Full of Adventure: The Memoirs of Grace Scattergood Lowry (review)

Book Reviews65 strong that Orthodox and Hicksite Friends cooperated in such efforts as the Association for the Aid and Elevation ofthe Freedmen and the Institute for Colored Youth. In fact, by the end of the nineteenth century, both of the main branches of Quakers were deeply involved in social action and outreach, including the Women's Foreign Missionary Association ofFriends ofPhiladelphia, which sponsored, among other endeavors, a girls' school in Ramallah, Palestine, and a mission in Tokyo. Race Street Yearly Meeting was moved in 1914 to pass a minute supporting women's suffrage, "perhaps the first such statement by a religious body," Bacon says. Philadelphia Quakers were powerful enough to have an impact; in the latter part of the nineteenth century, Race Street Meeting numbered nearly 1 ,900 members. The last chapter deals with the final healing ofthe breach of 1827 when, after years ofinching toward reunion through the efforts ofYoung Friends and through cooperation on various projects, Race Street and Twelfth Street finally met together in January 1 956 as Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting; by this time, the joint membership was fewer than 700 Friends. Theological differences remained, as well as tangled property and managerial issues, but members worked through Quaker process to resolve them. Policies regarding same-sex marriage and "Responding to Calls to Ministry" are two results ofthis process which have been found useful by other Meetings. This book will be read with interest by Philadelphia Quakers, by students of the history of Quakerism and of Philadelphia, and by those interested in observing how this "peculiar people" worked through the challenges of two centuries. Caroline CherryEastern University Full ofAdventure: The Memoirs of Grace Scattergood Lowry. Edited by Margaret Hope Bacon. Aston, PA: GCom2 Solutions, 525 Turner Industrial Way, Aston, PA 19014, 2001. 201 pp. Illustrations, chronology, genealogy. $15. The memoirs of Grace Scattergood Bacon have been privately printed and will be an engaging, inexpensive addition to all Quaker libraries. They may be seen as contributing to the Quaker tradition of journals and memoirs kept to nurture and inform future generations, although in an appealingly non-preachy form. Grace Lowry is probably best remembered as having founded, in 1936, at the request of Clarence Pickett, the International Student House in 66Quaker History Washington, D. C, a still-thriving institution. The work was overseen by Washington Meeting, but one of the factors that made ISH a success was that "the older people ofthe Meeting gave me no advice. It's a great art for older people to give no advice." In 1943, also at the request of Clarence Pickett, Lowry founded Davis House, the guest house run by the AFSC in Washington; when she had to close it because of complaints by neighbors about interracial gatherings, she arranged for the purchase of the present location on R Street. Among the anecdotes from this period is an account of bringing a group of international students to the White House at Mrs. Roosevelt's invitation. Mrs. Roosevelt's secretary objected that there would be Negroes in the group, but Lowry replied, "I did not suppose that would make any difference to Mrs. Roosevelt." Lowry believes this was the first interracial group to be received by a President's wife at the White House. Other notable accomplishments include founding, with Charlotte McJannet, the International Women's Service Group. As a young woman, Lowry accompanied and aided her husband as he worked with prisoners of war under the auspices of the YMCA in Germany during World War I. They were later evacuated to Paris where, in 1918, she bore her first child who lived while bombs rained on the city; she reports that "everything was right except at night we often had shrapnel hitting our steel shutters from the aircraft guns." After the war, from 1924 to 1930, her husband and she headed the Quaker Center in Paris, a joint project of the AFSC and its British equivalent. They got little help from Philadelphia, and Friends in Paris had widely differing ideas about how French Quakerism should evolve. It was a transformative period in Lowry's life, difficult but rewarding . This experience, with others, prepared her to accept Clarence Pickett's request in...