I have often felt a motion of love to leave some hints in writing of my experience of the goodness of God, and now, in the thirty-sixth year of my age, I begin this work.

John Woolman (October 19 1720 - October 7 1772) was a North American merchant tailor journalist and itinerant Quaker preacher and an early abolitionist in the colonial era. In 1772 Woolman traveled to England where he urged Quakers to support abolition of slavery.