The Journal of Quaker History, Vol. 113, No,2, Fall 2024, has recently published an article entitled "Long Island Quaker and Bowne Family Manumissions During the Revolutionary War and Post-Revolutionary War Eras" by Bowne House Collection Volunteer Ellen M. Spindler, with research assistance by Charlotte Jackson and Kate Lynch.
The article describes the Quakers' New York Meeting's efforts for more than twenty seven years from 1771-1798 to manumit the enslaved among its members, a long, complicated process which culminated with the New York Legislature retroactively legalizing in 1798 all previous Quaker manumissions. The Bowne (and Parsons who married into the) family's unique story, as a microcosm of the broader Quaker community in the New York Meeting, is told from the institution of enslavement already existing in New York in the mid-1700s, to subsequent abolitionist activities by the family in the late 1700s, and its participation in the Underground Railroad in the early 1800s.