Hugh Stewart Barbour was born in Peking (now Beijing), China, August 7, 1924, where his father was a professor of geology and a close friend of Teilhard de Chardin.  After schooling in England, he entered Harvard College in 1938, graduating in 1942.  After two years at Yale Divinity School, he entered Union Theological Seminary, where he received a bachelor of divinity degree in 1945.  In 1952 he received his Ph.D. in church history in 1952.             Barbour began his teaching career at Syracuse University in 1947.  In 1950 he became an instructor in the Department of Bible and Religion at Wellesley College.  Three years later, he joined the Earlham College faculty, where he retired as professor of religion in 1990.  At Earlham, he participated in the founding of the Earlham School of Religion in 1960, where he taught Quakerism until his retirement.             Barbour established his scholarly reputation with his dissertation on early Quakerism, published by Yale University Press in 1964 as The Quakers in Puritan England.  Thirty years later, an admiring Quaker scholar opined that if, as Alfred North Whitehead said, all of Western philosophy is but a footnote to Plato, then all of the voluminous scholarship on early Quakerism in the past half century is but a footnote to Hugh Barbour.  Taking issue with earlier scholars, especially Rufus Jones, who had located the origins of Quakerism in continental mystical traditions, Barbour argued that the roots of Quakerism lay in the English Puritan tradition.  Barbour followed this with numerous other publications, most notably Early Quaker Writings (1973), The Quakers (1988) and William Penn on Religion and Ethics (1991).             Barbour has also been active in the work of a variety of Quaker organizations, including Friends United Meeting, Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends, Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting of Friends, the Friends World Committee for Consultation, and the Quaker Theological Discussion Group.  He has also served as a Quaker representative to the National and World Councils of Churches.

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