American Grit: A Woman's Letters from the Ohio Frontier (review)

Book Reviews81 of South African Quakers, but raises some thought-provoking issues for Friends everywhere. Phyllis M. MartinIndiana University American Grit: A Woman's Lettersfrom the Ohio Frontier. Ed. by Emily Foster. Lexington: University Press ofKentucky, 2002. ? + 344 pp. Maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $45. In 1826 Joseph and Anna (Briggs) Bentley left the close-knit Quaker community of Sandy Spring, Maryland, for Columbiana County, Ohio. While their relatives included Brookes, Thomases, Stablers, Lukenses, Matthewses, and Hopkinses, Anna's father Isaac Briggs Sr, had left a legacy mainly ofdebts, and Joseph Bentley found it difficult to support his family on the wom-out land of Maryland. As was often the case, Joseph was far more enthusiastic about seeking a new life in the west than his wife. Anna Bentley solaced herself by maintaining a voluminous correspondence with her mother, siblings, and other relatives that forms the foundation for this volume. Fortunately, Anna Bentley was a gifted writer with a knack for description and story telling. Despite the back-breaking labor of opening a farm and caring for her husband and thirteen children, she found time to send regular reports back to Maryland of her new life. The result is one of the best collection ofQuaker family letters that this historian has encountered. Two striking themes emerge from Anna Bentley's collection. One is the nature of the community she joined near the village of Hanover, Ohio, embraced in Sandy Spring and New Garden monthly meetings. The Bentleys were able to establish themselves largely because ofthe help and support ofthe Friends, most ofthem not relatives. Clearing land, raising buildings, fighting forest fires were all enterprises that brought groups of twenty to forty neighbors together. On a smaller scale, Anna writes regularly of neighbor women appearing with food and clothing, helping with sewing and cleaning, nursing her and her sick children, and offering advice on everything from preparing for a barn-raising dinner to dealing with difficult relatives. The other theme that Quaker historians should note is the place oftheir faith in the lives ofthe Bentley family. Joseph and Anna, like their Maryland relatives, sided firmly with the Hicksites when the separation of 18271 828 took place. One ofthe most moving accounts in the letters is Anna's of the visit of the Orthodox committee, which included a formerly dear friend, to try to convince her ofher errors. But Anna writes relatively little 82Quaker History about religious matters. While she seems to have attended meeting with some regularity, and went to early meeting when it was held in nearby Salem, she almost never reflects on the state of her soul or exhorts her readers to think on their souls. All of her children married out of meeting, and became members of several Protestant denominations. One has to wonder if she was far more typical than the ministers and elders whose journals and memoirs are the foundation of so much Quaker historical writing. Emily Foster's editing is largely skillful and unobtrusive, supplying helpful identifications ofpeople, places, and things. Her work has brought a remarkable Quaker woman to life. Thomas D. HammEarlham College QuakerAesthetics: Reflections on a Quaker Ethic in American Design and Consumption. Ed. by Emma Jones Lapsansky and Anne A. Verplanck. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. xiv + 394 pp. Illustrations , glossary, notes, and index. $35. In 1806, Thomas Clarkson described Quaker homes in England as possessing few artworks: "I seldom remember to have seen above three or four articles of this description in all my intercourse with the Quakers....One ofthe prints to which I allude, contained a representation ofthe conclusion ofthe famous Treaty between William Penn and the Indians of America...The second was the print of a Slaveship...The third contained a Plan ofthe Buildings of Ackworth School." Clarkson's observations sustained popular notions about the Quaker aesthetic: Quakers cultivate plainness, deploying art, dress, and architecture as "moral and elevating in tendency" and as a marker of social difference. As a visit to eBay will attest, popular conceptions of Quakers have changed little in two centuries; many sellers muddle quaint religious figures dressed plainly, cataloging them as, variously, Quakers, Shakers, and Amish. Despite the mainstream association of...