Revolutionary Shore: The Shore Born Quaker Abolitionist

April 4, 1773 – On this very day, 250 years ago . . .

Exhilaration and relief overwhelmed Shore native Warner Mifflin and his wife Elizabeth as they welcomed their live-born infant Sarah. The Quaker couple’s good news quickly traveled through a labyrinth of well-positioned kin in the Mid-Atlantic and beyond. Soon enough, this same network afforded them intimate access to the most significant conversations and characters of the American Revolution. Though Warner Mifflin may not be a household name today, he was an abolitionist force, peace ambassador, and source of reckoning known to Washington, Jefferson, Lafayette, Howe, and countless other wartime leaders.  

Warner Mifflin’s earthly life began in 1745 at his father’s estate Pharsalia on Swan’s Gut Creek near present day Greenbackville. Few members of the Society of Friends remained in the area by then; Mifflin reckoned the nearest Quaker family more than sixty miles away. Though his parents insisted he read treatises by William Penn and others, they themselves did not strictly adhere to Quaker tenets. At fourteen Mifflin was deeply instructed by an unnamed

—but eternally thanked—protestor: 

Being in the field with my father’s slaves, a young man among them questioned me whether I thought it could be right that they should be toiling in order to raise me, and that I might be sent to school, and by and by their children must do so for mine. Some little irritation at first took place in my feelings, but his reasoning so impressed me as never to be erased from my mind. Before I arrived at the age of manhood I determined never to be a slave-owner.

-Mifflin

Many societal pressures challenged Warner Mifflin’s sincere teenage promise. He did hold other humans in bondage.  Enslaved servants came with his bride and more were added from his parents’ properties to his new home in Kent County, Delaware. Still, his successful outward rise could not quiet the promptings of his “Inner Light” that slavery was wholly outside God’s will. 

The year of 1773 came to a hard end for the young Mifflins. Their precious baby Sarah lived only three months and joined her younger sister in Delaware soil at Motherkiln Meeting. Then, in December, angry Bostonians dared British action by casting their tea into Boston Harbor. Mifflin saw the loyalties hardening around him.  He took a deep breath and declared that he could no longer live a double life of conscience. Slavery must end and peace was possible. Some called Mifflin a fool and others a fanatic, but no one could ignore this tall tenacious Quaker man embarking on a costly and often unpopular quest that all men might live as equals.  

On July 4, 2026, our nation will commemorate the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  Everyone is invited to be part of the great Semiquincentennial (half of five hundred) no matter their ancestry, no matter their American story.  The commemoration gives us an extraordinary chance to honor the countless Shore folks–men and women, enslaved and free, indigenous or “strangers,” Patriots and Tories, freedom fighters, abolitionists, and others —whose decisions helped form the nation we share and the Shore we love. 

Join WESR on the 4th of each month to learn more about Virginia and the Shore’s role in the War for Independence.  Get ready for the Revolutionary Shore!