In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Abington Meeting House, near Jenkintown, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, from a photograph taken about 1910 Abington Meeting House, with the addition erected in 1929, and dedicated on Eleventh Month 9th of that year HISTORY OF ABINGTON MEETING115 A SHORT HISTORY OF ABINGTON MEETING with an Account of the Building of Abington Meeting House By Arthur H. Jenkins and Ann R. Jenkins l ? The English Quakers who about the year 1680 transferred themselves and their families to the pleasant lands along the Delaware faced no easy existence. To be sure, the wise policies of William Penn and the just and pacific principles of the Quakers spared them the peril from the Indians that was the lot of most of the other American colonies. But the settlers had no lack of difficulties to overcome. There were houses to be built, land to be cleared of its heavy growth of timber, and a civil government to be set up. And, in addition to these tasks, the Quakers set themselves immediately to the organization of their religious society into settled meetings. They were an energetic and a practical people. They were carving a new society and a new state out of the wilderness. Their faces were to the future. They were too busy in making history to give much thought to recording their acts as they went along. And thus it comes about that anyone who delves into the early history of Abington Monthly Meeting immediately finds himself hampered and baffled by the fragmentary nature of the written records. Minutes of the monthly meeting were no doubt kept from the beginning, as Thomas Fairman was appointed to procure a book, probably for this purpose, at the earliest monthly meeting, in 1683. But there must have been much irregularity in the keeping of minutes, for when George Boone in 1718 made the transcription of the previous minutes which we now possess, he wrote specifically that it was "Transcribed from Sundry Manuscripts ." 1 A paper prepared for the dedication exercises of the new building at Abington Meeting House, Eleventh Month 9, 1929, and read on that occasion by Charles F. Jenkins, of Germantown : printed in 1929 in pamphlet form, and reprinted here, with a few changes, in connection with the account of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of Abington Monthly Meeting. 116 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION It was in 1716 that the meeting, evidently dissatisfied with the condition of its records, appointed a committee of four— Thomas Canby, Morris Morris, Peter Shoemaker and Everard Bolton—to "view the former minutes, and judge what is requisite to be transcribed." The committee was none too active in this service, and had to be prodded several times by later meetings, so that it was not until 1719 that the compilation was completed, and George Boone finished his admirable penman's copy and was paid for his work. George Boone was no doubt schoolmaster of Abington School. Among the children of his brother, Squire Boone, was Daniel Boone, famous pioneer and settler of Kentucky. We should perhaps be thankful for what minutes we possess. Too many records of Friends have disappeared completely and forever. But the meager skeleton of facts that the meeting's committee judged to be "requisite to be transcribed" falls sadly short of a satisfactory picture of our forefathers' ideas and actions. II This paper aims to set down in order two narratives, overlapping in many points, but still distinct—the history of the organization and growth of Abington Meeting, and the history of Abington meeting house. As to the meeting, the early minutes 2 are specific. In the autumn of 1682 meetings were being held at Shackamaxon, on the Delaware River north of the site of Philadelphia, and other meetings were appointed to be held at convenient points. As soon as Friends had made homes for themselves in the Tacony and Poquessing valleys, in the sections which we now call Frankford and Byberry, they doubtless held private religious meetings, the dates of which are unknown to us. But regularly organized public First-day meetings were ordered to be held by a minute of Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting dated Fourth Month 5, 1683, which...

pdf

Share