Briefer Notices

BRIEFER NOTICES47 BRIEFER NOTICES By Henry J. Cadbury REFERENCES to Quakers as early as 1653 are not common in non-Quaker sources. For that reason we may note in the diary of Thomas Crosfield, rector of Spennithorne, Yorks, two allusions of that year. "June 9 Dorothy Hammon a woman Quaker of Midlam sent to the house of Correction"; "Nov. 24 God out of evill can bring good, and why may he not out of the new sect of Quakers produce Glory to himselfe & good to his people, if they but with patience wait his lessone." See The Diary of Thomas Crosfield MA., B.D., Fellow of Queen's College Oxford, Selected by F. S. Boas, 1935, pp. 99, 103. A DAY BRADLEY, of Hunter College, New York, contributed to **¦? Scripta Mathematica vi (1939), 219-227 an interesting article on "The Mathematical Notebooks of James Boone, Jr." Boone (1743/4-1795) was of Quaker origin, a cousin of the famous Kentucky pioneer, Daniel Boone. He was disowned in 1780 for taking the test of allegiance and abjuration. As a school teacher his occupation had depended on this nonpacifist requirement of the revolutionary State government. For many years he was a teacher of the Friends School of Exeter, Pennsylvania. His manuscript notebooks, preserved at the Library of the Berks County Historical Society at Reading, Pennsylvania, cover a wide range of mathematics: algebra, arithmetic, astronomy, navigation, and fluxions. They show an original and industrious mind, and an interest in alternative mathematical rules, and suggest that his scholars at Exeter "were introduced to parts of the mathematics far beyond the traditional rule of three of the early country schools." MILTON RUBINCAM publishes in the Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society 59 (1941), 96-115, "A Critical Analysis of the Stokes Family Pedigree," in which he gives evidence about the English antecedents of Thomas Stokes, the Quaker, who settled in West Jersey in 1677. Attention may also be called to the same writer's article in The Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey 12 (1937), 73-79 on "A Little-Known Adventure of Thomas Stokes—1665." A GRANDFATHER FOR FRANKLIN, by Florence Bennett Anderson -^*- (Boston, Meadow Publishing Co., 1940, 462 pp.) is, as its subtitle suggests, "the true story of a Nantucket pioneer and his mates." It is the story of a Friend, Peter Folger (1609-1690), who became a settler in the island and was the author of at least one printed piece, A Looking Glasse for the Times. The book is based on much research, and includes an account of the settlement of the island and of political controversies and relations with the Indians. Vol. 30, No. 1. Spring 1941 48 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION "VTOTES and Queries clxxi (1936), 329 recalls the episode of a Quaker **¦ ' lieutenant in the Royal Navy—Robert Foster of Lancaster, who at the time of the American Revolution defied his Quaker upbringing and distinguished himself in action in the West Indies and off Portsmouth. Revisiting his home he was persuaded to give up the service and he became a good Friend until his death in 1824. There is included a contemporary account of his going to war and of his appearance in Lancaster meeting in the uniform of a lieutenant of a man-of-war. A N ARTICLE, based on \he minute books of monthly meetings in "^*1 Southwest Lincolnshire for 1668 to 1718, was published by Colonel W. V. R. King-Fane in The Lincolnshire Magazine ii (1936), 321 ff under the title "South Lincolnshire Quakers in the Seventeenth Century." See also Mary B. Burtt's brief account of "Friends' Meeting House, Brant Broughton," ibid., p. 356f. rT'HE Antique Collector, London, vii (1936), 75 ff presents an illustrated¦*¦ article on Daniel Quare, London, a Quaker clockmaker famous for his invention of repeating mechanism. The writer, John James, deals especially with two specimens of Quare's work. A BRIEF unsigned article on Hannah Mary Rattibone, the Quaker ^*" novelist, is to be found in Notes and Queries 177 (1939), 243-4. Perhaps her anthology, The Poetry of Birds, illustrated with her own drawings , is of more real interest today (see ibid., pp. 335f (portrait), 376). TO THE...