Notes and Queries

40 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL SOCIETY. NOTES AND QUERIES Origin of the Name " Nine Partners."—The name Nine Partners is said in the History of "Duchess" County, 1682-1882, to have been applied to a large tract of land rather centrally located in the present county, which was purchased from the crown by a co-partnership of the following nine men in 1697, viz. : Caleb Heathcote, Augustus Graham, James Emmott, Henry Filkins, David Jamison, Hendryck Ten Eyck, John Aaretson, William Creed and Jarvis Marshall. Thus the name was applied to a section of country, as the Oblong Patent and Oswego Patent gave names to others. The record of the establishment of a Friends' meeting here has not been found. Settlement was slow at first, but very rapid after 1750, so probably about that time the meeting was set up and took the name then held by its location. As a locality the name went out with the founding of the Town of Washington in 1788, but the Boarding School adopted the name of the meeting about 1796. The meetings — Quarterly and Monthly— have continued its use, and a few years ago the Nine Partners Burial Ground Association purchased of the remnant of the " Hicksite " Friends the old meeting-house and burial ground to be kept in good order perpetually. The name is much esteemed by the city dwellers and one of the streets they have named Nine Partners Lane. A. Franklin Swift. Millbrook, N. Y., Tenth month 20, 1918. Notices of Whittier. — In the third volume of The Cambridge History of American Literature (Putnams), just published, there is an appreciative chapter on Whittier by William Morton Payne, who awards him high praise. There is a bibliography of sixteen pages, which is probably one of the fullest of Whittier that has been made. It is the work of Frank Humphrey Ristine. In the " Early Years of the Saturday Club (1855-1870)," Edward W. Emerson, Editor, Boston , 1918, there is another appreciative notice (8 pages) of Whittier by Bliss Perry; also a portrait . " Death of Oldest Quaker Preacher."—" Rich in years and beloved by the entire community, ' Aunt ' Mary Goddard, the oldest person in Maine and the oldest Quaker preacher in the world, died on January 23, 1919, says a Brunswick dispatch to the Boston Globe. She would have been 109 years old had she lived to March 10. " Mrs. Goddard had apparently been enjoying good health this NOTES AND QUERIES. 41 winter, but on Monday contracted a cold and began to fail rapidly. " She was a minister of the Friends' Church and preached regularly every Sunday at the Friends' Meeting House in Durham until she was more than 100 years old. She was born in South Durham and preached at Sandwich , N. H., for a number of years." Another Centenarian Quaker Preacher. — The above record was almost reached by another Quaker preacher, a member of London Yearly Meeting, who died in 1901. Elizabeth (Sanderson ) Hanbury was born Sixth month 9, 1793, and died Tenth month 10, 1901, aged 108 years and four months. Mary Goddard, at the time of her death, was six months older, which makes her the oldest Quaker preacher on record. Both retained their faculties in a remarkable degree. Elizabeth Hanbury a few weeks before her 108th birthday composed and dictated the following versified message to London Yearly Meeting, which appears in the Minutes of that year, " Desiring that those who have upheld the faith in times long past might be kept in mind and their example followed ." "Fox, Penn, Woolman, Allen, Grellet and Gurney, And many more of faith the same, Made mortal life a heavenward journey, Eternal happiness their aim. " Saved by the power of Jesus And by his mercy blest, Whose love from guilt releases, And gives eternal rest. " No power of language can express The gratitude to God we owe, For all the blessings in excess That from Divine Redemption flow." "Tryal of William Penn."— Marshall, Jones Co., of Boston, announce for publication during the present spring " The Tryal of William Penn and William for Causing a Tumult," edited by Don C. Seitz, "the material for which has been brought together from newspapers and...