Israel Pemberton

THIS careful biographical monograph gives Pennsylvania’s Quaker ‘king’ of the middle 18th century the attention which has long been his due. Here is Israel Pemberton (1715-1779) as merchant, politician, friend of the Indians, Quaker leader, philanthropist, and proponent of peace. This Israel Pemberton, son of Israel, the merchant, and grandson of Phineas, one of the colony’s Quaker founders, was born to lead. Energetic, conscientious, gifted, and shrewd, he typified the practical, political side of Quakerism in all its strength and weakness. Economic success as merchant-shipper-trader came early to Pemberton, but did not satisfy him for long, and from about 1750 to the Revolution he devoted most of his energy to trying to maintain Quaker principles in Pennsylvania. He led the Friends in and out of the Assembly in their opposition to the aggressive Indian policy of the proprietors and the frontiersmen, hoping to keep peace with the Indians and to preserve the liberties as well as the power with which William Penn had endowed the first generation of Pennsylvania Friends. The effort failed, but Pemberton’s bold attempt, played for high stakes against all and sundry, is here told for the first time in the rich detail which the great collection of Pemberton Papers in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania makes possible.—Thomas Drake, The American Historical Review