Anne Whitehead

Anne Whitehead or Anne Downer; Anne Greenwell (c. 1624 – 28 July 1686) was an English Quaker organizer, preacher and writer. She underwent severe distraints for her beliefs.

Life and work Whitehead was born in Charlbury in about 1624 to Thomas and Mary Downer. Her father was vicar and her maternal grandfather is thought to have been Ralph Hutchinson, who was a biblical scholar and college head at Oxford University. Both men were jailed in 1657–1658 for refusing to pay tithes to the Church of England; Cole died in prison. She campaigned for an end to the persecution of Quakers, writing for both Quakers and non-Quakers, including For the King and both houses of Parliament. Much of her work was on the role of women within the Quaker community.

Anne Whitehead died in Middlesex in 1686. Her husband George to publish a collection of personal testimonies to her memory, Piety Promoted by Faithfulness (1686). Among those to laud her was Mary Forster in her 1686 work Piety Promoted. She was posthumously referred to as a “mother in Israel”.