Briefer Notices

Briefer Notices By Henry J. Cadbury John E. Pomfret's general paper, "The Province of West New Jersey: A Quaker Commonwealth,' in Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, 68 (1950), 21-39, is an unusually full and understanding account of a chapter of Quaker history too often ignored on account of the better known western neighbor. The author can apparently combine with his duties of college president the absorbing details of research in local history and can then present the latter with good perspective in which the political, social, and religious features hold their right proportion. * » » In the Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society; 67 (1949) , are two biographies of early settlers who were Friends and active also in political Ufe. Francis James Dallett, Jr., has written of "Francis Collins, Friend" (1635-1720) from Oxfordshire who settled near Haddonfield about 1682. He was a builder and constructed some of the first public buildings at Burlington (pp. 62-75) . "Richard Hartshorne of Middletown, New Jersey (1641-1722)," whose life is told by Arthur Layton Funk, settled in East Jersey a few years before the visit to him recorded by George Fox in 1672 (pp. 126-140) . * » » "Peter the Great and William Penn" is the title of an article (in Russian) in Novoye Russkoye Slovo, New York, February 5, 1950, pp. 2, 8. The writer is Mrs. Eufrosina Dvoichenko-Mazkov, whose research on Quakers and Russia is mentioned on page 103.» » * Little more than a year after Frank Baker's article on Quakerism and Methodism (noticed here, 38 [1949], 124) the same London Quarterly and Holbom Review (19 [1950], 148-153, 222-227) has published one with the same title, "The Relations between the Society of Friends and Early Methodism," by John C. Bowmer. These two articles in four instalments give without much repetition the fullest treatment of the subject yet published. * · « Frederick Denison Maurice (Cambridge University Press, 1950) is not only written by a Friend, H. G. Wood, but contains a discriminating account of the strength and weakness of Quakerism (pp. 38-42), since Maurice's own main principles were expressed most fully in his anti-Quaker book, The Kingdom of Christ.» « * Gerald Bullet's critical and biographical study, The English Mystics (London: Michael Joseph, 1950) includes prominently a thoughtful 121 122Bulletin of Friends Historical Association chapter on George Fox (pp. 65-93), whom the versatile author characterizes with understanding against his times. Rachel Davis DuBois has written a very useful "Manual for Local Leaders in Intergroup Relations," entitled Neighbors in Action (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), in which she includes a section (pp. 110-118) on "Home Life of Some Quaker Americans," with a bibliography . • « » The fantastic story of Mary Dyer's "royal origin" which the New England Historical and Genealogical Register allowed Mrs. Boden to put in print, 98 (1944), 25 (see this Bulletin, 33 [1944], 45) is soberly disposed of by G. Andrews Moriarty in "The True Story of Mary Dyer," ibid.,-104 (1950), 4042. • · « Kvekeren, the organ of Scandinavian Quakerism, contains an article by I(nger) C(lausen) on Christopher Meidel, the seventeenth-century Norwegian convert to Quakerism, who made the first Danish translations of Quaker literature (4 [Jan.-Feb., 1950], 3-6). Much of the contents is based on an article mentioned in this Bulletin, 30 (1941), 48. • · * Two recent articles deal with a Maryland Friend, astronomer and surveyor, born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who ended as a teacher of mathematics at West Point, having been for eight years Secretary of the Land Office in Pennsylvania at Lancaster and having surveyed from Natchez the Spanish-American boundary in 1796-1800. They are "Andrew Ellicott, Surveyor of the Capital of our Nation," in Papers Read before the Lancaster County Historical Society, (54 [1950], no. 1), by M. Luther Heisey; and "Major Andrew Ellicott and his Historic Boundary Lines," in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (58 [1950], 98-111), by William B. McGroarty.» » * Robert J. Leach, writing in the Inquirer and Mirror, Nantucket, for March 4, 1950, on "Ancestors for Maria Mitchell," limits himself to the astronomer's great-great-great-grandparents, a generation belonging generally near 1700. Of a possible thirty-two he...