Josiah Forster

Infobox Person
name = Josiah Forster


image_size = 240px
caption = Josiah in the centre
birth_name =
birth_date = 1782 [http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/portrait.asp?LinkID=mp00069&rNo=0&role=sit# National Portrait Gallery] ]
birth_place = Tottenham [http://www.tottenhamquakers.org.uk/history/Forsters001.html Tottenham Quakers History] , accessed 14 July 2008]
death_date = 1870
death_place =
death_cause =
resting_place = Tottenham Friends' burial ground
resting_place_coordinates =
residence =
nationality =English
other_names =
known_for = Slavery abolitionist, Bible society
education = Forster's school (founded by his grandfather}
employer =
occupation = Teacher and writer
title =
term =
predecessor =
successor =
party =
boards =
spouse = 1.Rachel Wilson 2.Sarah DillworthEdward H. Milligan, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9925/46946 Josiah Forster in ‘Forster, William (1784–1854)’] , "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", Oxford University Press, 2004, doi|10.1093/ref:odnb/46946 (subscription required for online access). Retrieved 17 July 2008.]
children = one (died a baby)
parents = William Forster (1747–1824)and Elizabeth Hayward (1759–1837)
relatives = William (brother), William Edward (nephew)
religion = Quaker


website =
footnotes =

Josiah Forster (1782 – 27 June 1870) was a teacher and philanthropist. He was an early member of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1839 and a supporter of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Both he and his wife were senior figures in the British Quakers.

Biography

Forster was born in 1782. He became a teacher at the school his grandfather, also Josiah Forster (1693-1763), had founded in Tottenham. The school started in 1752 in the ballroom of their grandfather's house and was called Forster's School. [http://www.tottenhamquakers.org.uk/history/Education002.html Tottenham Quakers - Education] , accessed 16 July 2008] His first wife, Rachel (née Wilson) was over thirty years older than him, and died in 1801.

Forster started another school in 1805 in Southgate that eventually moved to Tottenham in 1820. He ran this school until 1826 when he decided to devote more time to his Quaker interests. His wife had already been made a minister in 1810, and shortly afterwards he began sitting on Quaker committees; in 1817 he become an elder of the church. He campaigned for anti-slavery and worked for the British and Foreign Bible Society. He held the senior position of clerk to the Annual meeting of British Quakers from 1820 to 1831.

In 1838, Forster accompanied Elizabeth Fry on her tour and inspection of prisons in France. [ [http://www.ihaystack.com/authors/p/mrs_e_r_pitman/00016606_elizabeth_fry/00016606_english_ascii_p005.htm Elizabeth Fry] by ER Pitman] Forster sat on a committee of Quaker elders in 1836-7 who unsuccessfully tried to heal a schism in the Quaker church caused by the "Beaconite Controversy". The controversy was named after a book published in January 1835 called "A Beacon to the Society of Friends" [cite book|url=http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&id=CsgHAAAAQAAJ&dq=Isaac+crewdson&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=uh_TRiQ6SR&sig=fSSbfZgvT82itFGIUkyvOCE4JC0&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPP3,M1 |title=A Beacon to the Society of Friends|date=1835|first=Isaac|last=Crewdson|publisher=(unknown)] which was written by Isaac Crewdson, a mill owner and leader to the Manchester Quaker meeting, but the roots of the differences started as early as 1831. The controversy, which related to the role of evangelism in the society, eventually led to the resignation of Crewdson and about 300 similarly minded people across the country. [http://www.qhpress.org/quakerpages/qwhp/bfhstbc.htm The Beaconite Controversy] , Anna Braithwaite Thomas, 1912] cite book|title=Kleinwort Benson|first=Jehane|last=Wake|date=1997|isbn=0198282990|publisher=Oxford University Pres|pages=p50]

The "Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade" was mainly a Quaker society founded in the eighteenth century by Thomas Clarkson. Slavery had in theory been made illegal in 1807 in the British Empire. Following the Reform Act, William Wilberforce was able to get legislation through parliament. In 1838 legislation freed the slaves who had been relabelled apprentices. As a result in August 1838 800,000 people in the British empire became free. [ [http://www.brycchancarey.com/abolition/sturge.htm Biography of Joseph Sturge] accessed 10 August 2008]

A picture was commissioned that showed the delegates, including Josiah Forster, of the new British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society which was formed in 1839. The painting captured this important international convention in June, 1840. The small extract shown here includes only Samuel Gurney a banker and fellow Quaker, Forster, and William Allen.. Also in this painting are Josiah's brothers, Robert and William Forster, many significant figures and Isaac Crewdson. This new society's aim was "The universal extinction of slavery and the slave trade and the protection of the rights and interests of the enfranchised population in the British possessions and of all persons captured as slaves."

In 1842-3 a schism developed in the Society of Friends in Salum in Iowa. The difference developed over the ways that the society should support slavery, which was still an important part of the American economy. A rival meeting house had been created, and a separate burial ground which was separated from the older Quaker burial ground by a mere two feet of space. Four delegates were sent from Britain: Forster, his brother William, George Stacey and John Allen. The group did not manage to heal the divide immediately but it was resolved by 1848. [ [http://www.icelandichorse.info/salemantislaveryfriends.html The Anti-Slavery Friends in Salem, Iowa] , Lewis D. Savage, accessed 16 July 2008]

In 1849 the yearly meeting of the Quakers requested that representatives be sent to the rulers of the Christian nations. [New International Encyclopedia] Forster accompanied his brother, William, in 1853 when they and two others visited the American president, Franklin Pierce, and journeyed to spread the news around the governors of the southern American states. It was during this journey that William died and was buried in the Quaker town of Friendsville in Tennessee which was on the Underground Railroad. [Durwood Dunn, "Cades Cove: The Life and Death of an Appalachian Community" (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988), 125.]

Josiah Forster and his wife, Sarah, established a trust in 1862, where four new cottages were to be given to poor widows aged 55 or over. The nanaging committee was to be four Quakers including his nephew, W.E. Forster M.P. ['Tottenham: Charities for the poor', A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 5: Hendon, Kingsbury, Great Stanmore, Little Stanmore, Edmonton Enfield, Monken Hadley, South Mimms, Tottenham (1976), pp. 376-380. [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=26999 url] Date accessed: 14 July 2008.]

He attended the annual meeting of the British Quakers until his death in 1870.

Bible societies

Forster was a long and valued supporter of evangelical work of publishing and distributing bibles. In 1862 he was chairing a meeting at Blackfriars where it was moved that 2,000 pounds be sent to the American sister society of the "British and Foreign Bible Society". [ [http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9403E1DC1E3FEE34BC4E53DFB2668389679FDE&oref=slogin New York Times] , 6 April 1862, accessed 14 July 2008]

Education

Besides working at his grandfather's school, Forster helped to found the Grove House School in 1828 and he served on the management committee of the Lancasterian Boys' School in Tottenham. Forster and his brother Robert were lielong members of the London committee for Ackworth School.

Works

* [http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&id=tCRkrCdPtDgC&dq=%22Josiah+Forster%22&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=bFiMbn1n8O&sig=F-4obivvno6MtdvungBZh8X6rA4&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result#PPA3,M1 Some Reflections on the Importance of a Religious Life: offered to younger members of the Society of Friends] , 1834, 37pp, Society of Friends, accessed 14 July 2008
* Piety Promoted in Brief Biographical Memorials of Some of the Religious Society of Friends, Commonly Called Quakers

References

ources

*cite book|url=http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=o7nt71oazIoC|title=Memoirs of William Forster: In Two Volumes|author=William Forster, Benjamin Seebohn|publisher=A. W. Bennett|date=1865

External links