George Keith

[close] George Keith (1638/1639 - 1716) was a Scottish religious leader, a Presbyterian turned Quaker turned Anglican. He was born in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, to a Presbyterian family and received an M.A. from the University of Aberdeen. Keith joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in the 1660s, accompanying George Fox, William Penn, and Robert Barclay on a mission to the Netherlands and Germany in 1677.

In 1685, three years after Barclay had been made the nonresident governor of the Province of East Jersey (part of the present-day American state of New Jersey), Keith traveled there to take the post of Surveyor-General. In 1686 he ran the first survey to mark out the border between West Jersey and East Jersey, which is today still known as the Keith line. Around 1691 Keith decided that Quakers had strayed too far from orthodox Christianity and began to have sharp disagreements with his fellow believers. He first broke with Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to form a short-lived group called the Christian Quakers in the colonies. In 1693, he and his fellow Keithians published An Exhortation & Caution to Friends Concerning Buying or Keeping of Negroes, one of the earliest printed antislavery tracts in British North America.

After returning to England, he was disowned by London Yearly Meeting in 1694. In 1699, he attacked William Penn and other Quakers as "Deists". He was ordained to the Church of England ministry in May 1700. Sponsored by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Keith returned to the American colonies as a missionary from 1702 to 1704, trying to win over Quakers and others. Keith invigorated Anglican congregations in Perth Amboy. Upon returning to England, Keith served as rector at the parish of Edburton, Sussex until his death on 27 March 1716.