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Anthony Benezet

Anthony Benezet, or Antoine Bénézet (January 31, 1713 - May 3, 1784), was a French-born American educator and abolitionist.

Anthony Benezet was born in Saint-Quentin, France, on 31 January 1713. His family were Huguenots. Because of the persecution of Protestants after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, his family decided to leave France. They moved first to Rotterdam, then briefly to Greenwich, then to London. In 1727 Benezet joined the Religious Society of Friends. In 1731 the Benezet family immigrated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in North America.

Anthony Benezet and John Woolman were the earliest American abolitionists. Like Woolman, Benezet was also an advocate of war tax resistance.

In Philadelphia, Benezet worked to convince his Quaker brethren that slave-owning was not consistent with Christian doctrine. He believed that the British ban on slavery should be extended to the colonies (and later to the independent states) in North America.

After several years as a failed merchant, in 1739 Benezet began teaching at a Germantown school. In 1742, he moved to the Friends' English School of Philadelphia (now the William Penn Charter School). In 1750 he added night classes for black slaves to his schedule.