It only remains to picture the rest of the process by which slavery was purged away on Quaker Hill. In 1775 the practice of buying and selling slaves had come to an end, and no public abuse was noted by the Meeting in the treatment accorded to slaves by their masters. The next year there was but one slave owned by a member of the Meeting; and the day he was freed in the fall of 1777 was counted by the Meeting so notable that the clerk was directed to make a minute of the event. The owner had been Samuel Field, and the slave was called Philips. Another manumission in 1779 is recorded, but it was doubtless in the case of a new resident of the Hill, for it is recorded without signs of the joy exhibited in the freedom of Philips. In the years 1782-3 the final act in emancipating the local slaves was taken, in the investigation by a committee of the Meeting into the condition of the freed slaves, and the obligations of their old masters to them. It was not very cordially received at first, but in the third year of the life and labors of the committee it was reported by them that "the negroes appear to be satisfied without further settlement." So the first American community to free herself from slavery required but sixteen years of agitation fully to complete the process. [8] See "Some Glimpses of the Past," by Alicia Hopkins Taber, 1906; Quaker Hill Series. [9] See Map II. CHAPTER V. AMUSEMENTS IN THE QUAKER COMMUNITY. The Quaker community had little time for amusements, and less patience. The discipline of the Meeting levelled its guns at the play spirit, and for a century men were threatened, visited, disowned if necessary, for "going to frollicks," and "going to places of amusement." The Meeting House records leave no room for doubt as to the opinion held by the Society of Friends upon the matter of play. An account is given elsewhere of the discipline of the Meeting in its struggle against immorality and "frollicking." The following quotation from James Woods' "The Purchase Meeting," vividly depicts the confused elements of the social life of that time: "On great occasions such as the holding of a Quarterly Meeting, the population turned out _en masse_. Piety and worldliness both observed the day. The latter class gathered about the meeting house, had wrestling matches and various athletic sports in the neighboring fields, and horse races on the adjacent roads. The meetings regularly appointed committees as a police force to keep order about the meeting house during the time of worship and business."