The Friendly Moralist Society Minutes (bound volume), 1841 - 1856, 1842 - 1849

Includes sections with notes regarding members attendance and reasons for missing meetings. It also documents amount fined members for being absent. The proceedings are recorded by the elected secretaries and detail the meetings. Highlights include Annual Day festivities, induction of new members, and meetings. Minutes reveal the working of the Society and its role in providing burial aid and financial support to widows and orphans. Also explored is the intra-racial strife between free blacks and those of mixed parentage; minutes from May 1844 and October 1848 show the exclusion of free blacks from membership. In addition, the minutes chronicle the financial affairs of the group, with many references to the Society investment practices and financial troubles in the late 1840s. Of note are two June annual meeting addresses (1848 and 1853), the former discussing the status of mulattos caught between black enslaved and white populations, and the need for education and banding together for the benefit of all of their class; and the latter giving a history of the society and the various schisms.