"Hungering and Thirsting for the Contact with Kindred Spirits": Henry Wilbur and the Committee for the Advancement of Friends' Principles, 1900-1914

"Hungering and Thirsting for the Contact with Kindred Spirits": Henry Wilbur and the Committee for the Advancement ofFriends' Principles, 1900-1914 Roger Hansen* The keynote address at Friends General Conference at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, in 1910 hadjust been given by Jesse H. Holmes on "The Sense ofLarger Fellowship." Henry Wilbur, as he frequently did, responded from the audience with his characteristic thoughtfulness and passion: There are many men and women in the world to-day hungering and thirsting for the contact with kindred spirits as there ever were. The minute we put off our spiritual aloofness, and consider that the things of the spirit are common things, that they belong to all ranks and conditions ofmen, the response will come. . . . Let the members of this Society go home and get busy building a spiritual light in their meetinghouses and letting it shine there, an invitation to the weary and the wayward and even the wicked, that they may there get the light and the impulse which they need. Then the better days ofthis Society are before us and not behind us.1 Henry Wilbur, as staff of Friends General Conference, was in a good position to know about the needs of the Society of Friends and to do something about them. He had begun his labors for FGC as clerk of the Committee fortheAdvancement ofFriends' Principles in 1902, andbecame the firstpaid staffofFGC in 1905 as secretary ofthat Committee. His central role in the development of FGC is reflected in the change of title of his position in 1911 to General Secretary ofthe organization. Friends General Conference itselfhad been in existence only since 1900. The seven Hicksite Yearly Meetings were then emerging from the relative decline ofthe late nineteenth century.2 Significant signs ofincreased activity in this period were the formation of groups uniting the yearly meetings in common activities—the First Day School Conference in 1868, the Friends Union for Philanthropic Labor in 1 88 1 , the Friends Religious Conference in 1 894, and the Friends Education Conference the same year. In 1 900 these groups met together and formed Friends General Conference. Its founders, however, did not appear to attach much significance to this development. The committee that suggested the change was called a "Reorganization * Roger Hansen hold a doctorate in history from the University of Cincinnati. He currently works as a bereavement coordinator and is a member of Evanston Friends Meeting. His research interests include oral history and twentieth-century Quakerism. Henry Wilbur and Advancement of Friends' Principles 45 Committee," and its proposedplan was merelyto "simplifythe organization ofthe Conference." The mainprovision ofthe organizational minute was to identify the composition of the new Central Committee.3 This paper analyzes the gradual transformation of Friends General Conference, with its seven yearly meetings and four trans-yearly meeting organizations, into amore coherentbodywith aclearer identity andmission. Henry Wilbur and the Advancement Committee were central to this development . Wilbur, who appeared to some Friends to have come from out of nowhere, seemed an unlikely figure to play this role. Henry Wilbur's Background Wilbur was born in 1851 in Easton, Washington County, New York to Quakerparents who were involvedinthe abolitionistmovement. In 1 867 the family moved to Vineland, New Jersey, where his parents engaged in fruit farming. He finished high school there, where his education was supplemented by the library ofthe local Unitarian Church. He said that for many years he was a "religious wanderer," who "maintained my birthright in the Society in which I was born," but had no connection to or fellowship with it. This lack of connection may have been a cause for his later passion for outreach. When later asked what had influenced him so thoroughly toward Quakerismwhenthere was no meeting inVineland, he replied, "Readingthe life ofIsaac T. Hopper [a Quaker antislavery advocate] at the age ofnine."4 He began working for the Vineland Independent after he left school, and became its editor and owner from 1 876 to 1 884. In his newspaper work he was especiallyknown forhis advocacy oftemperance. During thisperiodhe married Eliza Macy Sowie, and they had three sons.5 Wilbur' s move to New York in 1 896 led to a new chapter in...