-
Briefer Notices
- Bulletin of Friends' Historical Association
- Friends Historical Association
- Volume 50, Number 1, Spring 1961
- pp. 59-61
- Article
- Additional Information
Briefer Notices By Henry J. Cadbury In its series of articles on Quakerism in modern times in Norse lands, Nordisk Kväker Tidskrift, Vol. XI, publishes one on Sweden (No. 1, pp. 2-11) by Emilia Fogelklou-Norlind and Greta Stendahl and one on Finland (No. 2, pp. 4-10) by Greta Langenskjöld. * * * The American Antiquarian Society in its Proceedings for 1959 (LXLX, 112-118) prints the account given London Yearly Meeting by Joseph Gill (1674-1741) of his journeys among Friends up and down through the colonies from North Carolina to New Hampshire. The article is entitled "A Quaker from Ireland in America, 1734-1735" and is edited by Henry J. Cadbury. * * * Lawrence Henry Gipson has written for his British Empire Before the American Revolution, Volume III, Revised (I960), a new chapter on Delaware , which was printed in advance in Pennsylvania History, XXVII (I960), 144-164, under the title "An Anomalous American Colony." Because of the abundance of Quakers in colonial Delaware and the legally irregular relations of these counties to Pennsylvania his careful and welldocumented study deserves mention here. * * * The article by Alfred L. Shoemaker on "Church and Meetinghouse Stables and Sheds" in Pennsylvania Folklife, Vol. XI, No. 1 (Spring I960), pp. 22-33, deals mainly with Mennonite premises, though it attributes both types of structure to Quaker precedent, and three of the many illustrations are of the sheds of Quaker meetinghouses. * * * The Pennsylvanian, a mimeographed serial published by the Pennsylvania Historical Junto, Washington, D. C. and edited by Milton Rubincam, contains a summary account, presumably by the editor, of the "Consorts of the Proprietors of Pennsylvania" (XVI [1959], 7-14). William Penn's wives are well known and John Penn was unmarried, but we have here information on the wives of Thomas and Richard Penn, with whom the dynasty dosed. * * * Willard Heiss, 4020 East 34th Street, Indianapolis 18, has compiled, somewhat in the fashion of Hinshaw's Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy, the records of Milford Monthly Meeting, Wayne County, Indiana (mimeographed, in wrappers, 92 pages, I960, $5.00). These 59 60Bulletin of Friends Historical Association records begin in 1823. This is apparently one of nine projected volumes to cover eastern Indiana (not including Hicksite records) A Mirror of Nantucket by George Allen Fowkes (n.p., n.d., c. 1959, 136 pages, 51 illustrations), is a very attractive pioneering study, described in a sub-tide as "An Architectural History of the Island, 16861850 ." An attempt is made to do justice to the special local determinative factors, one of which is the dominating Quakerism through a long early period. * * * In his passage from youthful radicalism to the conservatism of his old age, Robert Southey, the Romantic poet, went through a phase (ca. 1808) when he could describe himself as an "almost-Quaker." Geoffrey Carnal! in Robert Southey and His Age (Oxford, I960, pp. 74-80) deals with this brief flirtation, showing how, under the influence of Thomas Clarkson , another "almost-Quaker," Southey was attracted by Friends' freedom from dogma, their advanced social views, even their pacifism. But he never went quite all the way: "The only way one could sum up his attitude," Carnall concludes, "would be in the formula: Morality is the best policy— but not yet." The Second Edition of Elfrida Vipont (Foulds') Story of Quakerism (London: Bannisdale Press, I960) has a new subtitle (Through Three Centuries), thirty-two well-selected illustrations, an Introduction briefly summarizing Quaker history in the 1950's, and a few new titles added to the bibliography. Otherwise, except for the correction of a few minor typographical and factual errors, it is apparently identical with the 1954 edition which William Wistar Comfort called "the best current account of Quakerism for the interested inquirer" (Bulletin, XLIV [1955], 55). One of the fullest histories of a local meeting has appeared without place or date of publication, lithoprinted and bound, entitled Jericho Friend's [sic] Meeting and Its Community, Randolph County, Indiana, 1818 to 1958 (illustrated, 161 pages). Fully half the book consists of tables and appendices of membership, burial, and other lists. The rest is a detailed history for 140 years. The present brick meetinghouse dates, with some alterations, back to 1863. It...