Whittier's Philadelphia Friends in 1838

58 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION ever since he knew it in a barber's shop in London, the proprietor of which told him that it had hung in the same place during the years before the World War, and that his father (the former proprietor of the shop) had received it from a client, either as a gift, or in payment of a debt. The canvas on which it is painted shows signs of age on its back, and at some time it became necessary to reline it—a process which caused the loss of the man's picture noted above. There are small cracks on its face which also indicate, when examined under a microscope, evident signs of age; but how close it is to 1700 A. D.—Heemskerk's approximate date—is not apparent. WHITTIER'S PHILADELPHIA FRIENDS IN 1838 By Thomas Franklin Currier 1 IT IS a pleasure to serve this evening somewhat as a connecting link between Pennsylvania and Massachusetts on the occasion of this hundred-year anniversary of the exciting events that centered about the burning of Pennsylvania Hall on May 17, 1838, and it is appropriate because one of our Bay State citizens shared, that night, in the danger that threatened outspoken advocates of the rights of the slave. It is not necessary to explain that I refer to John Greenleaf Whittier, whose office as editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman was located in the burning building and who disguised himself in order that he might mingle freely with the mob and perchance rescue some of his most valuable papers from destruction. A centennial celebration possesses a human element that is not present when we commemorate events that date much farther back than one hundred years. Of one hundred years ago it is possible for a few of us to say that our fathers and mothers were then boys and girls, and those here who are fortunate enough to be of a younger generation may substitute the words grandfathers and grandmothers and feel that they are closely linked with events that took place in the year 1838. When we go back to the times of our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers and to bicentenary 1 A paper read at Haverford College, May 17, 1938, under the auspices of the Thomas Shipley Foundation, on the occasion of the centennial anniversary of the burning of Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia. WHITTIER IN PHILADELPHIA, 183859 and tercentenary celebrations the mists of legend intervene to obscure so distant a past. It is not my purpose this evening to recount, as might the professional historian, the intimate rôle played by John Greenleaf Whittier in those stirring events that took place in Philadelphia one hundred years ago, nor shall I make the attempt to sketch his life, nor to rival that brief biography said to have been produced by a Cambridge schoolboy who presented to his teacher the following masterpiece: "John Greenleaf Whittier was a Quaker. He was born in Haverhill. He never married—he hated slavery." As happens at times to many of us, the boy's facts were wholly correct—his implications misleading. What I hope to do in these brief and somewhat unsystematic notes is to call to your minds a vigorous and attractive young man, thirty years of age, who, early in the year 1838, came to Philadelphia from Amesbury, in Essex County, Massachusetts, my own father's boyhood town, to carry on the editorship of an antislavery paper which that pioneer abolitionist Benjamin Lundy had established here in your Quaker city. I wish also to present thumb-nail sketches of the members of a friendly, congenial, and cultivated circle of intimates which welcomed young Whittier into its midst. The persons whom I shall introduce to you seem like old friends to me because I have recently been perusing a collection of letters written to Whittier and his sister in the months following their leaving Philadelphia for New England early in the year 1840. May I remind you, just here, that it was not the poet Whittier who came among you, but a Whittier who had gained reputation in Boston, Haverhill, Hartford, and New York as...