Briefer Notices

Briefer Notices By Henry J. Cadbury Merton L. Dillon published in Michigan History, 39 (1955), 481494 , an article on "Elizabeth Chandler and the Spread of Antislavery Sentiment in Michigan." Elizabeth M. Chandler (1807-1834) came at the age of twenty-three to the newly gathered Raisin River settlement in Lewanee County and became the inspirer of the first group of antislavery advocates among Friends. She was a voluminous writer of poetry and essays and from these collected works and the correspondence in the Chandler papers at the University of Michigan this article is compiled. * * * Samuel Booth Sturgis is the author of a pamphlet (Publications of the Penn Club, Vol. 1, No. 1 [1956], 13 pages) on "Huguenot Source of William Penn's Ideal of Religious Tolerance." He indicates the difference between Penn's views of tolerance and those of Fox and finds that they rest on the teachings of Moïse Amyraut, with whom Penn studied, 1662-1664, at the very tolerant Huguenot University at Saumur. Amyraut had come to believe in something very much like the Inner Light of the Friends. He opposed predestination of the kind that made toleration of Huguenots impossible for Calvinists and Catholics. The suggestive paper does not claim to represent original research, but it invites others to investigate this possible clue to the origin of the peculiarly Pennsylvanian brand of tolerance. * * * Peter C. Welsh writes in Delaware History, 7 (1956), 17-36, on the "Brandywine Mills: a Chronicle of an Industry, 1762-1862." These important pioneer mills were owned by Quakers. The information given about them includes, besides local records, the reports of an unusual number of successive visitors. * * * Sterling College Faculty Bulletin (Sterling, Kansas, October 1955, pp. 5-7) contains a brief collection of unfamiliar facts about "Charles Lamb and the Quakers" by George A. Dunlap, including his friendship for some of the Lloyd family as well as for Bernard Barton and some of his whimsical as well as his appreciative reactions to Quakerism. The author concludes: "Charles Lamb's Quaker writings . . . have provided the Society of Friends with excellent free publicity ever since their first publication in 1821." Compare the fuller article in this Bulletin, 43 (1954), 67-83, by Warren Beck. 56 Briefer Notices57 A very brief article by an experienced genealogist appears in The Genealogists' Magazine (London), 12 (1955), (120-122): "The New England Visit of William Edmondson, the Quaker," by G. Andrews Moriarty. It deals mainly with the debate of Roger Williams with Edmondson and two other Quakers. Unfortunately it is not free from errors or misprints. * * * An address delivered by Frederick B. Tolles before the Welcome Society has been printed in pamphlet format (1955, 10 pages). The title is fames Logan: A Canterbury Pilgrim, the latter phrase a bit of "calculated impertinence" to the hearers. The versatility and importance of Logan are interpreted partly in comparison with Penn who preceded and Franklin who followed him as leaders in Pennsylvania. Another aspect of Logan is described by Frederick B. Tolles and appears appropriately in Isis, 47 (1956), 20-30, entitled "Philadelphia's First Scientist: James Logan." It deals with his scientific reading as attested by his famous library and by his numerous contributions to the Royal Society in its Philosophical Transactions in the field of optics as well as of botany. * * * The Civilian and the Military by Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956, 340 pages) is a history of the anti-militarist tradition in the United States. The role which Friends have played as individuals and as a Society is duly recognized. One is glad to make the acquaintance of Representative Isaac Sherwood of Ohio, who became a Friend after participating in forty battles in the Civil War and who said in a debate on a naval bill in 1910 that what the country needed more than anything else was "more Quakers and fewer battleships." The encouragement given by the Quaker bachelor poet to the great outcropping of American authoresses a century ago is the theme of an article on "Whittier and the "Feminine Fifties'," by Joseph M. Ernest, Jr., in American Literature, 28 (1956), 184-196. Ransacking the major collections of Whittier correspondence, the...