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FRIEND ANTOINE BÉNÉZET
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FRIEND ANTOINE BÉNÉZET FRIEND ANTHONY BENEZET
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1713
January 31, Saturday (1712, Old Style): Antoine Bénézet was born to a Huguenot family in Saint-Quentin in Picardy
in northern France.
WIKIPEDIA’S LIST OF HUGUENOTS
NEVER READ AHEAD! TO APPRECIATE JANUARY 31ST, 1712/1713 AT
ALL ONE MUST APPRECIATE IT AS A TODAY (THE FOLLOWING DAY,
TOMORROW, IS BUT A PORTION OF THE UNREALIZED FUTURE AND IFFY
AT BEST).
Friend Antoine Bénézet “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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FRIEND ANTHONY BENEZET FRIEND ANTOINE BÉNÉZET
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1715
While Antoine Bénézet was a 2-year-old, his family emigrated from France to London. As “Anthony
Benezet,” this Huguenot child would receive an English education appropriate for a scion of a merchant
family.
YOUR GARDEN-VARIETY ACADEMIC HISTORIAN INVITES YOU TO CLIMB
ABOARD A HOVERING TIME MACHINE TO SKIM IN METATIME BACK
ACROSS THE GEOLOGY OF OUR PAST TIMESLICES, WHILE OFFERING UP
A GARDEN VARIETY OF COGENT ASSESSMENTS OF OUR PROGRESSION.
WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP! YOU SHOULD REFUSE THIS HELICOPTERISH
OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORICAL PAST, FOR IN THE REAL WORLD THINGS
HAPPEN ONLY AS THEY HAPPEN. WHAT THIS SORT WRITES AMOUNTS,
LIKE MERE “SCIENCE FICTION,” MERELY TO “HISTORY FICTION”:
IT’S NOT WORTH YOUR ATTENTION.
Friend Antoine Bénézet “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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FRIEND ANTOINE BÉNÉZET FRIEND ANTHONY BENEZET
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1731
Antoine Bénézet was 17 years of age when his family emigrated from England to Philadelphia in
Pennsylvania. Here Anthony Benezet, a consummate Huguenot “joiner,” would affiliate himself with the
Religious Society of Friends.
WIKIPEDIA’S LIST OF HUGUENOTS
THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE
INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN
SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD.
Friend Antoine Bénézet “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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FRIEND ANTHONY BENEZET FRIEND ANTOINE BÉNÉZET
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1739
After some false starts in trade, Friend Anthony Benezet became a schoolteacher at Germantown in
Pennsylvania.
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
Friend Antoine Bénézet “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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FRIEND ANTOINE BÉNÉZET FRIEND ANTHONY BENEZET
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1742
By this point the overseers of the Pennsylvania public school system had four different types of school in
operation in Philadelphia. All were Quaker-dominated and all were open to the general public. There were
primary schools for teaching the trivium — reading, writing, and arithmetic. There was a secondary school
teaching English and math. There was a vocational school offering training for business, for surveying, and
for carpentry. There was a “Latin School,” preparing young men for college. They operated under a logo that
enjoined “Good Instruction is Better than Riches” and “Love One Another
A Moravian Seminary for Women founded in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Friend Anthony Benezet, a schoolteacher at Germantown, accepted a position at the Friends’ English School
of Philadelphia (this was to become the William Penn Charter School).
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION,
THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
Friend Antoine Bénézet “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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FRIEND ANTHONY BENEZET FRIEND ANTOINE BÉNÉZET
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1745
Lots were laid out for the Ansonborough neighborhood of Charleston, South Carolina.
In about this year Olaudah Equiano was born the son of a chief in an area called “Eboe” in Guinea or Benin
in Africa — unless the 1759 baptismal record we have belatedly discovered in England is correct and actually
1
he would be born in the Carolina colony in the New World in about 1747:
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD?
— NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES.
LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
1. Olaudah Equiano’s detailed account of his early life in Africa, although it is more substantial than what was offered by any similar
black writer of the period, is such that it could have been fabricated out of mere borrowings from various published pieces of travel
writing, and from white antislavery texts like those by Anthony Benezet. This is not to say that Equiano’s account is a fabrication;
it is only to say that there is no detail in it that might be granted any probative weight. If, for instance, a person came into a police
station to attempt to confess to a currently unsolved murder, but was able to provide the police only with details of the crime that
had already been published in the news media and with no accurate further details (this does rather often happen), although the
police would collect such testimony a competent District Attorney would not automatically on such a basis bring a charge of murder
or discount other possible explanations.
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FRIEND ANTOINE BÉNÉZET FRIEND ANTHONY BENEZET
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1750
William Williams, Sr. depicted the reclusive Friend Benjamin Lay in oil on a mahogany panel.
As we can see above, the depiction has Lay as standing in front of the grotto that served him as a study,
holding Thomas Tryon’s tract advocating healthful living.
In addition to his day duties at the Friends’ English School in Philadelphia (this would become the William
Penn Charter School), Friend Anthony Benezet set up an evening class for slave children which he ran from
his own home.
The result of this would in 1770 be the Negro School at Philadelphia. From at least this decade, Friend
Anthony would be firmly opposed to slavery. Initially, he was alone in such sentiments. He had a lot of work
to do, if he wanted convince his Quaker brethren that slaveowning was inconsistent with their Christian
doctrine.
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FRIEND ANTHONY BENEZET FRIEND ANTOINE BÉNÉZET
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Quakers and the “American Revolution”:
Pennsylvania Quakers ... experienced significant
harassment for their pacifism and neutrality. Their
numbers were already greatly reduced by the
disciplinary renaissance of the 1750s, and they faced
a real schism from “Free Quakers,” who both supported
the Revolution and rejected pacifism. As a result
“orthodox” Friends found themselves hunted down in a
colony they had founded and long governed. In May 1776
a stone-throwing mob forced Philadelphia Friends to
observe a fast day that the Continental Congress had
proclaimed. A Berks County mob shackled and jailed
Moses Roberts, a Quaker minister, until he posted a
$10,000 bond guaranteeing his “good” behavior.
Philadelphia patriots also exiled seventeen Friends to
Virginia in 1776 for nearly two years so they would not
interfere with revolutionary activities. Patriots
celebrating the surrender of Cornwallis in October
1782 ransacked Quaker homes that had not displayed
victory candles.
“HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE” BEING A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR
POINT IN TIME (JUST AS THE PERSPECTIVE IN A PAINTING IS A VIEW
FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN SPACE), TO “LOOK AT THE COURSE OF
HISTORY MORE GENERALLY” WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE PERSPECTIVE
ALTOGETHER. THIS IS FANTASY-LAND, YOU’RE FOOLING YOURSELF.
THERE CANNOT BE ANY SUCH THINGIE, AS SUCH A PERSPECTIVE.
Friend Antoine Bénézet “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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FRIEND ANTOINE BÉNÉZET FRIEND ANTHONY BENEZET
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1754
Friend Anthony Benezet left the Friends’ English School to set up one of his own in Philadelphia, providing
girls with an opportunity for an “advanced learning in English” — the initial public girls’ school in America.
RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
QUAKER EDUCATION
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
Friend Antoine Bénézet “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
