Briefer Notices

Abstract

BRIEFER NOTICES By Henry J. Cadbukt In the Friends-Jefferson Newsletter, Vol. II, No. 1 (April, 1966), Dr. Robert A. Clark writes on "Friends Hospital: One of Many Quaker Contributions to Psychiatry." Though brief, the article has the merit of associating the older institutions with later Friends like Thomas Eddy, Thomas Kirkbride, Pliny Earle, and Moses Sheppard. * * * An article by Harold B. Fields on "Free Negroes in Cass County before the Civil War," Michigan History, XLIV (1960), 375-383, attributes the coming of North Carolina Negroes to Calvin Township as due to the prior settlement of Quakers from the same background in the nearby Birch Lake Monthly Meeting. * * * Kenneth L. Carroll contributes another of his characteristic etudies of local Quakerism to the Virginia Magazine ofHistory and Biography, LXXIV (1966), 170-189. It is entitled "Quakerism on the Eastern Shore of Virginia." It uses material from the non-Quaker records previously collected in the books on the Eastern Shore by Susie Ames and Robert Whitelaw, from Quaker correspondence and Yearly Meeting records, and from the journals of Quaker visitors. There is no evidence of organized Quakerism in these two counties (Accomack and Northampton) after 1729. * * * Catherine Owens Peare is the author of adult as well as children's biographies. One of the latter, published in 1965, is The Herbert Hoover Story (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 247 pages). The bibliography suggests a pretty thorough use of sources, but there is no reference to his Quaker contacts after his teens. * * * Whittier's Legends of New England (1831) has been long out of print and scarce. In an introduction by John B. Pickard to a Facsimile Reproduction (Gainesville, Florida: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1965, xiv + 140 pages) Whittier's "mature dismissal of the book, his refusal to allow reprinting, and modern critical disparagement of its artistic merit must seem mainly justified," but it again deserves study as a prelude to his later work. * * * 51 52Quaker History A substantial contribution by an able historian, "Quakers and Poland, 1661-1919," by the late Marek Wajsblum (1903-1962), is in the Polish Review, Vol. XI, No. 2 (Spring 1966), pp. 3-22. Using Polish official as well as Quaker sources, it traces with all their contemporary , religious, and political overtones the intermittent contacts from the time when William Ames and other early Friends established Quakerism for a time at Danzig (cf. this Bulletin, XLI [1952], 81-92) until the English and American Quaker relief bodies ministered in Russia and in Poland itself to the Polish victims of the First World War. The article is prefaced by a portrait and memoir of the author. He became a refugee to England from Polish-Soviet civilization, a convert to Quakerism, an assiduous worker, but frustrated by the difficult need to make a living in historical research. * * * Nina F. Little writes on "New Bedford Oil for Philadelphia Friends: being a Portfolio of Paintings by Joseph S. Russell" in The Bulletin from Johnny Cake Hill (i.e., Quarterly Journal of the Old Dartmouth Historical Society, New Bedford) Autumn Issue, 1964. The artist, a Quaker, was a dealer in oil and lamps. * * * In connection with the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Vera Brittain published a volume entitled The Rebel Passion: A Short History of Some Pioneer Peacemakers (London: George Allen & TJnwin, Ltd., 1965, 240 pages and 32 portraits). As was to be expected, dozens of Friends in many countries are mentioned for their participation in this significant peace movement. * * * A. Day Bradley has collected and published in The Westchester Historian, XLII (1966), 33-35, the available information about Westchester Friends Meeting. Westchester Village, now included in the Bronx, is known to have had a meeting as early as 1684, held in homes which were registered in 1704, and later in a meetinghouse on land purchased in 1707. There were about 73 members in 1828, when the Separation divided them, about two Hicksites to one Orthodox. The former continued as a Preparative Meeting until 1860. The latter erected a meetinghouse in 1843, but this was destroyed by fire in 1892, when the meeting was laid down. Briefer Notices53 In American Quarterly, XVII (1965), 63-80, Robert W. Doherty writes on "Religion...