Monthly Meeting Research Articles

FGC's "Uniform Discipline" Rediscovered

FGC's "Uniform Discipline" Rediscovered Charles E. Fager* I One of the most thrilling feats of Quaker scholarship known to me is Henry Cadbury's discovery andreconstruction ofGeorge Fox's suppressed Book ofMiracles. While hardly in the same league, I felt the spirit ofCadbury's investigative eruditionhovering somewhere close by one morning this spring when, readingareportontheproceedingsofFriends GeneralConference for 1926, the following closing paragraph appeared: "The Discipline committee, appointed at Richmond in 1922, presented a printed report consisting of 140 pages. It presents a clear conception of Friendly faith, principles and business procedure, in modern language, so that not only those accustomed to Friends' expressions but any interested stranger can understand. The Conference passes this proposed discipline on to its constituent yearly meetings with the hope they will adopt it as way opens." (FI 7th mo. 31, 1926: 623) What this obscure paragraph disclosed was that FGC had once had a Uniform Discipline! The very idea seemed preposterous, utterly foreign to the pluralistic — notto say sprawling—ethos ofFGC as I have known itoverthepast 30years or so. Besides, while serving foralmost adecade on thatbody's Central and Executive Committees, I had never heard a single reference to any such document in any session, or read of it in any report or publication. There must have been some mistakeMoreover , such a project also seemed entirely out of step with what I knew of the Hicksite Quaker tradition of which FGC was the heir. Their forebears' opposition to Orthodox efforts to define and enforce religious uniformity was a key factor in the Separations of 1827-28 which brought theirbranch ofQuakerism into being. For thatmatter, controversy had long dogged the Orthodox yearly meetings own labors in this direction, most notably among those affiliated with the Five Years Meeting. That body's Uniform Discipline, developed in 1900, had been a source of endless controversy among its member groups, especially concerning the place of theRichmondDeclarationofFaithwithin it. ForFGC to nowbeundertaking something similarseemedtotally outofcharacter. (Mekeel, Chapters VII & VIII.) The staffattheFriendsHistoricalLibrary,whereIwasdoingthisreading, *Chuck Fager has written extensively on Quaker thought and history. He is a member ofState College (Pa.) Monthly Meeting, and teaches writing at Penn State University. 52Quaker History shared my puzzlement: they had not heard ofany FGC Uniform Discipline either. But Mary Ellen Chijioke, the FHL's very resourceful curator, went foraging in the depths oftheircollection, and soon returnedwith a 140-page volume bearing the nondescript title, "Suggested Revision ofthe Rules of Discipline and Advices ofthe Religious Society ofFriends." The date was right: 1926; but it was catalogued as a draft revision ofthe Philadelphia (Hicksite) Yearly Meeting's Discipline, a venture which was completed the following year. Closer inspection ofthe title page, however, showed this classificationto be in error. In small print near the bottom ofthe page was an overlooked, telltale notice: "Presented forconsiderationbytheRevision Committee ofPhiladelphia YearlyMeeting, appointed 1923, co-operating with the Uniform Discipline Committee, appointed 1923, by Friends' General Conference." And below that, in still smaller type: "This book is offered as the text for a Uniform Discipline for our [FGCs] seven Yearly Meetings." So there was the proof: FGC had indeed once had a Uniform Discipline. Or had it? How come none of us in the FHL Reading Room, some extremely knowledgeable about FGC history, had ever heard of it? Could the document, which was after all only "suggested" to the FGC yearly meetings for their "consideration," have fallen on deafears and been lost in some obscure eddy ofhistory? II Not at all, we learned. Soon there was a stack of these member yearly meetings' Disciplines on the table, and they yielded more remarkable facts: All were revised between 1926 and 1930, and all but one did indeed incorporate this Uniform Discipline, or almost all ofit. Yet for some reason, the FGC offering was not identified in them as an Urtext or archetype. (The variant was from New York Yearly Meeting, of which more presently.) This process was confirmed by a review ofthe FGC Central Committee minutes: They show that aUniformDiscipline Committee was appointedat sessions held in Richmond, Indiana, in 1922 (CC, 8/30/1922, 115), with William C. Biddle of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting as Clerk. Biddle reported on its work, including consultations with the member...

Research in Progress

Research in Progress Mary Ellen Chijioke and Barbara E. Addison Major early leaders and writers figure prominently in currentresearch in Quaker history. Two researchers are studying James Nayler, for different purposes. Jane Orion Smith (Pendle Hill, 338 Plush Mill Rd., Wallingford, PA 19086) has been awarded a Cadbury Fellowship to work with faculty member Elizabeth Kamphausen on a new edition of Nayler's writings. David Neelon (2773 North Park Blvd., Cleveland Heights, OH 44118) is studying Nayler and his contemporaries in preparation for an historical novel. Two other researchers are studying the writings and correspondence of JohnWoolman: WilliamM. Decker, Associate Professorat Oklahoma State University (1902 W. University Ave., Stillwater, OK 74074); and Drew Lawson (Pendle Hill, RMB 3230, Eaglehawk, Victoria 3556, Australia). Two Japanese historians have been studying early Quaker history. Hiromi Nishimura, who has published a history of early Quakerism for Japanese readers, spent spring term at Pendle Hill while doing research for a biography ofWilliam Penn. Tamaki Yamamoto (8-8, 2-2, Miyanodawa, Nishiku, Sapporo, Japan) has been studying the Quaker background of Inazo Nitobe. Peter Sippel (333 LaceyAve.,D-12, Doylestown, PA 18901) is working ofan edition ofthe sermons and letters ofWilliam Savery. Glenn Oeland, on the editorial staff of National Geographic Magazine (17th St., NW, Washington, DC 20036) is writing a book about another William, William Bartram. Several current research projects concern Quaker reactions to war and politics. Christine Greenland (790 E. Street Rd., Warminster, PA 18974), a Master of Divinity student at Earlham School of Religion, is studying Quakerpeace witnessbefore the French and Indian War, 1730 to the Treaty at Easton, 1762. Thomas A. Mogan (1435 Dalian Rd., West Chester, PA 19382), is writing his master's thesis at Villanova University on Quakers during the American Revolution. James Landers (33 Colonel's Lane, Chartsey, Surrey KT16 8RH, England) is investigating the involvement of Francis Richardson, a Quaker from Chester, Pennsylvania, in Stephen Sayre's 1775 plot to overthrow George III. Maureen Murphy (14 Foster Place, Sea Cliff, NY 1 1579) Professor of English and Secondary Education at Hofstra University, is writing a Research in Progress67 biography of Asenath Nicholson, who worked closely with Friends on matters of abolition, peace, and Irish famine relief. Julie Roy Jeffrey, Professor at Goucher College (Baltimore, MD 21204) has chosen Quaker abolitionist Laura Haviland as her subject. Allison Sneider (1621 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103) has used her semester as Visiting Lecturer at Bryn Mawr College to verify biographical details concerning Susan B. Anthony for the editors of the Stanton/Anthony papers. Scholars continue to consult Quakersources for the study ofothergroups in America. Judith A. Boughter (16805 Pine St., Omaha, NE 68130), InstructorattheUniversityofNebraskaatOmaha, hasbeenusing thepapers of Barclay White, Samuel Janney, and others involved in Grant's Peace PolicyforherstudyofPawnee history. Khalil G. Muhammed (16Roosevelt Place, Apt. C3, Montclair, NJ 07042), doctoral student at Rutgers University , has been using the papers ofAnna Wharton Morris and others for his dissertationresearch on earlytwentieth-century social work among African Americans and Italians. In women's history, Anne Kugler (10200 N. Park Blvd, University Heights, OH 44118), Assistant Professor at John Carroll University, is using Quaker sources for a paper comparing women and aging in early modern England and colonial North America. Current local history and institutional studies with Quaker content include the work of Christopher Jones (P.O. Box 1800, Kimberton, PA 19442), ofthe University ofPennsylvania and Pikeland Historical Society concerningPikelandlocal history, usingtherecords ofPikelandPreparative Meeting and the papers ofthe Lewis-Fussell family. TaylorM. Chamberlin (16158 Clark's Gap Rd., Waterford, VA 20197) is studying the history of Fairfax Monthly Meeting, especially during the periods of abolition, the Civil War and Reconstruction, for a planned book on local history. Despite the vaunted Quaker disdain for the arts, several scholars are studying Quaker connections with art and literary history. Margaretta Frederick Watson (1 101 Corner Ketch Rd., Newark, DE 1971 1) is preparing a book on J.W. Pease and investigating Quaker patronage ofthe arts in nineteenth-century Britain. Ruth Irwin Weidner (511 West Miner St., West Chester, PA 19382), retired Professor of Art History at West Chester University, has been consulting the papers ofSwarthmore Professor Spencer Trotter in her study the career ofPhiladelphia artistNewbold H. Trotter...

John M. Moore: July 21, 1904-September 26, 1998

John M. Moore July 21, 1904-September26, 1998 Friends Historical Association records its profound appreciation for the many fine and varied services rendered by our Honorary Director, John M. Moore, both to the Association and to Quaker history and practice. His interests and education focused on philosophy and religion. He received degrees from Park College in Missouri, from Harvard University, Union Theological Seminary, and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He taught ethics and religion atHamilton Collegebefore going to Swarthmore College in 1943, where he became Professor of Philosophy and Religion. Later, he also served for many years as Associate Dean and Registrar of the college. This administrative experiences led to his appointment as Acting Director ofFriends Historical Library, a position which he held for two years, retiring finally from the college in 1973. John's early publications include his doctoral dissertation, Theories of Religious experience: with special reference to James, Otto, and Bergson (1938) and a pamphlet, The Place of Morals and Religious Values in Programs ofGeneral Education (1952). He wrote articles which appeared in scholarly journals ofreligion, and provided contributions to other works. John's interest in Quakerism developed after he came to Swarthmore. In 1 948 he and his wife, Margaret, and their two daughters joined Swarthmore Monthly Meeting, in which the couple took an active part during their many years of residence in the community. John gave particular service to the Friends Historical Association: as a member of the Board of Directors 1972-1977, Editor of Quaker History 1974-1980, and as President 1980-1985. He was named an Honorary Director in 1986. He also served on several committees, including the Curatorial, Nominating, and Publication Committees. The Association asked John twice to edit books on Quaker history: Friends in the Delaware Valley: Philadelphia Yearly Meeting 1681—1981; and, as co-editor with J. William Frost, Seeking the Light: essays in Quaker history in honor of Edwin B. Bronner. This second work was published jointly by Pendle Hill and the Friends Historical Association in 1986. John Moore shared responsibility for yet another book of Quaker history. After leaving theirhome in Swarthmore in 1 985, John and Margaret became residents of The Hickman Home in West Chester, Pa. For a book to commemorate the 1991 centennial of the Friends Boarding Home of Concord Quarterly Meeting and The Hickman, John Moore wrote the history of the founding and challenging development of these two Quaker institutions. John Child shared responsibility for the book. John Moore relates with clarity the difficult steps along the way taken by caring Friends who also needed to be practical business managers through times of economic turbulence and changing governmental regulations. John's his- John M. Moore83 torical account is a masterful summary of the rather complicated history of the joining together of the two institutions. John Moore's insight, his spirit ofhelpfulness, and his good humor made him a supportive and encouraging colleague in any cooperative endeavor. We shall continue to miss him. We express our gratitude for his contributions to the work and aims of our Association. Edwin B. Bronner Jane R. Smiley ...

Research in Progress

Research in Progress Mary Ellen Chijioke and Barbara E. Addison There are several interesting clusters in current research in Quaker history. One is centered around John Woolman and Quakerjournals. Drew Lawson (RMB 3230Eaglehook, Victoria, Australia) is studying Woolman's letters as a source of insight into the nature of the spiritual journey. Continuinghis literary studies ofWoolman, Mike Heller (3156 GarstCabin Drive, SW, Roanoke, VA 24018), faculty member in the Department of English at Roanoke College, is examining the journals read by Woolman and those written by his contemporaries. Joe Mathews (P.O. Box 395, Leesburg, NJ 08327) is transcribing and analyzing one such journal, that of Joseph Smith, for his Ph.D. dissertation at Temple University. Quaker topics in American studies are more diverse. Rosalind Beiler, faculty member in the department ofHistory, University of Central Florida (Orlando, FL 32816-1350) is writing a book, "Becoming American: The Transatlantic World of Caspar Wistar, 1650-1752." John Fea (Chapman Parkway, Stony Brook, NY 1 1794) is including Quakers in his dissertation in History for SUNY Stony Brook on "Rural Religion: Protestantism in Southern New Jersey, 1740-1820." Chris Cascio (610 Stonegate Boulevard , Elkton, MD 21921), graduate student affiliated with the Historical Society of Delaware, is studying Quaker attitudes toward taverns and drinking in eighteenth-century Wilmington. Catherine Blecki (1 607 Bittern Ct., Carlsbad, CA), faculty member in English at San Jose State University, is studying the connection between Quakers and the French from the American Revolution to about 1 800; she is also interested in Quaker women writers. Maria Thompson (1509 Montgomery Avenue, Rosemont, PA 19010) is preparing an interpretive video on the Free Quaker Meetinghouse in Independence National Historical Park. W.J.D. Kennedy (622 Simmons Drive, Boulder, CO 80303-3035) has been studying the journal of Moses Coates as he traveled west of the Alleghenies in 1 805 and 1 806 looking for suitable sites for a Quaker to resettle. Richard MacKinnon (89 Cottage Road, Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada BIP 2C9), Associate Professor in Folklore Studies and Architecture at University College of Cape Breton, is planning a book on Mary Arnold's work in the North American cooperative movement. Researchers are studying the history of a wide field of meetings and localities. Christopher Briggs Klemek (3401 Walnut Street, Apt. 352B, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6228) is working on Easton Monthly Meeting (New York Yearly Meeting) for his graduate studies in History at the Research in Progress79 University of Pennsylvania. Terence Maguire (2605 Brightwell Drive, Wilmington, DE 1981 0), English teacher at Wilmington Friends School, is clerk ofthe committee preparing a book to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the school. Margaret L. Steneck (127 Grandview Drive, Ann Arbor, MI 48103), on the faculty of History and Education at the University of Michigan, has funding from the New Jersey Heritage Commission for a source book on Randolph, NewJersey, a Quakercommunity that can claim such members as Jacob L. Brotherton and Benjamin Lundy. Mark C. Ebersole (1166 Country Club Drive, Lancaster, PA 17601) is studying Sadsbury Monthly Meeting and Friends in Columbia, Pennsylvania. Christopher Densmore (67 Randwood, Getzville, NY 14068), Archivist at SUNY Buffalo, is preparing a book on the Genesee Yearly Meeting and the Friends of Human Progress (New York). Seth Hinshaw (1071 Greenwood Avenue, Zanesville, OH 43701) continues his research into Ohio Quakers and especially the Wilburite meetings. In the area of women's studies, Michele Lise Tarter (947 6th Street, Charleston, IL 61920) faculty member in English at Eastern Illinois University , is revising herdissertation forpublication as "The Body as Testimony: Quaker Women's Prophesyings in Early American Culture and Text." Kama Linden (Mejramv. 103, 70218 Örebro, Sweden), member of the Department of Social Studies, University of Crebro, is including feminist Swedish theologian Emilia Fogelklou in her study of women, health, and action. Rolynne Rogers Healey is preparing her dissertation for the Department ofHistory, University ofAlberta (2-28 Tory Building, Edmonton, AB T6G 2H4) on the role of Quaker women in the establishment of community in early Upper Canada. Sandra MacKenzie Lloyd (6835 Gorsten Street, Philadelphia, PA 19119) is conducting research on Alice Paul and her family for the Alice Paul house in Mt. Laurel, NJ. Another cluster in current research is...

Rhode Island Monthly Meeting: An Evangelical Secession from New England Yearly Meeting

L'article est consacre a l'histoire de la secession des deux congregations quakers de Newport et Portsmouth (Rhode Island Monthly Meeting) d'avec le New England Yearly Meeting en 1951 aux Etats-Unis. La secession a eu lieu a cause de differences theologiques et de controverses a propos d'une nouvelle discipline.

Research in Progress

Research in Progress Mary Ellen Chijioke We know that the George Fox tri-centennial is past when we get a sixmonth periodwith noreports ofnewprojects in seventeenth-century Quaker history. Currentresearch is also dominated by social, not religious, history. Eighteenth-century England is represented by Christina M. Devlin (575 South Bengstorff Avenue, #97, Mountain View, CA 94040), who is studying eighteenth-century Quaker printers in London and Philadelphia, especially Tace Sowie Raylton and the Bradfords. Herresearch is related to her Ph.D. dissertation in the History of Christianity for the University of Chicago Divinity School. Women's Studies continues to draw veryheavily upon Quakertopics and resources. Alice Eichholz (Box 766, Montpelier, VT 05602), on the faculty of Vermont College of Norwich University, is examining Long Island Quaker families for a study of six generations ofwomen's experience. Rita M. Broyles (640 Okmalgee Street, Norman, OK73071) has a grantfrom the New Jersey Historical Commission for her masters thesis on the women of Monmouth County, New Jersey during the Revolutionary era; she is making particularuse ofthe materials related to Shrewsbury Monthly Meeting. Jean H. Baker (8717 McDonogh Road, Baltimore, MD 21 208), afaculty member in the History Department of Goucher College, is preparing a book on suffragists, including many Quaker women. Several current projects relate to Lucretia Mott. Elizabeth A. Roslewicz (3428 Lakeside View Drive, Falls Church, VA 22041) is doing her dissertation in Adult Education on Mott and Quaker alternatives to dominant social and ethical thought in the public domain. Irene P. Baros-Johnson (1055 Lucknow Street, #506, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 2T3) is continuing her interest in Mott, currently studying her rug-making. These scholars and others will be pleased to know that Beverly Wilson Palmer of the Department of History, Pomona College (Claremont, CA 9171 1) has received funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission towards producing a one-volume edition ofMott's letters. The project has also been designated as host for an historical editing fellowship. While Mott may be getting special attention, many scholars are working on other individual Quaker women or women with Quaker ties. Andrea Constantine Hawkes (205 Rockland Street, Portsmouth, NH 03801) is writing her dissertation in History for the University ofMaine on "The Life 74Quaker History of Elizabeth Wilson McClintoch Phillips (1821-1896): A Story of Family, Community, and a Self-Made Woman." Marian Brubaker (247 North Duke Street, Lancaster, PA 17601) is editing the diaries of Phebe Earle Gibbons, a Friend who taught school in New York City 1 839- 1 845. Sherrie Schulke (310 East Sherman, Newberg, OR 97132) has a George Fox University Faculty Grant for completing her dissertation on Jane Addams and the Society of Friends. Vanessa Northington Gamble, of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine (1300 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53706), is writing a biography of Virginia Alexander, physician and Friend active in the Race Relations Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Two researchers are using Quaker sources in the study of abolitionism and African-American history. Kathryn Grover (115 Pleasant Street, New Bedford, MA 02740), has a National Endowment for the Humanities grant and the Mystic Seaport Museum Cuffe Fellowship for her study of the relationship between New Bedford and Philadelphia Quaker antislavery activists, 1790-1860. Brian Driscoll (131 1 WestGourleyPark, Bloomington, IN 47404) has funding from the National Science Foundation and the Spencer Foundation for his dissertation in Sociology at Indiana University on "Education Reform in the Progressive Era: Northern Efforts to Effect Reform for Southern African-Americans." Several dimensions of Quaker efforts for peace are being examined by scholars. David C. Lawson (722 East Montgomery Street, Sparta, WI 54656) is writing a book on the American peace movement, 1815-1865. Kim Cash (7422 Nashville Road, Bowling Green, KY 42101) is doing her masters thesis in East Asian Studies on Quakers in occupied Japan, 19451952 . Jacqueline B. Magness (3428 Lakeside View Drive, Falls Church, VA 22041 ) is using Quaker sources for her dissertation in Adult Education on theories of the common good and reconciliation. Other researchers are dealing with a variety of other topics in Quaker social and intellectual history. Christopher Schroeder (5207-1 LeParc Drive, Wilmington, DE 19809) has funding from the Pew...

Gentle Invaders: Quaker Women Educators and Racial Issues During the Civil War and Reconstruction (review)

52Quaker History compilation ofpictures ofpeople and meeting houses followed by excerpts from references to Indiana meetings in the writings ofFriends who visited Indiana, from William Forster in 1824 to Thomas Kelly in 1915. The reader will have to look elsewhere to understand the important issues that concerned Indiana Friends and shaped the faith and practice of the yearly meeting. The discussions of the Hicksite, Anti-slavery, and Conservative separations are chronicles of events that offer very little explanation ofthe issues involved. Slightlymore explanation is given ofthe rise ofevangelicalism, but to satisfy the need or desire to know the how and why of these important developments the reader would want to look at Thomas Hamm's The Transformation ofAmerican Quakerism: Orthodox Friends, 1800-1907 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988; paperback ed., 1992). Indiana Friends Heritage updates an earlier anniversary history of Indiana Yearly Meeting, Our Special Heritage: The Sesquicentennial Publication ofIndiana Yearly Meeting ofFriends, written by Richard P. Ratcliff for the 1971 celebration [Indiana Yearly Meeting, 1970]. It proceeds at a more leisurely pace, exploring issues and events in brief essays generously illustrated. The institutions and churches are treated similarly to the newhistory. The new history adds morepictures and details to provide a very useful reference, one that I know will be used often in the Friends Historical Collection. Carole TreadwayGuilford College Friends Historical CollectionGreensboro, North Carolina Gentle Invaders: Quaker Women Educators and Racial Issues During the Civil War and Reconstruction. By Linda B. Selleck. Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1995. 312pp. Maps, illustrations, appendices, notes, glossary, bibliography, and index. Paper. It is well-known that Quakerism provided a fertile seedbed for women to grow away from the confining sphere of Victorian domesticity. Traditional Quakerwitness to the equal gifts ofwomen, combined with a concern for educating and aiding first slaves then freed Blacks, provided opportunities for some Quaker women to exercise courageous ministries. Selleck charts the rise of Quaker education for Blacks, beginning with Anthony Benezet in his home in 1750. By 1797 Philadelphia Friends supported seven schools for Blacks. Combined orphanage/schools continued to be established, such as "The Shelter" in 1814, and Cheyney in 1822. Schools were established in Virginia: Alexandria in 1764, Henrico County in 1782, Book Reviews53 and Gravelly Runin 1808. LevyandVestal Coffin taught a summersabbath school for slaves in North Carolina in 1 82 1 . But the harsh reaction to Nat Turner's rebellion in 1 83 1 brought laws forbidding Black education in the South and Black immigration to the North. This was the hostile climate in which Prudence Crandall opened her school for "young ladies and little "misses of color" in Connecticut in 1833. It was not until nearly two decades later that the work was actively resumed. Selleck recounts vignettes ofthe Friends women who, in increasing numbers, responded to the call to offer their services during and after the Civil War and Reconstruction. She also mentions Blackwomen, usually educated in Quaker schools, who became skilled teachers and administrators . Two longer stories are ofLaura Towne ofWilliam Penn School on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, and Alida and Calvin Clark of Southland College in Helena, Arkansas. The Claries opened an orphanage and school in partnership with the 56th Colored Infantry Regiment. Alida shared her faith as well as her learning, and soon names of prospective Black members were sent to her home meeting in Richmond, Indiana. In 1 868 seven were admitted, followed by eight the next year. In 1 868 Daniel Drew became the first Black recorded Friends minister. This wasn't what many Friends had in mind when they funded the mission. Indiana Yearly Meeting solved the delicate difficulty by making Southland a Monthly Meeting in 1873. Eventually it had over 500 African American and three white members. There had been eleven Black recorded ministers (all male) when the meeting was laid down at the school's closing in 1925. While some individual Friends were clear in their response to the plight of Blacks, the Religious Society of Friends as a whole remained ambivalent . Friends responded magnificently to pleas for relief funds, but remained mostly unwilling to encourage Blacks to join their meetings. Selleck raises some interesting issues, which are not explored...

Whittier Inducted into the American Poets' Corner

Whittier Inducted into the American Poets' Corner Daniel Hoffman* During a vespers service on Sunday, 27 October 1996, John Greenleaf Whittier was inducted into the Poets' Corner in the Cathedral ofSt. John the Divine in New York City. The Poets' Corner, established in 1983 under the aegis ofDean James Parks Morton, occupies a bay offthe northern aisle of the nave. Each year a Board of Electors, comprised of a dozen eminent poets and writers and the Cathedral Poet in Residence (in which post I have served since 1988) chooses two distinguished authors to be installed in the Corner. The other writer chosen in 1996 was Ernest Hemingway. Among the hymns sung by the Cathedral choir were settings of two by Whittier, "Dear Lord and Father ofmankind" and "All things are thine; no gift have we." The dedicatory service included readings from the chosen authors by two writers especially interested in their work, and brief observations on their significance. The poet and critic John Hollander, editor ofthe Library of America anthology American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, read passages from the opening and conclusion of "Snowbound." I began the program with the remarks that follow here. When I was young, Whittier was one of the Bearded Bards on the schoolroom wall—along with Bryant, Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes— and ofcourse the cleanshaven Emerson. Ofthese, nowadays only Emerson is in critical favor. Since the advent ofmodernism among the complications oflife in the 20th century, the poems ofWhittier once memorized by every school child—"Barefoot Boy with Cheek of Tan," "Barbara Frietchie," "Telling the Bees," and "Skipper Ireson's Ride"—are now thought too sentimental, too patriotic, too prolix, too simplistic for contemporary taste. In addition to these old favorites, Whittier also wrote reams offacile verse, and a couple of fine poems, to encourage and defend the Abolitionist movement. This was aposition hardly more popular in the North than in the South, a conviction requiring physical as well as moral courage. As a Quaker he expressed the heritage ofJohn Woolman and Benjamin Lay and propounded his abhorrence of slavery and of war. To introduce Whittier I offer passages from a poem published 48 years ago by another admirerwho, like his subject, lived in Haverhill, Massachusetts . "Mr. Whittier" was the title poem ofa volume, much acclaimed at the time, by the late Winfield Townley Scott: *Daniel Hoffman is a former Consultant in Poetry ofthe Library ofCongress, the appointment now designated Poet Laureate. He is a member of Swarthmore Monthly Meeting. 42Quaker History It is so much easier to forget than to have been Mr. Whittier. It is easier to leave Snow-Bound and a dozen other items in or out of The school curriculum than it is to have written them. Try it and see. Born where the east wind brought the smell of the ocean from Plum Island upriver, At a brookside haunted in the foggy dark of summer nights By six little witches in sky-blue caps—Uncle Moses had seen them;— Born on a farm to the Bible, Pilgrim 's Progress, a weekly paper, the Quaker Meeting-house, To hard poverty, obscure, and a few winters of country school; To die—though only after there were thirteen for dinner, and the clock Suddenly stopped—ancient with fame, with honorary degrees, and One hundred thousand dollars all made out ofpoems—I say Even this was not easy, though also it is not What I am talking about, but is really incidental along with Not liking Walt Whitman and never quite affording marriage. Neither, under the circumstances, could it have been easy, and it was important, To stand suddenly struck with wonder of old legends in a young land, To look up at last and see poetry driving a buckboard around the bend, And poetry all the time in the jays screeching at the cats in the dooryard, Climbing with the thrush into the August noon out of the boy's sight As he dawdled barefoot through poetry among the welts of the goldenrod; But nothing is hardest which treads on nobody else's toes. Let us not begrudge Mr. Whittier his white beard, his saintliness, his other foibles; Let us remember him when...

The Forster Family and the Irish Famine

The Forster Family and the Irish Famine Jeanne A. Flood* InApril of1880, atthebeginning ofhis secondministry, W.E. Gladstone offered William Edward Forster the post ofChiefSecretary for Ireland and thus madehimthe executive in charge ofthe government ofIreland. Forster was a distinguished Liberal politician who, his biographer notes, could reasonably have expected a higherplace in the Gladstone ministry. He was offered the Irish post because "public opinion had, by general consent, fixed upon him as the man who was best qualified by his sympathies and administrative capacity to fill it" (Reid 2:233). One might say that Forster at his birth on July 11, 1818, inherited these Irish sympathies from his Quaker parents, both of whom had spent time in Ireland. His mother, Anna Buxton Forster, was born into a wealthy Essex family ofhigh social status. Anna Buxton's motherwas a Quaker who had married an Anglican; she did not raise her children within the Society of Friends. Thus the young Anna "was only taught the accomplishments and introduced into the gaieties of fashionable life" (Forster 1:198). Soon disillusioned with this life, she applied to and was received by the Society of Friends. Through the marriage ofher brother, Thomas Fowell Buxton, into the Gurney family ofEarlham, she was brought into contact with her future husband, William Forster, a Quaker minister who was a close friend of Joseph John Gurney. In 1812, at the instigation of Forster and Stephen Grellet, she and Elizabeth Gurney Fry began working with women prisoners in Newgate. In October of 1816, by which time she too was recognized as a minister in the Society ofFriends, she married William Forster (Reid 1:23—4). Early in 1818, during her first and only pregnancy, "Anna Forster felt it to be her duty to unite with her cousin, Priscilla Gurney, in paying a religious visitto Friends in Ireland" (Forster 1:211). She spentthree months there, doing evangelistic work, returning to England at the end of May, 1818, less than two months before her son was born. "Ofthe result ofAnna Forster's work in Ireland we have no actual record," writes the biographer ofher son, but "the memory ofthatjourney, undertaken in simple faith and love . . . had throughout his life a great and abiding influence" (Reid 1 :29). William Forster the elder was born in 1784 into the large family of a Quaker land agent living in Tottenham near London. Though he trained as a land surveyor to work with his father, he came to feel that he should work actively as a Quaker minister. At twenty-one, he was acknowledged by the *Jeanne A. Flood is a professor of English at Wayne State University. The Forster Family and the Irish Famine1 17 Tottenham Monthly Meeting as an approved minister. Very soon afterwards , he became convinced that he should "give himselfup to the service ofthe Lord wherever he might be pleased to send him under the anointing guidance of the Holy Spirit" (Forster 1 :45). Accordingly he set out on a series ofjourneysthroughoutthe British Isles. Inthe course ofthese travels, he spent fourteen months in Ireland in 181 3-1814.' For four years after his marriage, WilliamForsterlived in Bradpole in Dorset inretirementwithhis wife and son. However in April of 1820, when William Edward was less than two years old, William Forster set off on a religious mission to America, which was to last five years until June of 1825 (Reid 1:31). This was the first of the three religious journeys he would make to the United States. In 1845^16, he served as part of a deputation carrying an Epistle from the London Meeting to Quakers who had recently withdrawn fromthe Indiana Yearly Meeting (Forster 2:193-206). In 1853, he set out again for the United States as part of a deputation carrying an anti-slavery address from the London Meeting to President Franklin Pierce and various state governors. On thisjourney, he became ill, and on January 27, 1 854, he died in Tennessee and was buried in a Quaker cemetery in Friendsville (Forster 2:386-91). William Edward Forster did not follow his parents into the life of a Quaker minister. When he left school in 1835 at the age...

The Dilemma of Quaker Anti-Slavery: The Case of Farmington Quarterly Meeting, 1836-1860

In 1839, English Quaker and noted abolitionist Joseph John Gumey visited Farmington, New York, during his two-year tour ofNorth America. He later wrote that he knew no in America where the anti-slavery cause was more vigorously maintained, by Friends and others (Gurney 309). Thomas Drake's Quakers and Slavery in America also identified the Farmington region as a stronghold of anti-slavery feeling (150-51). Individual Quakers were well represented in the anti-slavery movement and other reforms in the burned-over district ofNew York State. Friends were anti-slavery lecturers, agents for the Liberator and National AntiSlavery Standard, and hosts of anti-slavery gatherings. Nancy Hewitt's Women's Activism and Social Change (1984) documents extensive involvement by Hicksite and Progressive Friends in the network of ultraist women in the abolitionist and women's rights movements in western New York. Two-thirds to three-fourths of leadership of the ultraist and women's rights organizations in the Rochester area between 1842 and 1 860 are identified by Hewitt as present or former Quakers (27 1 , Table 1 7). Yet in the early 1 840s, Quakers were being criticized in the anti-slavery press for opposing abolitionists. Eliab W. Capron of Williamson, New York, an anti-slavery lecturer and a member of Farmington Monthly Meeting, publicly resigned from the Society of Friends in a letter published in the March 15, 1844, issue of the Liberator. Capron charged that the Society of Friends stood directly in the way of efforts now being made to liberate three millions of our brethren , who are now being held in bondage as chattel slaves (7b the Monthly Meeting). Why were New York Friends, whose Discipline prohibited slave ownership or any involvement in the slave trade, and cautioned its members to avoid any act by which the right of slavery is acknowledged (NYYM, Discipline 49-50) being criticized by abolitionists? To attempt to understand the seeming contradiction between the antislavery professions of the Society of Friends and the criticisms published in the abolitionist press, I will present an evaluation of the institutional response of Farmington Quarterly Meeting to slavery in the twenty years before the Civil War.

Research in Progress

Research in Progress Mary Ellen Chijioke & Claire B. Shetter Meeting histories top the list ofsubjects ofcurrent Quaker research. Starting in the North, Thomas Bassett (179 North Prospect Street, Burlington, VT 05401) is using his research on Quakers of the Champlain Valley for New York Yearly Meeting's tercentenary history as the starting pointfor a general history ofreligion (including Quakerism) in Vermont. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's Outreach Committee is moving into the visual age: Laura Jackson (Bank Street Court #302, 24 S. Bank St., Philadelphia, PA 19106) is producing a 10-15 minute video on its historical roots and present reality. On the local level, Mary Larkin Dugan (354 Marlborough Rd., Kennett Square, PA 19348) is studying the history ofMarlborough Meeting and village to seek their registration as an historic district. Two scholars are studying Exeter Meeting: Karen Guenther (106 Ambershadow, Houston, TX 77015) is writing her Ph.D. dissertation in History for the University of Houston on "Exeter Monthly Meeting, 17371789 : A QuakerCommunity on the PennsylvaniaFrontier"; and PhilipE. Pendleton (221 3 E. Lombard Street, Baltimore, MD 21231) will include the Meeting in his social history ofthe Oley Valley region of Berks County, PA 1700-1775, expected to be published in book form by the Pennsylvania German Society, 1994. George M. Whiteside, III (Hornblende Farm, 554 McFarlan Rd., Kennett Square, PA 19348) is studying the social and architecturalhistory ofCentreMeeting, Centerville, Delaware. Scholars interested in the early history of Friends on the western shore ofMaryland will look forward to the history ofGunpowder Monthly Meeting being prepared by Marshall O. Sutton ( 1 3801 York Road, D-3, Hunt Valley, MD 21 0301825 ). Quaker sources and topics figure in a number of current topics in 18th-century social history. Jeffrey B. Webb (5709 S. Ellis, #21 1, Chicago, IL 60637) is doing his dissertation on local elites in Philadelphia and Chester County, focusing on the language ofrank in early 1 8th-century Pennsylvania and status signification among first-, second-, and third-generation Pennsylvanians. With the dissertation behind her, Christine Daniels of the History Department, Lehigh University (Maginnes Hall #9, Bethlehem, PA 18015), is using Quaker sources for her study of apprenticeship and servitude in the 1 8th century, especially the practice of binding out orphans in colonial Maryland. Turk McCleskey (1121 Tienken Ct., #21 7, Rochester , MI 48306), on the History faculty of Oakland University, is doing research for a book on merchants in Philadelphia and Charleston dealing with the 1 8th-century Virginia back country. Outside the academic circle, Susan Vipont Hartshorne (22 Denison Rd., Victoria Park, Manchester M14 5RY, England), a British magistrate studying at Pendle Hill, has used her time in the U.S. to study the sentencing and judicial procedure during the first 50-100 years of Pennsylvania history. Two scholars are looking at Quakers and the American Revolution. Arthur J. Mekeel (142 Decatur Rd., Havertown, PA 19083) is revising his classic work on The Relation ofQuakers to the American Revolution (1979). Stephen A. Marini (670 Washington St., #3, Wellesley, MA 02181) in the Religion Department at 56Quaker History Wellesley College, is studying theresponseto the Revolution by FriendsMeetings, especially the Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings. There is nolet-up in theuse ofQuakersourcesforwomen'shistory. MicheleLise Tarter (4425 Osage Ave., Boulder, CO 80303) is doing her dissertation for the University ofColorado on 17th- and 18th-century Quaker women's autobiographical writings. Elsa F. Glimes (22566 Fifth St., Hayward, CA 94541), Professor Emerita atCalifornia State University, Hayward, is using the Cadbury Scholarship at Pendle Hill to edit the letters ofMargaret Fell for publication. Hard though it may be to believe, this will be the first time this has been done! Richard Sweterlitsch, faculty member in the Department ofEnglish, University ofVermont (Burlington, VT 05405-01 14) is working on a biography of Sarah Norcliffe Cleghom. Moving from the personal to the topical side of women's studies, Stephen A. Bonnie (73 1 6 Bryan St., Philadelphia, PA 1 91 1 9), Director ofAdmissions at Penn Charter School, is doing his dissertation in History for Temple University on the history of women's education in Philadelphia, especially in Friends' schools. Bonnie S. Anderson (433 West 21st St., New York, NY 1001 1), faculty member at Brooklyn...

Guide to the Records of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (review)

110Quaker History mentally disturbed; their familial relationships, their attitude toward prayer, their own sense of the relation between personal guilt and the judgment of the Meeting. This is unfortunate, for given the vast amount of material in Quaker archives, there is surely a wealth of literary evidence that would open up this world for the reader. Nevertheless, Charles Cherry has provided us with an immensely interesting account of the leaders of the movement, if not of the patients themselves, and his book will be a valuable addition to libraries of both scholars and non-scholars interested in the history of psychology and religion. Rutgers UniversityPhyllis Mack Guide to the Records ofPhiladelphia Yearly Meeting. Compiled by Jack Eckert. Philadelphia: Haverford College, Records Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Swarthmore College, 1989. xix, 288 pp. Paper, $20. American historians working on many facets of American life and culture have found Quaker records increasingly of value for research. Because of their view of the church as a gathered community and their sense of making history by preaching, migration, and settlement, they early saw the importance of keeping historical records. Hence Quakers have produced more records and more detailed records than most other American denominations except possibly the Moravians. To make the official records of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and its constituent quarterly and monthly meetings available for research, the present volume was projected in 1986. Essentially it is a finding list of the records available at the two official yearly meeting depositories—the Quaker Collection at Haverford College and the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College. That there are two archival centers for the yearly meeting reflects the fact that from 1827 to 1955 there were two rival yearly meetings, the so-called Orthodox and the so-called Hicksite yearly meetings following the disastrous theological and organizational split of 1827. Thus Haverford, founded by the Orthodox wing, houses the official records of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting from its foundation in 1681 until the schism of 1827, and the records of the Orthodox yearly meeting from 1827 until the reunion of 1955, when the present united yearly meeting was founded. Swarthmore College, founded by the Hicksite branch, houses the records of the Hicksite yearly meeting from 1827 to 1955, and the records of the united yearly meeting since 1955. The yearly meeting committee records are likewise divided between the two depositories—those of the Indian Committee and the Japan (Missionary) Committee being housed at Haverford, with the archives of the Friends Peace Committee , the Meeting for Social Concerns, and the Young Friends Movement at Swarthmore . Finally, the record books of the various monthly meetings are for the most part divided between the two depositories. Where original record books are retained by the monthly meeting, microfilm copies are usually available at the official depositories. The bulk of the book (pp. 1-245) contains an alphabetical listing of all quarterly and monthly meetings that make up the yearly meeting, with the types, dates, and location of their existing records. Variant names for the meetings are listed in the index to the book. The concise, competent introduction (pp. v-xix) traces the genesis of the project , outlines the structure of the yearly meeting, with descriptions of preparative, Books1 1 1 monthly, indulged, particular, independent, united, quarterly, and half-yearly meetings, and gives a rundown of the varied types of records kept by Quaker meetings. It is important to note that the two Philadelphia-area colleges are now also the official depositories for the records of Baltimore Yearly Meeting and Virginia Yearly Meeting. Finally, instruction is given on the policies involved in using the records for research at the two official archives. Hidden at the back of the book (they should perhaps more appropriately have been placed at the front) are the lists of the vast body of records kept officially by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (pp. 246-264). This includes a variety of minute books, committee records, including in the case of the Indian Committee some personal papers and journals of individual members of the committee, and records of Charleston Monthly Meeting, 1719-1786, identified in the index only as Charleston, South Carolina, with no explanation of why these particular records...

Ministers, Merchants and Migrants: Cumberland Friends and North America in the Eighteenth Century

Ministers, Merchants and Migrants: Cumberland Friends and North America in the Eighteenth Century Angus J. L. Winchester* I It is almost forty years since Frederick Tolles explored the origins of what he termed The Atlantic Community of the Early Friends (Friends Historical Society Supplement 24, London, 1954), in which Quakers on both sides of the Atlantic were "held together by the intangible yet powerful bonds of love, fellowship, and a common faith." He concluded that those bonds developed from and were sustained by a variety of trans-Atlantic links. Pre-eminent was the travelling ministry, the numerous men and women who traversed the ocean in both directions on religious visits, and whose missionary zeal, pastoral care and spiritual nurturing drew scattered Quaker meetings into a common religious life. Other specifically religious influences included the exchange of epistles between yearly meetings and the promulgation of a common fund of published journals and other religious writings. By the middle decades of the eighteenth century the "powerful cement of trade" had built a more worldly bridge across the Atlantic as a network of commercial links bound Quaker merchants in the American colonies to their increasingly wealthy opposite numbers in England and Ireland. Not specifically mentioned by Tolles in that essay was a third link, the ties of kinship which extended their threads across the seas as British and Irish Friends emigrated to the New World. Quaker emigration was substantial in the later years of the seventeenth century , especially to participate in the "Holy Experiment" of Pennsylvania in the 1680s. Time and distance inevitably loosened the family ties of the early generations of colonists, but emigration continued throughout the eighteenth century, maintaining a personal, family dimension to the Anglo-American Quaker community.1 This paper seeks to explore the relationship between the three strands in the trans-Atlantic connection outlined above—religious, mercantile and family bonds—by focussing on the lives of Quaker families in Pardshaw Monthly Meeting, Cumberland, in the mid-eighteenth century . It will be argued that the three strands cannot be viewed in isolation , as each fed on and nurtured the others. Answering the call to travel in the ministry, pursuing mercantile activity, and taking the Quaker History decision to emigrate were different aspects of a common AngloAmerican Quaker culture which significantly reduced the psychological distance across the eighteenth-century Atlantic. The exercise in local history presented below may be thought of as a footnote to Tolles' study of Quaker merchants in colonial Philadelphia, Meeting House and Counting House (University of North Carolina Press, 1948). The West Cumberland Quaker community was neither as numerous, nor as wealthy, nor as powerful as that in early eighteenth-century Philadelphia, and its roots remained, for the most part, firmly embedded in the soil of the small yeoman farms of the Cumbrian countryside. Nevertheless, the brief flowering of Whitehaven as a major port in the Anglo-American trade made its impact on local Quakers by opening up opportunities for trade and emigration. In the following discussion , the local evidence for contact between West Cumberland Friends and America is first presented in some detail; then one theme is highlighted for discussion: the inter-linkages between the travelling ministry and the development of mercantile links across the Atlantic. II In the mid eighteenth century, Pardshaw Monthly Meeting embraced six particular meetings: the original rural Quaker stronghold at Pardshaw Hall itself, meetings in the bustling market town of Cockermouth and in the thriving port of Whitehaven, and three smaller congregations at Broughton, Isel and Keswick. It covered an area of West Cumberland that had experienced significant economic growth in the early eighteenth century. The mining and export of coal, largely to Ireland, and a burgeoning trade with America, notably in the import of tobacco, stimulated industrial development in the vicinity of Whitehaven, which stood second only to London as a port for the import of tobacco in the 1740s.2 As we shall see, local Quakers were heavily involved in Whitehaven's mercantile growth: the opportunities for trade and for commercial contact with America were an important influence on the development of the Quaker community in West Cumberland at that time. The meeting at Pardshaw Hall was one...

Briefer Notices

Briefer Notices Barbara L. Curtis, compiler The annual meeting of Friends Historical Association took place on Eleventh month 12th, 1990 at Friends Meetinghouse, 4th and Arch Sts., Philadelphia. Following a social period and supper together in the East Room the group of some 90 members and friends gathered in the Monthly Meeting room at 7:30 p.m. Under the able direction of Margaret H. Bacon, president of the Association, the regular business was completed. Reports were read and approved from the Treasurer, the auditors, the editor of QuakerHistory, the chairpersons of historical publications, and the membership and nominating committees. Minutes of the annual meeting of the Association in 1989 were read and approved with thanks expressed for the work which these reports entail. Margaret Bacon then introduced the speaker of the evening, Irwin Abrams. Dr. Abrams, retired professor of history at Antioch University, gave an informative and insightful account of events leading up to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947. The joint recipients were the American Friends Service Committee and the British Friends Service Council. In early summer 1990 a centenary was observed at Scattergood School in West Branch, Iowa. The event was marked in part by the publication of a book called Scattergood Friends School: 1890-1990. The authors are Robert Berquist, David Rhodes and Carolyn Smith Treadway. This hard cover volume contains 399 pages, 72 photographs and an index. Copies are available from the school at $15.00, which includes postage. Address the school at Route #1, Box 32, West Branch, IA 52358. A review copy has been received by Thomas Hamm, of Earlham College, book review editor for Quaker History. The Conference of Quaker Historians and Archivists, at its business meeting at the close of the 8th Biennial meeting held at George Fox College, Newberg, Oregon, June 22nd to 24th, 1990, decided after careful discussion to retain its biennial schedule. The next meeting of the conference will be held in 1992 at Wilmington College. This is in response to an invitation from Wilmington to the conference to participate in their 100th anniversary events taking place in 1992 in Wilmington , Ohio. The steering committee for the conference will be chaired by Carole Treadway. Others who agreed to serve with her in planning the gathering are Larry Ingle, Charles Cherry, Jack Marietta, Barbara R. Dailey, Ina Kelley and John Oliver. Persons proposing papers to present in 1992 are invited to get in touch with Carole Treadway, Chair, Steering Committee, Conference of Quaker Historians and Archivists, Guilford College Library, Greensboro, NC 27410. The Board of Directors of the Friends Historical Association at its regular meeting held on Tenth month 10, 1990 requested that notice be given in Quaker History, Spring 1991, that interested persons may obtain a full copy of the Constitution and By-laws of the Association. Please write to Elisabeth P. Brown, Secretary, at the Quaker Collection, Haverford College, Haverford, PA 19041. ...

The Separation of the Children of Peace

In July 1812, David Willson, an aspiring minister in the Yonge Street Monthly Meeting1 in Ontario, Canada, seceded from the meeting to form a dissident sect, the Children of Peace. The ostensible cause of the schism was a doctrinal dispute. An elder, offended by Willson's assertion the person of Jesus Christ was a man; that his spirit was, and is, God with us2 blocked Willson's recognition as a minister. Warned by this elder to remain silent in meetings for worship, Willson refused controversy, fled from argument and opened his own home to meetings for worship.3 During the War of 1812 the sect expanded until one quarter of the Yonge Street Monthly Meeting had joined it. Over the following thirty years the group developed into a millennial, cooperative sect whose flamboyance seemed at odds with their Quaker quietist roots.4 This change can only be understood in relation to the social forces which had led to the initial schism: first, the encroachment of market relations within a rural moral economy, and second, the resistance of these independent subsistence farmers to a state which ignored their distinctive culture and social organization. The specific doctrinal dispute leading to the separation of the Children of Peace had parallels within broader Quaker culture. In 1827 these issues led to the more familiar schism of the Hicksites from the Orthodox. The ostensible causes were similar to that of the separation of the Children of Peace: Elias Hicks, like Willson, called

Quakerism and its Implications for Quaker Women: the Women Itinerant Ministers of York Meeting, 1780-1840

In York Monthly Meeting, women ministers were to become dominant by the end of the eighteenth century, having been outnumbered by men since the beginning of the century. The Meeting for Ministers and Elders appears to have degenerated between 1726 and 1768 under the stewardship of Nathaniel Bell and Daniel Peacock. At the same time, female influence in the Meeting suffered a hiatus, the Meeting ceasing to send female representatives to the Quarterly Meeting in about 1718. This situation continued until 1783, when women once again began to feature strongly in the Meeting of Ministers and Elders; they were appointed to the positions of elder and minister and resumed sending representatives to Quarterly Meetings. From 1706 to 1775, York Meeting had 7 male ministers, of whom 4 were itinerant. There were 5 female ministers; 3 made more than one journey in the ministry. From 1775 to 1860 there were 11 male ministers, 2 being itinerant. There were 20 female ministers, of whom 11 made regular journeys in the ministry.

Articles and Publications

118Quaker History of Quaker Education, A Source Book, it deserves more careful editing. There are some omissions and errors in the index, and enough misprints throughout to be distracting. I hope there will be a second edition with these corrected. The book is a unique contribution to the literature on Friends education and would reward a wide audience. Westtown SchoolAnne Wood Articles and Publications By Claire B. Shetter Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College Swarthmore, Pennsylvania 19081 A handsome new book by John Michael Vlach, Plain Painters: Making Sense ofAmerican FolkArt, is the fifth in the New Directions in American Art Series, published by the Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, 1988. The author suggests a new interpretation of American folk art. Describing these artists as "charming, naive, and original" one could fail to see the complexity and sophistication of much of their work. Numerous untrained artists intended to create within the authentic tradition of the fine art world, not the folk community. The author suggests the term "plain" to suggest a version of what potentially could have been quite elaborate. Included are many references to, and reproductions of, the works of Edward Hicks, Quaker artist. An account written in 1916, tracing village life in Haddenham, Buckinghamshire , and the role of the Quakers since 1660, by Walter Rose, now edited by James and Audrie Brodie, has been published by Beechtree Press, 1 Fettes Crescent , Wellington 3, New Zealand. It is illustrated with photographs and maps. The cost is $10.50 postpaid. For those who enjoy a visual representation of the schisms of the Society of Friends, Geoffrey Kaiser, with the help of Bruce G. Grimes, has charted the relationship between yearly meetings in his The Society ofFriends in North America. This is a large broadside, and was published by the author and artist , Sumneytown, PA 18084, 1988. A family newsletter known as "Ely Heritage" is being published quarterly, covering all branches of the Ely surname and allied lineages, many of whom were Quakers. The editor welcomes unlimited, free, queries. The cost of the publication is $15.00 per year. Please correspond with Theresa Ryan, 501 N. Paradise Road, Aberdeen, MD 21001. Listed below are articles relating to Friends appearing in recent periodicals. Stephen A. Kent, "Psychological and Mystical Interpretations of early Quakerism: William James and Rufus Jones," Religion 17 (1987): 251-271. George H. Cox, Jr., "The Peace and Social Concerns of Wrightsborough Friends," Southern Friend 10.1 (1988): 1-13. This is the first part and is titled, "Living with the Indians." Articles and Publications119 David M. Butler, "Friends' Sufferings, 1650 to 1688: a Comparative Summary ," Journal of the Friends Historical Society 55.6 (1988): 180-183. Jacques Tual, "Sexual Equality and Conjugal Harmony: the Way to Celestial Bliss. A view of early Quaker matrimony," Journal of the Friends Historical Society 55.6 (1988): 161-173. Forrest McDonald and Ellen Shapiro McDonald, "John Dickinson, Founding Father," Delaware History 23.1 (1988): 24-38. Joan Greene Orr, "Civilize the Indian: Government Policies, Quakers, and Cherokee Education," Southern Friend 10.2 (1988) 27-38. Emma Jones Lapsansky, "Feminism, Freedom and Community: Charlotte Forten and Women Activists in Nineteenth-century Philadelphia," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 113.1 (1989): 3-19. The article includes references to Forten's Quaker fellow-activists. Bradley Chapín, "Felony Law Reform in the Early Republic," Pennsylvania Magazine ofHistory and Biography 113.2 (1989): 163-183. Some Quakers led and sustained the felony law reform movement. A. Day Bradley, "Quakers in the Lancaster Gaol, 1778," Pennsylvania Folklife 36.2 (1986-87): 95-96. Six Friends were imprisoned in this Pennsylvania jail for refusing to take the oath of allegiance, pay fines, or join the Militia. Kenneth L. Carroll, "The Berry Brothers of Talbot County, Maryland: Early Antislavery Leaders," MarylandHistoricalMagazine 84.1 (1989): 1-9. The Berry brothers were gifted, active, and dedicated members of Thud Haven Monthly Meeting, and were also slaveholders. In the late eighteenth century they freed their slaves and became champions in the struggle to free society from slavery. Research in Progress By Claire B. Shetter Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 19081 Quaker meetings and Quaker meeting houses are perennial topics...

Research in Progress

Articles and Publications57 England at Hanover, N.H. , is the publisher of this valuable and definitive edition of Williams' letters. The price of the set is $100. The citations listed below have been taken from America: History andLife, 1988, 25(A): Howard Beeth, '"Know Thyself: the Uses of Queries among Early Southern Quakers," Southern Friend, 1987, 9(1), 3-13. James E. Bellarts, "A Quaker Hill Family: Descendants of Samuel Hill and his son William Hill of England, Virginia and North Carolina," Southern Friend, 1986, 8(1), 20-40. Donald B. Kelley, "Friends and Nature in America: Toward an EighteenthCentury Quaker Ecology," Pennsylvania History, 1986, 53(4), 257-272. Thomas C. Kennedy, "The Last Days of Southland," Southern Friend, 1986, 8(1), 2-19. Southland Institute was founded in 1864 by Indiana Quakers at Helena, Arkansas, as an orphanage for Black children. H. Larry Ingle, "Samuel Hanson Cox: Quakers and the Hicksite Separation ," American Presbyterians, 1986, 64(4), 259-262. David W. Jordan, " 'God's Candle' within Government: Quakers and Politics in Early Maryland," Southern Friend, 1986, 8(2), 27-58. Stephen Jay White, "From the Vestry Act to Cary's Rebellion: North Carolina Quakers and Colonial Politics," Southern Friend, 1986, 8(2), 3-26. Richard L. Zuber, "Conscientious Objectors in the Confederacy: the Quakers in North Carolina," Southern Friend, 1987, 9(1), 42-60. Research in Progress Prepared by Clarie B. Shetter Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College Swarthmore, Pennsylvania 19081 Carol E. Hoffecker, Richards Professor of History at the University of Delaware, is currently preparing for the publication of a book on the Ferris family, prominent Wilmington Quakers. Her address is 804 Cinnamon Drive, Hockessin, DE 19707. Much current research using Quaker source material concentrates on women. Elaine S. Crane and Sarah Blank Dine are working on a study of Elizabeth Drinker in preparation for the publication of the Drinker diary. They are Fordham University faculty members. Vera Norwood, a faculty member at the University of New Mexico, is researching Graceanna Lewis and other female botanical illustrators. Her address is 2402 Calle de Panza, N.W., Albuquerque, NM 87104. Quaker women ministers, British and American, who crossed the Atlantic are the subject of Rebecca D. Larson's social history dissertation for Harvard University. Thomas Bechman is completing research for an article in the catalog of the Delaware Antiques Show, scheduled for November 1988. His subject is Wilmington silversmiths, and he is presently at the Historical Society of Delaware. 58Quaker History Another study of traveling ministers is being done by Stephen J. White, whose topic is transatlantic Quakerism, 1700 to 1756. He is working for his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and correspondence may reach him at 1905-B East Washington St., Urbana, IL 61801. Philip L. Boroughs, S.J., has chosen the spirituality of John Woolman as his dissertation topic for the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. His address is 2517 Virginia Street, Berkeley, CA 94709. Dennis D. Moore's dissertation focus is "Hector St. John de Crevecoeur and his treatment (in essays) of members of the Society of Friends." He is at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Several Quaker meetings are currently the subject of study, particularly Exeter , Merion, Malvern and Little Falls, Pa. Karen Guenther's dissertation topic is Exeter Monthly Meeting in the 18th century. Her address is 106 Ambershadow , Houston, TX 77015. David G. Orr's study of the details of Merion Meeting house, its evolution and construction from 1700 to 1840, is to be used to obtain a National Historic Register nomination for that meeting house. His address is 135 Washington St., Delaware City, DE 19706. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Malvern, PA, Joan Kelly is examining historical and pictorial material on Quakers and Quaker influence in the meeting for the Malvern Historical Commission's anticipated book on the history of the borough. Her address is 107 S. Sugartown Rd., Malvern, PA 19355. Virginia Russell has prepared pictorial material to accompany an exhibit commemorating the 250th anniversary of Little Falls Meeting, Fallston, MD. She is a graduate student at the University of Delaware, Winterthur Museum. Stephen M. Beaver is examining material on the Edgmont Township community...

Nation of Nantucket (review)

Book Reviews125 the Brandywine Valley, of whom there were an extraordinary number in the eighteenth century, rather than writing more generally about both English and American traveling ministers. And it would have been of great interest to learn more about the influence of some of these women in their local meetings. Local women's minutes need to be studied in greater depth in each part of the country, for it seems clear that their role and power varied enormously and may have had a great deal more to do with the creation of leadership on the part of Quaker women than we have yet recognized. A study of local minutes might reveal whether Jensen's central thesis—that changes in work patterns for rural women led to their liberation in the public sphere—or whether the Quaker doctrine of gender equality was the overriding influence in determining the role of Quaker women both in the Brandywine Valley as well as elsewhere. Nevertheless, we cannot fail to be grateful to Joan Jensen's careful and fresh studies, for the picture she has given us of farm women's day-to-day lives, and for the many fresh clues she provides for further research into the interaction between economic and religious factors in shaping the world of our foremothers. Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaMargaret Hope Bacon Nation ofNantucket. By Edward Byers. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987. 367 pp. $30.45. This is a first class work of careful scholarship, interestingly written, and embodying stimulating theses regarding why the whaling island gives a clue as to what is good and bad in our western Christian civilization. A century ago and more, Herman Melville was transfixed by Nantucket in Moby Dick, where by transposition the importance of the Quaker "far-away" island was recapitulated. Already in the 1760's Crèvecoeur's Letters ofan American Farmer indicated that the perceptive observer had "eyes to see." There are shortcomings in the volume because Byers seems not to have taken account of the book of membership of Nantucket Monthly Meeting (1708-1944), which combined with information in Alexander Starbuck's 1924 History of Nantucket make it possible to estimate membership. Byers, for example, excludes Thomas Macy (1687-1759) when he was a treasurer of the meeting as well as of the town. But these are minor blemishes. The main thesis lies in Crèvecoeur's statement that Nantucket "embodies the essence of American possibility. '' Yet the "nation of Nantucket,'' to quote Emerson, was built on the exploitation of Indians, Blacks, Polynesians, and Cape Verde Islanders, not to mention the thousands of white "Ishmaels." A small oligarchy of first families survived a "half-shares" revolution in the 1670's to include them in the nation which (like Switzerland) developed a multilateral identity of "privatism," using the seasonal workers to build up enormous wealth widely shared but only among the "nation." Politically the nation accepted the guidance of an elite, half Quaker and onethird Congregationalist, till the challenges of the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 (combined with subsequent depressions) caused the members of the elite to turn against one another. Nantucket Monthly Meeting committed group suicide rather than accommodate to the secular culture which independence brought to the States. Still as late as 1820, the Quaker elite on the island were the great whaling magnates, participants in the Massachusetts and Federal governments (from which they were excluded in the colonial period). But by 1831 the Hicksite division hit 126Quaker History the meeting a body blow which sent it reeling into the Wilburite separation of 1845. However, as John F. Kennedy once said, "Those who do not know the past are condemned to relive it." Byers's work is an excellent corrective in many areas. For once the Nantucket Indian gets his due, and the hitherto hidden proletariat looms with new importance. The "radical spiritism" which lay behind the founding of Nantucket is well portrayed, but Thomas Mayhew's charter to Martha's Vineyard is strangely omitted. Appeals from monthly meeting to quarterly meeting are overlooked, but not the appeal of the town to the General Court of Massachusetts in 1757. The history of city street illumination adds an...

The Quakers and Emigration From Ireland to the North American Colonies

The Quakers and Emigration From Ireland to the North American Colonies Audrey Lockhart* The Quaker movement developed rapidly in Ireland in the course of the sixth decade of the seventeenth century, having been introduced in 1654 by William Edmundson. The first missionaries from England directed much oftheir proselytising zeal at the large military establishment. The Cromwellian army had been recruited mainly among the non-conformist sects in England and so, not surprisingly , it yielded many convincements. Although most of the English soldiers, even those who received Irish land as payment for their military service, returned home, numbers of them stayed to settle in Ireland, either as farmers, or, after selling their land grants, as shopkeepers.1 Significant among these was Captain Thomas Holme from the north of England who gained experience as a landowner in County Wexford before becoming Surveyor-General of Pennsylvania.2 Another Quaker convert was the boy-soldier, Robert Turner, from Cambridge, who, after selling his allotted lands, became a successful linen merchant in Dublin.3 A close friend and agent of William Penn, he was proprietor of land in three colonies before he also emigrated to North America in 1683." When the Quaker preachers turned to the civilian population of Ireland they drew most response from the recently established Protestant settlers, known as "planters", as well as from the early AngloProtestant plantations in the south of Ireland, that is, from among people of "British stock" and, significantly, with few exceptions, * Audrey Lockhart received an M.A. in history from Trinity College, Dublin, and is the author of Some Aspects of Emigration from Ireland to the North American Colonies, 1665-1775. 1.Robert Dunlop, ed., Ireland under the Commonwealth, Documents, (2 vols., Manchester, 1913). 2.Wexford, register of births, microfilm reel no. 212, 2; Wexford Monthly Meeting register of births, microfilm reel no. 215, 265, Friends House Library, London (hereafter referred to as FHL, which is the depository of all the microfilm reels cited, unless otherwise indicated); Abraham Fuller and Thomas Holme, A Compendious View ofSome Extraordinary Sufferings of the People Called Quakers. . . (Dublin, 1731), 51. 3.Dublin register of births of Quakers, 1655-1750, reel no. 213, 19-20. 4.John Bowne, The Journal of John Bowne, 1650-1694, ed. H.F. Ricard, (New Orleans, 1975),29. 67 68Quaker History from the same social classes as in England.5 These might be called the middle-income entrepreneurial classes—merchants, artisans and yeoman farmers—in fact, the sort of people who had been coming to Ireland for centuries, irrespective of politics and the sword. To them belonged William Edmundson who has been dubbed "the father of Irish Quakerism." He came from the north of England in 1652 for the prime purpose of setting up shop.6 Quakerism made little headway, however, among the Presbyterians of Scottish origin who were concentrated in the north of Ireland , while only in unusual circumstances did any of the native Roman Catholics join the movement. From the first, therefore, most of the Quakers of Ireland claimed English birth or descent. Notable exceptions included the parents of James Logan, secretary to William Penn, and some relatives of Robert Barclay, the Apologist, who came from Scotland later in the century.7 Quakers in Ireland, as elsewhere, endured much vilification and persecution, although often unauthorised and seldom instigated by the highest officials in the land.8 In fact, except in the matter of tithes, the harassment of Quakers in Ireland was less severe than in England after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. During the reign of Charles II, therefore, Ireland became the chief refuge of English Quakers seeking to carry on their business in a less prohibitive environment. As a result, the Quaker community in Ireland reached its peak of strength and influence in those years.' Outstanding among Englishmen who transferred their businesses to Ireland at this time were Anthony Sharp of Gloucester who became Dublin's leading wool merchant, the Stretteli brothers from Cheshire, and members of the Jacob and Penrose families, all of whom were soon to establish connections with the North American colonies.10 The founder of Pennsylvania himself had been associated 5.Thomas Wight, A History of the Rise...