Briefer Notices

Briefer Notices By Henry J. Cadbury A lecture at Guilford College by Frances Renfrow Doak on Mary Mendenhall Hobbs has now been published by the college (18 pages, 1956). This distinguished North Carolina Quakeress (1852-1930) is attractively described and especially her interest in the education of women. * * * The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography has put three hitherto unpublished documentary pieces of Quaker interest in one issue (Vol. 80 [April 1956]): a plan of Philadelphia, attempting to plot the original grants, though actually made in the 1740's (pp. 164-226) ; the missing evidence of the early settlement by the Dutch in Delaware before 1630, depositions on which Penn relied to establish his rights to that province (pp. 227-235) ; and a long letter of William Penn to Thomas Lloyd on public and private affairs (pp. 236-247). This last was ably edited by Frederick B. Tolles, the other two by Nicholas B. Wainwright. * * * Using a variety of materials including his own earlier articles on the Nicholites, Kenneth L. Carroll has written in Delaware History, 7 (1956), 37-48, on "Joseph Nichols of Delaware: An Eighteenth Century Religious Leader." Nichols (about 1730-1774) and his followers were like Friends in many respects. They organized soon after his death and later were mostly merged with Friends. * * * John E. Pomfret writes, in a manner parallel to his studies of early New Jersey, an account of the "First Purchasers of Pennsylvania" in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 80 (1956), 137-163. He deals at length with the persecutions of Friends in England as a motive for the Holy Experiment, and with the expense to Penn himself at which the early development of the settlement was secured. * * * In the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 64 (1956), 180-207, Richard L. Morton prints an account written by a Philadelphia girl of Quaker background of her work at Fort Magruder in the winters of 1865-66, 1866-67, and 1867-68 under the Friends Association of Philadelphia for the Relief of the Colored Freedmen. It is entitled "Life in Virginia by a 'Yankee teacher,' Margaret Newbold Thorpe," and is 124 Briefer Notices125 a compilation she made later from her letters (now lost). It is particularly rich in detail about the folk she worked with. The later part of the same journal for the years 1869-70 and 1870-71 was edited for the North Carolina Historical Review, 30 (1953), 564-82, by the same editor under the title "A Yankee Teacher in North Carolina." In the Tercentenary Supplement to the Jewish Chronicle for January 27, 1956, David Carrington has written on "Quakers and Jews" especially in the seventeenth century. The illustrations are from Quaker pamphlets to the Jews. The article may be compared with or supplemented by one in this Bulletin, 29 (1940), 97-106, and another in Children of Light (ed. by Howard H. Brinton, 1938), 135-63. A sixty-page pamphlet without imprint entitled Sudbury Quakers, 1655-1953 consists of brief extracts, partly from standard Quaker history books and partly from the local Sudbury meeting books in manuscript and those of the nearby Bury and Colchester Monthly Meetings. These are arranged to show the interrelation of local Quaker history and the wider movement in and outside of the Society. They were collated by Stanley H. G. Fitch. * * * Historical Sketches of Crosswicks and Neighborhood by George De Cou (?. ?. 1955, 19 pages) has been issued five years after the author's death. This area was settled by Friends, and the Quaker interest is fully described, including the meetings and meetinghouses of Chesterfield and Bordentown. * * * Hobert D. Ragland writes in the Chronicles of Oklahoma, 33 (1955), 169-182, on "Missions of the Society of Friends among the Indian Tribes of the Sac and Fox Agency." The story begins with the initiation of the Quaker superintendency in 1869 under President Grant and continues to the present, except where the Quaker work was discontinued. It includes the Shawnee, Iowa, and Kickapoo Missions and the establishment of several meetings composed of Quaker Indians. Notice may still be in order of Thomas Eddy's Hints for Introducing an Improved Mode of Treating the Insane in the Asylum...