William Penn and the Dutch Quaker Migration to Pennsylvania (review)

BOOK REVIEWS43 Dear Mrs Ordway was at my Birth-day with the Haverhill friends and I was very glad to meet her. How few are now left whom I knew sixty years ago! I thank thee for thy letter which has called up memories of East Haverhill ver}' vividly. I am very truly thy aged friend, JOHN G. WHITTIER BOOK REVIEWS William Penn and the Dutch Quaker Migration to Pennsylvania, by William I. Hull. Swarthmore College, 1935. xiii+445 pp.; illustrated. $4.00. T-1HE LATE Philadelphia national historian, McMaster, once said it was not time to write a history of Pennsylvania; "a lot of monographic work must be done first," he added. He might have added that in no national history, including his own, is the state properly represented. "A lot of monographs" have been and are now being done; and Dr. Hull, "Howard M. Jenkins Research Professor of Quaker History" in Swarthmore College, is doing a number of them, of which this excellent volume is the second. In these, he takes the scientific viewpoint of seeking causes in the European background, avoiding the provincial view. A first-hand sight of contemporary material as well as knowledge of all Quaker historians from Sewel to Braithwaite and Jones shows his vital grasp of his great field. In his five chapters and six appendices he traces Quaker movements arising in Holland, the Orange dependencies of Netherlands and Rhineland , and Germany, from about 1652 to Penn's first visit in 1671, a mission to others in spiritual revolt like the Labadists, Pietists, and Quietists. He then traces the great mission of Penn, Fox, Barclay, and others in 1677, when Penn had been made umpire of West Jersey, and became aflame with asylum possibilities on the American shore. On this trip he and his companions visited over a hundred places in the above regions, and chiefly to Dutch Quaker settlements, scattered by persecution to kindly principalities, and by the wars of Louis XIV. The hideous Thirty Years' War and its religious persecutions tend to make one endure 1914 and after more calmly. It is no wonder that Penn prompted 800 of them to flee to West Jersey, and in 1680 took measures to get control of the Delaware Valley on both sides for a "Promised Land" ! Then in 1683 about 300 Dutch Quakers from Krefeld and elsewhere settled north of Philadelphia in what should then have been called "Dutchtown" and so remained for about a quarter of a century, or until, 44 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS* HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION in 1709, the German influx caused it to be named "Germantown." Dr. Hull makes us fully acquainted with these Holland settlers in a vivid first-hand way. Then in 1686 Penn made another visit to the above lands—his last—and when he had acquired control of the Delaware Valley on both sides, he started a great migration or "trek" thither as a land of freedom. It is not surprising that, as Dr. Myers states, Penn should marry a "Dutch woman." Dr. Hull makes us realize these powerful features : suffering in religious persecution, hard to realize in these days ; powerful preaching over a large territory; powerful pamphleteering and correspondence, in spiritual revolt ; and a wonderful migration of the spiritually minded to a land of freedom. He is doing a great work for history, Quaker history, Pennsylvania and national history in his ten monographs—"a lot"—of which two have now been issued. The rest, listed in this volume, are most promising. Burton Alva Konkle. Quakerism and a Creed. By Arthur T. Mekeel. Friends Book Store, Philadelphia, 1936. 171 pp. TT HAS always been a little difficult to explain why the Society of¦*¦ Friends has had no creed. A historical monograph on the subject such as we now have in Mekeel's book is the best way of answering the question . The objections to a creed are its inadequacy and its danger of misuse as a test of membership. On the other hand Friends have legitimately desired a statement that would silence false charges of unorthodoxy or that would enable inquirers to know what they were joining if they wished to become Friends. All these and other...