Pacific Coast Quakerism. The Part of Philadelphia and London Friends in its Planting

98 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL SOCIETY PACIFIC COAST QUAKERISM. THE PART OF PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON FRIENDS IN, ITS PLANTING. Rayner W. Kelsey. Mary Fisher and Ann Austin came to New England in 1656, and within one hundred and fifty years Quakerism had spread westward a thousand miles to the Mississippi Valley. From the Mississippi to the Pacific coast, about twice the distance, it moved in one third the time. There is an item of peculiar interest to Philadelphia Friends and English Friends in the story of Quaker beginnings in California . That item is connected with what was probably the first meeting held by ministers of the Society of Friends on the Pacific coast. In the years immediately following the discovery of gold (1848) in California, Friends from various parts of the United States, and even from England, sought the new land of promise in the west. Among these were several young men by the name of Hobson from North Carolina, and two brothers, John and Thomas Bevan, who had attended Ackworth School in England and later had joined their parents in South America. These brothers were conducting a drug-store in San Francisco in 1859. It is possible and probable that among such Friends private meetings had been held previous to the occasion to be described in this writing. Yet so far as the writer has been able to discover by considerable efforts of research, the first appointed meeting held by ministers of the Society of Friends on the Pacific coast, was in San Francisco, on First-day, Seventh month 17th, 1859. This meeting was held by ministers of London Yearly Meeting in the home of a member of Orange Street Meeting, Philadelphia. Robert and Sarah Lindsey, ministers with a minute from London Yearly Meeting, traveled in America from 1857 to i860, and during the last two years of that time visited California and Oregon. It was during this visit that the meeting in question was held. PACIFIC COAST QUAKERISM99 In Third month, 1909, the writer had the privilege of visiting Hannah Lloyd Neall in her home in San Francisco, CaI. She was said to be over 90 years old, but in spirit and mental power she was yet young. She still claimed membership in Orange Street Meeting, and said almost archly : " I like the Friends and propose to be one always." Her husband, James Neall, was deceased. They had come to California shortly after their marriage (about 1850 as she remembered it), and it was in their home that the appointed meeting for Robert and Sarah Lindsey was held. The meetings held by these visiting Friends were spoken of in contemporaneous newspapers as the first Friends' meetings in California, and since a tradition to the same effect still exists among California Friends, and was confirmed by Hannah Neall, the writer was especially anxious to learn more about the first meeting. Through the kindness of Elizabeth L. Galleway, daughter of Robert and Sarah Lindsey, the following description of the meeting is now available, taken from the journal of Sarah Lindsey . The writer of the journal, with her husband, had arrived in San Francisco on Seventh-day, Seventh month 16th, by ship from the Isthmus of Panama. Not a long delay ensued before their first meeting, as the following entry witnesseth : First-day, 17th, " Arrangements having been made for us to sit with a few persons connected with our society at James Neall's this morning, twenty persons assembled. The solemnizing presence of the Lord was spread over us, and I was constrained to supplicate at His holy foot-stool. My dear husband had good service , particularly for the encouragement of some who had been mercifully visited with the day-spring from on high in the morning of life, who were invited once more to renew their covenant with Him by resigning themselves to His disposal, who could revive His own work in their hearts in the midst of the years, and enable them to put away the strange gods. Thomas Bevan supplicated in a broken manner for the Lord's blessing. I believe many of our hearts were contrited, and we had cause to set up an Ebenezer to the...