The Quaker Collection of Wilmington College

Abstract

NOTESSfDOCUMENTS THE QUAKER COLLECTION OF WILMINGTON COLLEGE By Larry Gara* Wilmington College's Quaker Collection is in the process of being sorted and catalogued; therefore any description of it must be tentative and incomplete. For the first time, however, the special collection does have its own roomy quarters in a section of Wilmington's newly expanded Arthur S. Watson Library, with the more valuable manuscript records housed in a large vault located just off the Quaker room. Dr. Willis Hall, Curator, and student assistants have started to put it into shape for convenient use by visiting researchers as well as by Wilmington students and faculty. Approximately fourteen hundred volumes have been catalogued and are available for use. While many of these are of recent date, there is a scattering of some very early editions of well-known works, including Testimony on Behalf of the Truth's Innocence (1660), Testimony to the Sufficiency of the Light Within (1701), a 1736 edition of Barclay's Apology, and a volume of Penn's Works dated 1771. Since the Wilmington Collection is new, there are numerous gaps and the Curator would welcome information about the availability of writings on any aspect of Quaker history which may not now be among the current holdings. The heart of the Quaker collection consists of the manuscripts and records of various preparative, monthly, and quarterly meetings and of Wilmington Yearly Meeting. These were consulted by the compilers of William Wade Hinshaw's Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy, and all have been microfilmed. There are approximately four hundred volumes, some dating from 1803. While most of the volumes are minute books, the collection also includes books of * Larry Gara is a member of the History Department at Wilmington College and author of Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad (Lexington, Kentucky, 1961). 41 42Quaker History births and deaths, treasurers' books, ministers' and elders' records, separate volumes of marriages, and membership lists. Items of special interest include a journal, probably by Gershon Perdue, covering the years 1836-1841, when its author made a visit to Friends Indian establishments in Missouri, and a book of the "Fairfield Branch of the Committee on Concerns for the People of Color, 1855-1868," which was one of two special committees set up by Friends to "extend care to the two settlements of colored people in Brown county." These are included in a nineteen-page typewritten "Index to List of Quaker Records in the Vault of the Wilmington College Library," which is available for consultation in the library. A segment of the collection is abstracted in Richard Z. Smith's master's thesis (Kent State University, 1966) "Minutes of the Wilmington Ohio Monthly Meeting, 1868-1873" with an introduction and a complete index. A number of source materials, mostly related to Quakerism in the area, are also in the collection. These would include several scrapbooks ; minutes of the Wilmington Ministerial Association, 1894-1930; two volumes of Records of the Friends Bible Institute, 1899-1904; three volumes on the Bloomington W.C.T.U.; and a volume of records of the Wilmington Yearly Meeting Home Missions Committee , 1920-1932. In addition to material relating to local meetings, Wilmington's Quaker Collection contains a number of Friends and peace publications and pamphlets as well as good files of the principal Friends periodicals. The Quaker Room also houses the college archives, which are by no means complete. The college publications contain a wealth of material on Friends who have taught or visited at Wilmington College. A systematic preparation and collection of archival material is continuing. For those who may be interested in using these materials it is worth noting that some rather significant items are not in Wilmington 's Quaker Collection. Except for a sketch of Thomas Kelly's life prepared by Mary Kelly Farquhar, his sister, and T. Canby Jones, a former student, for the dedication of the college's Thomas R. Kelly Religious Center, there is no known source material concerning the college's best known alumnus. Nor is there an organized collection concerning Friendsville Academy, which has been fostered by Wilmington Yearly Meeting. The remarkable and nearly forgotten venture of the nineteenth-century Friends...