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Benjamin Ferris was truly a "Renaissance Man." He was an ambitious self educated man, well versed in the classics, who blossomed from watchmaker to surveyor and conveyancer to architect and finally into a noted historian in Wilmington, DE. It was an historian who labeled him "Father of Delaware History."

While his Quaker "Inward Light" predominated over the Bible as the "fountain," he was extremely well versed on the passages of the Bible and effectively debated a Presbyterian minister weekly for nearly two years on theological issues in a religious publication. He partnered with Elias Hicks in the 1820s, which resulted in a major split in the Quakers between the Hicksites and the Orthodox, establishing the author's Ferris Hicksite line. As a respected first clerk of the Hicksite Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, he was instrumental in partially resolving a territorial issue involving the Seneca Indians in upstate western New York.

A man with a remarkable memory, Benjamin learned French, became acquainted with the DuPonts in Wilmington, DE, and could converse with them fluently in their own language. They had a very pleasant exchange over the years.

As stated in the Dedication, this author's father Albert was Benjamin Ferris reincarnated. The Hicksite separation had long been diminished when Hicksite Albert Ferris married Orthodox Elma Henby in 1921 in Dublin, Indiana.