Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

of the Religious Society of Friends

Arch Street Meeting House

Movie Night at ASMH: Back to the Future (1985)

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Join us at Arch Street Meeting House for an outdoor screening of Back to the Future (1985)!
Arch Street Meeting House will be hosting an outdoor screening of Back to the Future (1985) on Thursday, June 29th, 2023 from 8 pm to 10 pm. Tickets are a suggested donation of $10 per attendee and include admission to the museum. Feel free to bring snacks and have fun with the whole family! Doors will be opening at 8:00 pm, and we will begin the movie at 8:30 pm to give attendees the opportunity to get settled and explore our exhibits. Chairs will be provided, but picnic blankets are welcome.
Support provided by the Philadelphia Cultural Fund.

Prisoners of Congress: Philadelphia’s Quakers in Exile 1777-1778

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Norman E. Donoghue, II will discuss his new book, Prisoners of Congress: Philadelphia’s Quakers in Exile, 1777-1778, on June 14th at Arch Street Meeting House.

About the Book

In 1777, Congress labeled Quakers who would not take up arms in support of the War of Independence as “the most Dangerous Enemies America knows” and ordered Pennsylvania and Delaware to apprehend them. In response, Keystone State officials sent twenty men—seventeen of whom were Quakers—into exile, banishing them to Virginia, where they were held for a year.

Prisoners of Congress reconstructs this moment in American history through the experiences of four families: the Drinkers, the Fishers, the Pembertons, and the Gilpins. Identifying them as the new nation’s first political prisoners, Norman E. Donoghue II relates how the Quakers, once the preeminent power in Pennsylvania and an integral constituency of the colonies and early republic, came to be reviled by patriots who saw refusal to fight the English as borderline sedition.

Surprising, vital, and vividly told, this narrative of political and literal warfare waged by the United States against a pacifist religious group during the Revolutionary War era sheds new light on an essential aspect of American history. It will appeal to anyone interested in learning more about the nation’s founding.

The Quaker City: A Walking Tour of Old City

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Participate in Arch Street Meeting House’s brand new walking tour of Quaker sites in Old City, Philadelphia!

The tour begins with a brief exploration of the historic burial grounds at ASMH before continuing on a walking tour of important Quaker sites throughout the neighborhood. This is not just your run-of-the-mill famous Founding Fathers’ tour! It is perfect for visitors who are seeking a different side of Philadelphia history.

REGISTER

About the tour: Visitors will start their walking tour at Arch Street Meeting House, then continue to the Betsy Ross House and on to Welcome Park, the site of William Penn’s first residence in Philadelphia. After snaking their way through Independence National Historical Park, the group will stop at various other sites with a Quaker twist.

Support provided by the Philadelphia Cultural Fund.

The Quaker City: A Walking Tour of Old City

Written on:

Participate in Arch Street Meeting House’s brand new walking tour of Quaker sites in Old City, Philadelphia!

The tour begins with a brief exploration of the historic burial grounds at ASMH before continuing on a walking tour of important Quaker sites throughout the neighborhood. This is not just your run-of-the-mill famous Founding Fathers’ tour! It is perfect for visitors who are seeking a different side of Philadelphia history.

REGISTER

About the tour: Visitors will start their walking tour at Arch Street Meeting House, then continue to the Betsy Ross House and on to Welcome Park, the site of William Penn’s first residence in Philadelphia. After snaking their way through Independence National Historical Park, the group will stop at various other sites with a Quaker twist.

Support provided by the Philadelphia Cultural Fund.

The Quaker City: A Walking Tour of Old City

Written on:

Participate in Arch Street Meeting House’s brand new walking tour of Quaker sites in Old City, Philadelphia!

The tour begins with a brief exploration of the historic burial grounds at ASMH before continuing on a walking tour of important Quaker sites throughout the neighborhood. This is not just your run-of-the-mill famous Founding Fathers’ tour! It is perfect for visitors who are seeking a different side of Philadelphia history.

REGISTER

About the tour: Visitors will start their walking tour at Arch Street Meeting House, then continue to the Betsy Ross House and on to Welcome Park, the site of William Penn’s first residence in Philadelphia. After snaking their way through Independence National Historical Park, the group will stop at various other sites with a Quaker twist.

Support provided by the Philadelphia Cultural Fund.

The Quaker City: A Walking Tour of Old City

Written on:

Participate in Arch Street Meeting House’s brand new walking tour of Quaker sites in Old City, Philadelphia!

The tour begins with a brief exploration of the historic burial grounds at ASMH before continuing on a walking tour of important Quaker sites throughout the neighborhood. This is not just your run-of-the-mill famous Founding Fathers’ tour! It is perfect for visitors who are seeking a different side of Philadelphia history.

REGISTER

About the tour: Visitors will start their walking tour at Arch Street Meeting House, then continue to the Betsy Ross House and on to Welcome Park, the site of William Penn’s first residence in Philadelphia. After snaking their way through Independence National Historical Park, the group will stop at various other sites with a Quaker twist.

Support provided by the Philadelphia Cultural Fund.

File/Life: We Remember Stories of Pennhurst

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Over nearly eight decades, more than 10,000 people lived at the Pennhurst State School and Hospital. Their lives contain its history. Who are they? What do their stories have to say to us today? With generous support from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, the Institute on Disabilities at Temple University is pleased to announce the world premiere of File/Life: We Remember Stories of Pennhurst.

Part installation, part event, and part community gathering, File/Life will have a strictly limited Philadelphia engagement April 20-23, 2023, at the Arch Street Meeting House.

FILE/LIFE is a community-led exploration of the Pennhurst archives. Seven archivists (all people with disabilities and/or family members) share stories from the archives that made them listen, feel, imagine, and remember. In doing so, they ask the question: Can a file ever contain a life?

[Read more…] about File/Life: We Remember Stories of Pennhurst

The Vegetarian Legacy of Benjamin Lay

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Join us at Arch Street Meeting House on Friday, May 12th, from 5:30 to 7 pm for The Vegetarian Legacy of Benjamin Lay, presented by Vance Lehmkuhl of the American Vegan Center.

Benjamin Lay was scorned and laughed at during his life for his stubborn, relentless advocacy for the abolition of slavery from as early as 1732, and he spent nearly two centuries as a nearly-forgotten footnote to history. Thanks to Marcus Rediker’s 2017 biography The Fearless Benjamin Lay (now optioned for a major motion picture!), more Americans are starting to learn and appreciate how his anti-slavery activism reverberated through U.S. history, up to and beyond the US civil war. But his vegetarianism, which for Lay was cut from the same cloth as his abolitionism, also impacted American history.

We will look at how his influence was borne out in the lives of US vegetarians such as Anthony Benezet, John Woolman, Joshua Evans, Stephen Grellet, Sarah & Angelina Grimke, Bronson Alcott, and Dr. William Alcott, the first president of the American Vegetarian Society.

Vance Lehmkuhl

Vance Lehmkuhl runs the veg history tour program at the American Vegan Center, offering pre-scheduled and custom walking tours around Old City. He is the author of Eating Vegan in Philly (2016) and V for Veg: The Best of Philly’s Vegan Food Column (2016), both from Sullivan Street Press. He spent years as the vegan columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News and, prior to that, as the political cartoonist for Philadelphia City Paper, for which he was named Best of Philly by Philadelphia Magazine. He also founded the eco-pop band Green Beings, whose novelty patter song “Leftovers” has been heard many times on Dr. Demento’s radio show. Vance is passionate about three things: Helping acquaint people with Philadelphia’s amazing veg history; his wife, Cynthia Way; and the symphonies of Joseph Haydn.

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