Earliest Records of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

EARLIEST RECORDS OF PHILADELPHIA YEARLY MEETING By Henry J. Cadbury THE yearly meeting of Philadelphia and Burlington, as is well known, met alternately at those cities for many years beginning in 1686. Before that there were apparently two yearly meetings. One was at Burlington beginning in 1681 and die other at Philadelphia beginning apparently in 1683, but overlapping the older one in membership. Before the coming of Penn, Friends had meetings west of die Delaware and these were represented at Burlington yearly meetings. The evidence of parallel yearly meetings in this period is not absolute but is probably sufficient. It is most definite for 1684, since a letter to London Friends is extant from the Philadelphia meeting, dated Seventh Month 24, 1684,1 in which the writers say: "We have had lately two precious, heavenly, and blessed yearly meetings one at Burlington the other at Philadelphia .... And dear Friends, at the two aforementioned yearly meetings . . . . " A yearly meeting, presumably in Philadelphia, in Third Month, 1683, was projected, according to a letter dated 17th of First Month, 1683 from Pennsylvania Friends to Friends in England, but a minute at the beginning of the minute book of Bucks Quarterly Meeting refers to the yearly meeting held at Philadelphia in the Seventh Month, 1683. The minutes of die Burlington sessions in the same month are extant. As for 1685 the minutes of Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting for Seventh Month 12, 1685 speak of the Quarterly Meeting as "being deferred to then because of Burlington and our Yearly Meeting," while the Yearly Meeting minutes of the same month record, as though it were a new plan: "It was therefore concluded and agreed by this meeting that there be but one yearly and general meeting in this province and West Jersey, one year at Burlington and another at Philadelphia." 1 The same date is given as of a letter from this Yearly Meeting to Friends of Maryland in dieir reply copied into the Yearly Meeting minutes of 1685. 16 Earliest Records of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting 17 The minutes of the first annual meeting at Burlington provided for a meeting to be held in Second Month every year at Salem. This apparently was intended to be as inclusive as die odier. As we shall see, it was called a Yearly (or Half Yearly) Meeting. The early Yearly Meeting minute books preserved at the Department of Records, 302 Arch Street, Philadelphia are two. One is a small parchment-bound folio extending from 1681 only to 1710, the second part of the book being left blank. It is in die careful hand of Phineas Pemberton but it is evident from die writing diat the minutes were not entered into it year by year but after several years had elapsed, and that the minutes had to be supplied from elsewhere. There are no minutes for 1684, though as stated above, we know yearly meetings were held that year.2 The second book is a larger leather-bound folio. Its beginning is a copy of the odier book and was made by James Pemberton, grandson of Phineas and clerk a hundred years after him. He copied also a letter that Phineas evidently intended for the first book, in which he says that the minutes had been derived from loose copies. This explains why the minutes are so incomplete. The following chart lists the meetings probably held in the years 1681-5, bracketing those unminuted in the Yearly Meeting books extant. Burlington (autumn) 168116821683[1684][1685] Half Yearly (Second Mondi) [1682] [1683] [1684][1685] Philadelphia[1683] [1684]1685 Beside regretting the omissions in die oldest records, one cannot but wonder whether the copies made so long after are as accurate as if they had been written down without the perspective of later years. I have come upon copies of some of diese minutes evidently earlier than the official Yearly Meeting 2 This book has headings but no minutes for yearly meetings in Burlington in Seventh Mondi, 1684, in Philadelphia in Seventh Month, 1684, and in Burlington in Seventii Month, 1685. Cf. die description of these minute books in this Bulletin, 20 (1931) , 60-61. 18Bulletin of Friends Historical Association minute books which...