Research in Progress

Research in Progress Prepared by Mary Ellen Chijioke and Claire B. Shetter Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore, PA 19081-1399 Current research in progress promises a continuing and varied flow of material in the future. In regional studies, Herbert C. Standing (Route 1, Box 73, Earlham, IA 50072) has been working on Iowa Friends history. Currently, he is re-abstracting the records of Bear Creek Monthly Meeting, which had been incompletely (and sometimes incorrectly) done by William Wade Hinshaw. Jean Coffey Row (207 Orchard Avenue, Dover, DE 14401) is attempting to tie up one loose end in Delaware history in tracing the final disposition of the Royal Charter of 1682 and the deeds and leases that comprise the present state of Delaware from the time they were in the custody of Sarah Wistar Miller. Douglas Gwyn is writing a book on early Quaker covenant theology in relation to Puritan covenant theology and political social contract theory. Rev. Dr. Alan P.F. Sell, Professor and Chairholder of the Department of Religious Studies, University of Calgary (2500 University Drive, N.W., Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4) is preparing an article on Robert Barclay (1648-1690): "The Fathers and the Inward Universal Saving Light: A Tercentenary Reappraisal." Variety is also the key word in describing research into Quaker life. MarieClaire Kirch (3 Elm Street, Carrboro, NC 27510) is doing her master's thesis for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Quaker women in seventeenth-century England, looking particularly at the changing role of women in the London group as affected by the intersection of class and ideology. Mary Anne Caton is Project Coordinator for a two-year cataloging and management project of the Chester County Historical Society (Box 3503, West Chester, PA 19381) funded by the Penn Foundation, which includes mounting an exhibition of Quaker clothing, opening October 19, 1990. George W. Boudreau(lll S. Jordan Ave., Bloomington, IN 47405) is working on his Ph.D. dissertation for Indiana University on "Education of Quakers in Colonial Pennsylvania." For the modern period, Mary Golden (127 West 96th St., #11 A, New York, NY 10025) is travelling around the U.S., visiting with, interviewing, and photographing all types of Quaker families to create a portrait of family life in the 1990s. Looking forward to the centenary of the death of John Greenleaf Whittier, Adelbert Mason (740 Castlewood Road, Glenside, PA 19038), retired Executive Director of the Friends Council on Education, is studying the poet's Quaker persona. Austin Meredith (2860 Kenwood Isles Drive, Minneapolis, MN 55408-1981) is working with Professors Don Ross and John Dolan at the University of Minnesota on the "Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project," developing a cumulative CD-ROM publication on Henry David Thoreau. He would be interested in learning about Friends whom Thoreau may have met both in Massachusetts and elsewhere. Quaker sources continue to assist students of African-American history. Robert Lane (13 West Tulpehocken St., Philadelphia, PA 19144) is doing his Ph.D. dissertation for the University of Pennsylvania on the desegregation effort in Pennsylvania's public system of higher education, including the early history of Cheyney State University, founded under the will of Richard T. 116Quaker History Humphreys as the Institute for Colored Youth. Dr. Howard Sacks of the Department of Sociology of Kenyon College (Gambier, OH) is working on a book on blacks and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American music. Margaret Sidlick (143 Channing Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355) has been assisting him in tracing the Plummer family of Maryland who, when moving to Knox County, Ohio, took with them Thomas Snowden, the man who taught the minstrel who wrote "Dixie." Bruce Dorsey is doing his Ph.D. dissertation for the History Department at Brown University (Providence, RI 02917) on the history of religious benevolent societies in Philadelphia, 1790-1845. Norris Hansell, M.D. (7 Regent Court, Champaign, IL 61820) is doing research on the life of Josiah White, 1781-1850, Quaker nineteenth-century entrepreneur . He has consulted the biography of White, prepared by Eleanor Morton in 1946 and published by Stephen Daye Press. Morton's bibliography and acknowledgements refer to a collection of letters and papers...