Spring Meeting, 1947: Friends Historical Association

SPRING MEETING, 1947 FRIENDS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION THE FRIENDS of Plymouth Monthly Meeting entertained Friends Historical Association at the annual Spring Meeting on May 17, 1947. President William W. Comfort called the meeting to order at 3.30 p. m., in the old part of the meetinghouse, which dates from about 1708. He introduced Carroll L. Corson, a member of Plymouth Meeting, who welcomed the Association and told of the revival of interest in the meeting and its school in the recent years. He was followed by Judge George C. Corson, who entertained the group with a series of anecdotes concerning "Plymouth Meeting in History and Legend." Since "Plymouth Meeting" is a Pennsylvania village as well as a Friends' meeting, Judge Corson was able to include some tales of the doings of local characters whom Friends would undoubtedly have disowned if they could! He also told of the preaching of some of the older ministers of Plymouth Meeting, and revealed that Carroll L. Corson lives in what was once the Orthodox meetinghouse, which was next door to the present Hicksite meetinghouse but was converted into a dwelling when the Orthodox Plymouth Preparative Meeting was laid down in 1896. In a talk on "Antislavery Friends near Plymouth Meeting," Thomas E. Drake spoke briefly of the Underground Railroad activities of Friends in the vicinity. He read, as a kind of thumbnail sketch of the doings of radical antislavery Friends in Plymouth Meeting, a letter on the subject written in 1885 by Dr. Hiram Corson, one of the leading abolitionists. The letter, which is a recent addition to the manuscripts in The Quaker Collection of the Haverford College Library, contained references to Benjamin Lundy's conversion to abolitionism in the early 1830s of Hiram Corson, George Corson, Alan W. Corson and others, and told how they entertained antislavery lecturers and constructed "Antislavery Hall" on George Corson's property for abolitionist meetings. Following the speaking, Friends found it interesting to visit the Underground Railroad station of George Corson, across from the meetinghouse, to look at Antislavery Hall, later the studio 80 ABINGTON FRIENDS SCHOOL81 building in which George Corson's son-in-law, Thomas Hovenden, did the well-known painting, "John Brown on His Way to His Execution," and to inspect the new wing of the meetinghouse, designed by a member of Friends Historical Association, Joseph Linden Heacock. Here Plymouth Meeting Friends served coffee and ice cream to go with the box suppers which members of the Association had brought with them. ABINGTON FRIENDS SCHOOL, 1697-1947 Two Hundred Fiftieth Anniversary THE CELEBRATION of the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of Abington Friends School on Fifth Month 17th, 1947, is a notable milestone in the history of education in the Society of Friends in America. While our Quaker colleges— Haverford, Guilford, Earlham, and others soon to come—are marking the completion of a century of higher education among Friends, the celebration of the 250th year of a school which is believed to be the oldest American institution of its type in continuous existence in the same place under the same ownership and management, is a striking reminder of the fact that an earnest concern for education has marked the Society of Friends from the very beginning. Abington Friends School has served eight generations of Pennsylvania Friends in what was originally Dublin or Cheltenham, now Abington Meeting. It began as an ungraded elementary school, expanded to the secondary level, served as a boarding school before George School was founded, and is now a day school, offering instruction to 250 girls, both Friends and nonFriends , from the pre-school to college preparatory grades. It was held first in the meetinghouse, then in a separate building, now the caretaker's house, and since 1887 in a building across the road to the south. The School's celebration in Fifth Month last had as the theme "A Glimpse of its Past—A Vision of its Future." The vision of the future includes plans for a new auditorium and new classrooms, for which an anniversary fundraising campaign for $100,000 is now in progress, beginning with the anniversary year and continuing through 1948. Vol. 36, Autumn 1947 ...