Several Quaker elementary schools had existed in southern New Jersey in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, including two in what would become present-day Gloucester County, namely the “Little Red Schoolhouse” under the care of Mickleton Meeting and a School under the care of Woodbury Monthly Meeting sometimes called the “Deptford Free-School Institute.”  Eventually, these schools and...

The reason that Mullica Hill Quakers felt comfortable letting the care of a school close was the growth of public education in the United States.  Quakers had long been powerful advocates of free public education, and they remain so in the present. For many years, local Quakers in Mullica Hill and the surrounding towns saw no need for an additional, independent school once free public education...

Quakers arrived with a strong belief in the value of education but also disposed against the class-based and gender-based educational system of England.  In southern New Jersey, Quakers opened up several schools in the 18th century and made them open to Friends and non-Friends alike, rich and poor, boys and girls.  Beyond the Lenape, however, few non-Quakers lived in the region at the time. As...