A Quaker Community Way Down East, 1796

NOTES ^DOCUMENTS A QUAKER COMMUNITY WAY DOWN EAST, 1796 By Henry J. Cadbury William Bingham's Maine Lands, 1790-1820 is the title of an elaborate and extended report of the real-estate speculation of William Bingham of Philadelphia , in which many persons were involved.1 In one of the many long documents there is reference to a Quaker community otherwise unknown to me. Alexander Baring, later Lord Ashburton, and already at the age of twentyone an Englishman of much business experience, traveled in the summer of 1796 through parts of Maine which he was interested to purchase and gives a full description of what he saw and learned.2 Traveling from Machias about twentyone miles towards Gouldsboro', he came in lot No. 12 upon "a settlement of about thirty Quaker families, who all had good farms near each other and had formed themselves into a society. Settlements in new countries always commence on the waters and in Maine by lumbering and not by agriculture. This was the first exception I met with, for they were distant from any river and lived entirely by their farms. I attribute it to the Quaker character, being averse to the vagrant life of a lumberer, and as they are a moral quiet set of people I think them a vast acquisition to our country. . . . There are few houses that are not full of children. A Quaker we visited on No. 12 had seventeen and I found on enquiry that the thirty families settled there averaged upwards of eight children each. A large family being rather an assistance than an embarrassment, people all marry and generally early."3 The careful editor of these papers, Frederick S. Allis, Jr., is not aware of any reference to this community, nor, as is not surprising, is it indicated on the Quaker maps mentioned in Quaker History, LII (1963), 3-9. BENJAMIN WEST NOT A QUAKER By Eleanor von Erffa* It is the custom of Friends to count as their members those who belong to a meeting. At the same time, attendere are welcomed without question. Sometimes these attendere receive the name of Friends and go down into popular history as Quakers. A notable example is Benjamin West, the painter. His * Eleanor von Erffa, of New Brunswick, New Jersey, is at work on a biography of Benjamin West. 1 Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XXXVI-XXXVII (1954), 1315 pages. 3 Pp. 765-795. 3 Pp, 777, 812. 109 ...