A Collection of Townsend Family Letters, Diaries, and Documents, 1776–1957: Volume 2 by Jennifer Gross, Dana Dunbar Howe (review)

Dana Dunbar Howe continues her service to Quaker historians through publishing a second volume of family papers. Her great-great-grandparents Charles Townsend (1777–1859) and Priscilla (Kirk) Townsend (1785–1862) were weighty Philadelphia Friends who sided with the Hicksites in 1827. Priscilla was a While Charles and Priscilla were firm quietists, they were not as extreme as some of their contemporaries. For example, they remained on good terms with Lucretia Mott, and they did not object when their children became active in reform movements that ranged from abolition to penal reform.

The Townsends were part of an eventful era of Quaker history. The Hicksite Separation of 1827–1828 is largely absent from this volume. But they were interested observers of the new controversies that arose among Hicksites in the 1830s and 1840s over questions of reform and authority. More radical Hicksites, like Lucretia Mott, advocated joining with non-Quakers in reform movements like abolition and women’s rights. They also became increasingly skeptical of traditional structures of authority and power. Thus they questioned the need for “select meetings” of ministers and elders; they challenged the very existence of such positions. The Townsends’ letters and diaries, particularly Charles’s accounts of journeys with Priscilla to attend Genesee, Ohio, and Indiana yearly meetings in 1835 and 1838, give vivid pictures of some of these debates. From them we now know, for example, that Mott was expressing reservations about select meetings as early as 1835.

Dana Dunbar Howe has included not only transcriptions (skillfully done) but prints of many of the original manuscripts as well. We are fortunate that the Townsends preserved so much, and that their descendant has taken such pains to disseminate it.