Josiah Forster

Biography Forster was born in 1782. He became a teacher at the school his grandfather, also Josiah Forster (1693–1763), had founded in Tottenham. The school started in 1752 in the ballroom of their grandfather's house and was called Forster's School. His first wife, Rachel (née Wilson) was over thirty years older than he was, and died in 1801.

Forster sat on a committee of Quaker elders in 1836-7 who unsuccessfully tried to heal a schism in the Quaker church caused by the Beaconite Controversy. The controversy was named after a book published in January 1835 called A Beacon to the Society of Friends which was written by Isaac Crewdson, a leader to the Manchester Quaker meeting. The controversy, which related to evangelism in the society, eventually led to the resignation of Crewdson and about 300 similarly minded people across the country.

The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was mainly a Quaker society founded in the eighteenth century by Thomas Clarkson. Slavery had in theory been made illegal in 1807 in the British Empire. Following the Reform Act, William Wilberforce was able to get legislation through parliament. In 1838 legislation freed the slaves who had been relabelled apprentices. As a result, in August 1838 800,000 people in the British empire became free.

caption=Forster is on the left of centre near the front in this painting which is of the 1840 Anti-Slavery Convention.

In 1849 the yearly meeting of the Quakers requested that representatives be sent to the rulers of the Christian nations. Forster accompanied his brother, William, in 1853 when they and two others visited the American president, Franklin Pierce, and journeyed to spread the news around the governors of the southern American states. It was during this journey that William died and was buried in the Quaker town of Friendsville in Tennessee which was on the Underground Railroad.

Josiah Forster and his wife, Sarah, established a trust in 1862, where four new cottages were to be given to poor widows aged 55 or over. The managing committee was to be four Quakers including his nephew, W.E. Forster M.P.

He attended the annual meeting of the British Quakers until his death in 1870.

Bible societies Forster was a long and valued supporter of the evangelical work of publishing and distributing Bibles. In 1862 he chaired a meeting at Bible House, Blackfriars, where it was agreed that £2000 be sent to the American Bible Society, the US sister society of the British and Foreign Bible Society.

Education Besides working at his grandfather's school, Forster helped to found the Grove House School in 1828 and he served on the management committee of the Lancasterian Boys' School in Tottenham.

Works

Some Reflections on the Importance of a Religious Life: offered to younger members of the Society of Friends, 1834, 37pp, Society of Friends, accessed 14 July 2008 Piety Promoted in Brief Biographical Memorials of Some of the Religious Society of Friends, Commonly Called Quakers