RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. Few
members of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as
Quakers, were to be found in Texas until after the Civil War.
Their early opposition to slavery led the Friends to bypass the
Gulf Coast states. Several monthly meetings (organizational
units) of Friends made known their opposition to accepting
slaveholding Texas into the Union, primarily because Texas
reserved the right to divide into five slave states.
Furthermore, a proslavery, antiabolitionist newspaper, the
Austin Anti-Quaker, appeared in March 1842. Several individual
Quakers made their way to Texas before the 1870s, however, the
most famous being Mifflin Kenedy. Early twentieth-century Quaker
groups were in Lipscomb County (1910) and in View Point, Texas.
Today there are two major Quaker organizations in the state, the
Kansas Yearly Meeting, the earlier group, and the South Central
Yearly Meeting. The Estacado Monthly Meeting of the Society of
Friends, established in Estacado, T