Impressions of a Norwegian Quaker in 1838

DOCUMENTS33 conduct researches of the records of the State and like written sources of information for the later periods of the red man ; (3) properly to preserve and arrange these collections for futurity and to exhibit such as are suitable for educational display. The Survey proposes also to study, compile and publish the results of these labors so as to form a history of the Pennsylvania Indian. " A suggestive exemplification of an archaeological investigation in Pennsylvania was that made, in a preliminary way, of the Susquehanna River region, the summer of 1916, by the Museum of the American Indian of New York, under the direction of Warren K. Moorehead, the Pennsylvania Historical Commission (Dr. George P. Donehoo, Secretary , and Dr. Thomas Lynch Montgomery, Curator) being represented by the participation of Dr. Donehoo." The final appeal of the Prospectus is as follows : " This work should have commenced thirty years ago ; it can be done now; ten years from now it will be too late. Let us lay the cornerstone of a great monument in American archaeological history today." Any readers having information that would be of help to this important Survey should address the Chairman of the Committee, Miss Frances Dorrance , care of Wyoming Historical and Geological Society, Wilkes-Barré, Pennsylvania. DOCUMENTS IMPRESSIONS OF A NORWEGIAN QUAKER IN 1838 Contributed by Db. Henry J. Cadbury The following letter is one of several letters from members of the Larson family, the leaders of the first party of Norwegians to emigrate to America in the famous sloop " Restaurationen " in 1825. That family settled in Rochester, New York. The letters were addressed to Friends or relatives at their home in Stavanger, Norway. Here they were preserved among the archives of Friends. In 1924 Gunnar J. Malmin, an enterprising young Norwegian-American bent upon historical research, secured copies of them. They were published in part in Decorah-Posten (Decorah, Iowa, Dec. 5 and 12, 1924) and in the American Scandinavian Review (New York, June, 1925), Vol. XIII, No. 6, pp. 361 ff.). The one here published in full is of special interest because of the naïve appreciation of American Quakerism given by this talented woman of foreign birth as she sees it about a decade after the Great Separation. For the correction and completion of the published text we are indebted to Gunnar Malmin. For some strange reason this letter unlike the other letters of Lars and Martha Larson was written in English. Elias Tastad had learned this language while in England; Martha Larson had apparently secured a good mastery of it (except in spelling) since coming to America: 34 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION My Dear Friend Elias Tasta : 1 I can't let this good opportunity go by accept writing these few lines to you for to express little of my feeling and situation. I have not for sometime past been very well but at present I am better. I and my husband went away last 5th month on acont of my health. We went from home the 16th of the same month and got to New York the 20th about 5 o'clock in the morning and 6 o'clock we took the steamboat for Philadelphia. Then we went about 30 miles by water, then we took the rail road car for about 30 miles cross the New Jersey and through Berlington where Steven Grellet 2 live, and from there we took the steamboat again across Delawere River into Philadelphia, and there we staid for four days. We meet there excedingly kind friends and we tended meting twice and there we found Tormon Bournson,3 and from there we went again to N. Y. to tend the yearly meting, witch was very interesting to me. I had the comfort to be in company with our dear friend Steven Grellet, also, with a great minister from England of the name Joseph John Gerny.* We all put up together to a friend of the name Collins.5 The meting lasted about 5 days. O my dear friend Elias, thou cannot have any idea what a good meting the yearly metings are. It has felt to me as a kingdom on the earth, and...