Glimpses Into Haverford Quakeriana

12 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION GLIMPSES INTO HAVERFORD QUAKERIANA By Arthur J. Mekeel THE QUAKER collection at Haverford College is one of those places to which anyone dealing with Quaker history naturally turns for information in his field. There one can find material from the earliest period of Quakerism to the latest. The purpose of this paper is to indicate broadly the type of historical data available and to give a glimpse into the successive periods of Quaker history here represented. The William H. Jenks collection of Quaker pamphlets and tracts of the seventeenth century is one of the most important sources for that period.1 This consists of about 1500 titles and was presented to thé college by Mr. Jenks' widow. It deals primarily with English Quakerism and has been supplemented by later additions. For early American Quakerism, especially in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the Gulielma M. Howland 2 and Haddon-Estaugh-Hopkins 3 manuscript collections are of great value. The former was given by Rachel S. and Susan Howland and the latter by Rebecca Nicholson Taylor. Smaller but interesting and important are the collections of family letters and other documents of the same period represented by the Allinson papers 4 donated by Caroline Allinson, the Barclay family letters, the letters of Anthony Benezet, mostly the gift of Charles Evans, and the Drinker letters given to the College by Henry S. Drinker, Jr. There is also a wealth of material on nineteenth-century developments . The Howland and Haddon-Estaugh-Hopkins collections are valuable for the early part of the century. The Thompson family letters donated by the late Norman Penney cover the period from about 1760 to 1876, but deal mostly with the nineteenth century. The letters of Isaac Stephenson, an English Friend, comprise a smaller collection and were written to his family in England while he was on a religious visit to this country 1 See Bulletin of Friends' Historical Association, viii (1919), p. 27 ff. * Ibid., p. 28. 3 See Quakeriana Notes, no. 2, p. 6 (Spring 1934) ; no. 4, p. 7 (Spring 1935). 4 See Bulletin of Friends' Historical Association, xx (1931), p. 21. HAVERFORD QUAKERIANA13 in the 1820's. For the middle period of the century there are the John Wilbur letters,5 recently given by Agnes L. Tierney, and the Taylor collection,6 presented to the College by Margaret Taylor Macintosh. The latter item consists of a large number of letters written to Dr. Joseph W. Taylor and his brother Abram Taylor of Cincinnati, Ohio. It is one of the most extensive sources for the years it covers. The needs of the Indians and Negroes were two of the chief social concerns of Friends in the last century. Their work among the Indians is fully represented at Haverford. Especially important in this line are the data connected with Thomas Wistar, Jr., one of the Friends most active in this work. Besides numerous letters of his in the Taylor collection, there is his manuscript diary and memoirs in six volumes, the gift of his grandson, Edward M. Wistar. Additional material is available in the journals of similarly interested Friends dating from the early accounts of the visits of David Bacon and Joshua Sharpless to the Indians in western Pennsylvania and New York in 1794 and 1798 respectively. These journals give an excellent picture of Indian life and customs in the periods and places which they treat. The Indian work of the latter half of the nineteenth century and opening years of the twentieth is shown in the John B. Garrett collection, the papers of the Quaker Indian agent Jonathan Richards, recently donated by Francis R. Taylor,7 and the files of the Associated Executive Committee of Friends on Indian Affairs for the years 1895-1917. The latest phase of Quaker activity in social problems is the work of the American Friends Service Committee. This was begun in an effort to alleviate conditions in war-torn Europe and has since continued in an ever widening program of social reconstruction . The first decade of the Committee's work, 1917-1927, is contained in the complete files for that period deposited at Haverford.8 Finally, there is...