Richard Jordan, a world-traveling Quaker evangelist and abolitionist whose early 19th-century farm in what is now downtown Camden was immortalized on elegant Staffordshire chinaware.
Twenty years before the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, Jordan was born to an affluent North Carolina Quaker couple who operated a slave plantation.
After leaving North Carolina, he returned repeatedly to buy and free his own family's slaves as well as lobby the state legislature against the institution of slavery. He later traveled widely to Quaker communities throughout the U.S. and Europe as an itinerant evangelist, speaking out on behalf of the plight of "the oppressed Africans among us."
Jordan's grassroots antislavery work was part of the early phase of a movement that, by the 1830s, would become a mainstream political force that ultimately sparked the Civil War.
Jordan, who wrote a book about his world travels entitled "Journal of Richard Jordan," spent the last 19 years of his life as a member of the Newton Meeting in what is now Camden. Jordan, who died in 1826, and his wife, Pharaby, who died in 1825, are considered by many to be the Quaker Burial Ground's most distinguished occupants.
As a very early abolitionist, he was doing his work in the opening years of the 19th century at a time when this area and Philadelphia across the river were a center for the movement. At the time he embraced the concept of abolition, Jordan preached a radical idea: that slaves were as human as white Europeans and should be treated on the same level of humanness as everyone else.
The New Newton Meeting was the core of a Quaker enclave that played a pivotal role in creating the social and business community that evolved to become Camden.
What appears to be a vacant lot behind a warehouse at the Mt. Ephraim Avenue and Mt. Vernon Street end of Old Camden is actually a Quaker cemetery whose stones now lie below the surface. One hundred thirty-nine members of the city's founding Quaker families are buried here.
Twenty years before the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, Jordan was born to an affluent North Carolina Quaker couple who operated a slave plantation.
After leaving North Carolina, he returned repeatedly to buy and free his own family's slaves as well as lobby the state legislature against the institution of slavery. He later traveled widely to Quaker communities throughout the U.S. and Europe as an itinerant evangelist, speaking out on behalf of the plight of "the oppressed Africans among us."
Jordan's grassroots antislavery work was part of the early phase of a movement that, by the 1830s, would become a mainstream political force that ultimately sparked the Civil War.
Jordan, who wrote a book about his world travels entitled "Journal of Richard Jordan," spent the last 19 years of his life as a member of the Newton Meeting in what is now Camden. Jordan, who died in 1826, and his wife, Pharaby, who died in 1825, are considered by many to be the Quaker Burial Ground's most distinguished occupants.
As a very early abolitionist, he was doing his work in the opening years of the 19th century at a time when this area and Philadelphia across the river were a center for the movement. At the time he embraced the concept of abolition, Jordan preached a radical idea: that slaves were as human as white Europeans and should be treated on the same level of humanness as everyone else.
The New Newton Meeting was the core of a Quaker enclave that played a pivotal role in creating the social and business community that evolved to become Camden.
What appears to be a vacant lot behind a warehouse at the Mt. Ephraim Avenue and Mt. Vernon Street end of Old Camden is actually a Quaker cemetery whose stones now lie below the surface. One hundred thirty-nine members of the city's founding Quaker families are buried here.
Richard Jordan, a world-traveling Quaker evangelist and abolitionist whose early 19th-century farm in what is now downtown Camden was immortalized on elegant Staffordshire chinaware.
Twenty years before the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, Jordan was born to an affluent North Carolina Quaker couple who operated a slave plantation.
After leaving North Carolina, he returned repeatedly to buy and free his own family's slaves as well as lobby the state legislature against the institution of slavery. He later traveled widely to Quaker communities throughout the U.S. and Europe as an itinerant evangelist, speaking out on behalf of the plight of "the oppressed Africans among us."
Jordan's grassroots antislavery work was part of the early phase of a movement that, by the 1830s, would become a mainstream political force that ultimately sparked the Civil War.
Jordan, who wrote a book about his world travels entitled "Journal of Richard Jordan," spent the last 19 years of his life as a member of the Newton Meeting in what is now Camden. Jordan, who died in 1826, and his wife, Pharaby, who died in 1825, are considered by many to be the Quaker Burial Ground's most distinguished occupants.
As a very early abolitionist, he was doing his work in the opening years of the 19th century at a time when this area and Philadelphia across the river were a center for the movement. At the time he embraced the concept of abolition, Jordan preached a radical idea: that slaves were as human as white Europeans and should be treated on the same level of humanness as everyone else.
The New Newton Meeting was the core of a Quaker enclave that played a pivotal role in creating the social and business community that evolved to become Camden.
What appears to be a vacant lot behind a warehouse at the Mt. Ephraim Avenue and Mt. Vernon Street end of Old Camden is actually a Quaker cemetery whose stones now lie below the surface. One hundred thirty-nine members of the city's founding Quaker families are buried here.
Twenty years before the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, Jordan was born to an affluent North Carolina Quaker couple who operated a slave plantation.
After leaving North Carolina, he returned repeatedly to buy and free his own family's slaves as well as lobby the state legislature against the institution of slavery. He later traveled widely to Quaker communities throughout the U.S. and Europe as an itinerant evangelist, speaking out on behalf of the plight of "the oppressed Africans among us."
Jordan's grassroots antislavery work was part of the early phase of a movement that, by the 1830s, would become a mainstream political force that ultimately sparked the Civil War.
Jordan, who wrote a book about his world travels entitled "Journal of Richard Jordan," spent the last 19 years of his life as a member of the Newton Meeting in what is now Camden. Jordan, who died in 1826, and his wife, Pharaby, who died in 1825, are considered by many to be the Quaker Burial Ground's most distinguished occupants.
As a very early abolitionist, he was doing his work in the opening years of the 19th century at a time when this area and Philadelphia across the river were a center for the movement. At the time he embraced the concept of abolition, Jordan preached a radical idea: that slaves were as human as white Europeans and should be treated on the same level of humanness as everyone else.
The New Newton Meeting was the core of a Quaker enclave that played a pivotal role in creating the social and business community that evolved to become Camden.
What appears to be a vacant lot behind a warehouse at the Mt. Ephraim Avenue and Mt. Vernon Street end of Old Camden is actually a Quaker cemetery whose stones now lie below the surface. One hundred thirty-nine members of the city's founding Quaker families are buried here.
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