Marcellus Balderston

56 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION MARCELLUS BALDERSTON The Evening Public Ledger of November 11, 1935, reports the death on November 9, 1935, of Marcellus Balderston, at the age of ninety-three, for many years a minister of the Arch Street Meeting. He died at the home of his brother-in-law, Dr. Thomas S. Dunning, 1328 North Fifteenth Street, Philadelphia. With his death the Honorary Treasurer of the Friends' Historical Association, James H. Atkinson, becomes the sole survivor of the original Friends' Historical Association, founded in 1873, with which the Friends' Historical Society, founded in 1904 under the leadershp of Isaac Sharpless, merged in 1923. An account of the founding of the two organizations, and of their merging on the fiftieth anniversary of the older one, is contained in Vol. 13 (1924), No. 1, of the Bulletin. Albert Cook Myers. THE DISOWNMENT OF JOHN BARTRAM A reference to John Bartram's case of disownment (treated fully in the Bulletin 17 (1928) : 16ff) occurs without mention of his name in the Account of the Gospel Labours . . . of . . . John Churchman (Philadelphia, 1779, p. 190; London, 1781, p. 260) : On fourth day returned to Darby, to their monthly meeting ; where we found friends under a strait about disowning one among them who denied the divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, on whom they had bestowed much labour to convince him of his error : the meeting ended well, the company of friends who attended it being acceptable, and of service. From John Churchman's Journal it is possible to fix the date as Twelfth Month 7, 1757, which coincides with the date of the meeting at which a definite decision was made to disown John Bartram . A whole line in the minute as printed in the Bulletin has been missed out by error. The passage for this date should read : [The Friends who visited him reported] that he did not seem in any disposition of mind to condemn his contrary belief to ours respecting Jesus Christ but still persists therein so far as to say the longer he lives the stronger he is in the Disbelief of the Divinity of Jfesus Christ. Therefore this meeting appoints Thomas Canby and William Home to Draw a Testification against him . . . Henry J. Cadbury. ...