Briefer Notices

Briefer Notices By Henry J. Cadbury Chigwell School in Essex, England, is famous to Friends and to others because it was attended for a time by young William Penn. He was eleven years old and the school about twenty-four years. Godfrey Stott, one-time Sixth Form Master of the school, has published two overlapping articles in which Penn's attendance is discussed in connection with Edward Cotton, Master of the Latin School from 1638 to 1658. They are "Notes on the Early Masters of the Latin School at Chigwell," The Chigwellian, 73 (Michaelmas, 1952), 75-77, and "Early History of Chigwell School," The Essex Review, 62 (1953) 4-13J . Monroe Torrington contributes to the Alpine Journal, 59 (1953), 19-22, an article on "Martin Barry, Quaker Microscopist." Barry (18021855 ) wrote "Ascent to the Summit of Mont Blanc, 16th—18th of 9th Month, 1834" He was one of the first doctors to ascend this mountain and to publish his findings. He was a consistent Friend, as even his dates show. Grellet Academy, as the name suggests, is one of the many almost forgotten Quaker schools of last century. It was organized by Friends in 1878 in the Solomon Valley, Kansas, near Cawker City. The building burned in 1895 and was not rebuilt. A brief historical article about it was published by Henrietta Boyd in the Cawker City Ledger, February 25, 1954 (Information from Kansas Historical Quarterly). The article on "Elections in Colonial Pennsylvania" by Sister Joan de Lourdes Leonard, C S. J., gives a vivid picture of practical politics in a period when citizens were either for or against the Quaker policy. It is based on materials in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and is published in the William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 11 (1954), 384-401. H. Travis Clay writes on "The Fryers of Rastrick," a Quaker family, in the Transactions of The Halifax Antiquarian Society (1951), 63-70. From various records he notes their births, deaths, marriages, sufferings, building and business activities, including patents, mainly during the eighteenth century. 59 60Bulletin of Friends Historical Association A page-length article by C. M. Cooper, entitled "Old Spring River Academy Monument to Early Day Settlers" was published in the Pittsburg [Kansas] Headlight, October 17, 1953. The Quaker Valley area of Cherokee County along the Spring River was setded by Quakers around 1866. In 1880 the Spring River Academy was opened and served the community until 1912. (This note is quoted from Kansas Historical Quarterly (Spring, 1954), p. 71.) * * * Anyone who attempts to deal in one volume with The Religious Bodies of America will hardly suit those he discusses outside his own church. F. E. Mayer who writes on this subject (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1954, 587 pages) devotes a dozen pages to the Quakers (400-414), their history, etc., but primarily their theology, which he finds either vague or unsatisfactory. Barclay is emphasized and the bibliography has some striking omissions. Under the circumstances perhaps one should be surprised that so much at least of the history is accurate. With her usual combination of interest and detail Dorothy Lloyd Gilbert has written a pamphlet, Two Hundred Years of Rocky River Friends Meeting, Siler City, N. C, Route 1 (1953, 16 pages, illustrated). The meeting was made up of migrants from the North. Its holding was intermittent for a time and it was not a preparative meeting until 1794 or a monthly meeting until 1908. The pictures are of the last two of its four meetinghouses and of some of its pastors. An extended minute and a portrait of "Morris E. Leeds, 1869-1952" is published in pamphlet form in a special number of Haverford College Bulletin, Vol. 51 (1952). This Is New Jersey: From High Point to Cape May by John T. Cunningham (Rutgers University Press, 1953, 230 pages) is a handsomely illustrated description of the state, arranged by counties. Quakers are frequently mentioned in the historical text and at least two of their meetinghouses , Crosswicks and Seaville, are pictured. Besides the article by Frank Baker mentioned in this Bulletin, 38 (1949), 124, an essay on the same subject of Early Methodism and the Quakers was written by John...