The Annual Meeting of Friends' Historical Association, 1931

Volume 21, No. 1 Spring Number, 1932 Bulletin of Friends' Historical Association THE ANNUAL MEETING OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, 1931 Friends' Historical Association held its annual meeting in the rooms of The Historical Society of Pennsylvania on Second-day, Eleventh Month 30, 1931. Charles Francis Jenkins, President of the Association, presided at the business meeting. The annual reports of the President and Treasurer were given, and the Directors of the Association were re-elected for the ensuing year. After the adjournment of the business meeting, the Directors met and elected officers, with results as indicated on the preceding page of this Bulletin. The first part of the entertainment of the evening consisted of the showing of moving pictures of the anniversary meeting at Burlington, taken by Margaretta S. Hinchman and Henry N. Woolman. There followed a poem on William Penn, written and read by David H. Wright. The remainder of the evening was spent by those present in examining the large exhibition of pictures arranged for the occasion by the Committee on Old Meeting Houses, Walter F. Price, Chairman. Walter F. Price had loaned a collection of beautiful photographs taken during a recent visit to England. Quite notable among his pictures was an enlarged interior view of Swarthmore Hall, as reproduced in the frontispiece above, and an enlarged view of the ancient Abbot's Kitchen of Glastonbury Abbey, Somersetshire . The latter was used for forty years as a meeting house by Friends, among whom were the ancestors of our Pennsylvania Clothiers and of Roger Clark, grandson of John Bright and son-in-law of our friend, the late William P. Bancroft, of Wilmington , Delaware. Built of cut stone, this picturesque old edifice is octagonal in shape and may have been the prototype of 3 4 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION the old Burlington Meeting House and other structures of like form on this side of the water. In the same collection was an enlargement of All Hallows Barking Church near the Tower of London. Samuel Pepys devotes several thrilling pages in his Diary to the story of the great fire of 1666 which destroyed Old St. Pauls and eighty-nine churches. There were left about eight churches standing, when nine-tenths of old London was burned down. The All Hallows Church, about one square west of the Tower of London, was one of those left, and Pepys tells how he mounted this church to see the fire sweep on its way. For Friends and for all Americans this old church has the interest of being the one in which William Penn was baptized and John Quincy Adams married. In the south aisle there is a modern bronze tablet to the founder of Pennsylvania. Philip B. Wallace, well-known photographer, loaned many original photographs that were used in his splendid new book called Colonial Churches and Meeting Houses in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. These were mounted on large cardboards and hung on the walls of the assembly room. Likewise were shown many pictures taken by Horace Mather Lippincott, who had assisted Philip Wallace by conveying him from point to point in his work, and had himself taken many fine views of old meeting houses. Albert Cook Myers devoted much time to arranging the various exhibits, particularly a collection of several hundred views of old meeting houses, displayed in three show cases, one containing his own pictures and the other two (including the Gilbert Cope Collection ) loaned by The Historical Society of Pennsylvania. T. Chalkley Matlack also contributed to the occasion by loaning a scrapbook from a large collection of pictures of meeting houses taken by himself. A happy sequel of the occasion was the gift by Horace M. Lippincott, Walter F. Price, and Philip B. Wallace, of their respective exhibits to Friends' Historical Association. The combined collections make a notable and highly valuable addition to the archives of the Association. The Ancient Octagonal Abbot's Kitchen, c. A.D. 1400, of Stone, Glastonbury Abbey, Somersetshire, England. Used as a Friends' Meeting House, 1670-c. 1710. First Friends' Meeting House, Octagonal, High Street, Burlington, New Jersey. Built 1682. The Abbot's Kitchen (above) may have been the prototype of this building...