The Two Quaker Signers

Volume 18, No. 1 Spring Number, 1929 Bulletin of Friends' Historical Association THE TWO QUAKER SIGNERS Address by Charles F. Jenkins at the annual meeting of Friends' Historical Association, 11 month 26, 1928. Two of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence were grandsons of members of the Society of Friends; they were Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia and Richard Stockton of Princeton . In addition, Charles Thomson, the perpetual Secretary of the Congress, had been principal of the Friends' School in Philadelphia and while brought up a Presbyterian he had married into a Friend's family and in his old age, while connected with no religious organization, " his affections," according to John F. Watson , " were most with the Quakers." But it is not these descendants of immigrant Quaker ancestors, but two Signers of the Declaration who themselves were members of the Society of Friends, whom we are to consider this evening. The approach of the 50th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence naturally turned the attention of the country to the men who had affixed their names to this foundation of our political structure. A young Philadelphia lawyer, John Sanderson, proceeded to carry out the ambitious project of a series of lives of the Signers, each to be written by the person best qualified for the task. " Sanderson's Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence " in nine volumes was the result, the first volume appearing in 1820 and the last in 1827, completed by other hands. It is true that three of these men, whose lives would be included in the series and who were growing in public regard as the years unfolded, were still living. Two of them had been the chief actors in bringing the Revolution to a successful outcome, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and in 1820 they were busy exchanging letters and friendly reminiscences of their long public life. It is one of the most remarkable coincidences of our history 1 2 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION how their lives, so different in environment, should have progressed along parallel lines. One had written the Declaration, the other was perhaps the most potent force in its passage. Of all the fiftysix Signers they alone had been Presidents of the United States, both had served as Vice-Presidents and both passed away on the exact 50th Anniversary of the date of the Declaration, July 4, 1826. Two years later on July 4, 1828, the venerable Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic among the Signers, was to lay the corner stone of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, thus linking the formation of the Republic with the beginnings of one of the greatest forces of our modern development. Carroll lived four years after this event, respected by the nation, beloved by his friends and family, surrounded by every comfort, in possession of all his faculties, to a beautiful old age. He alone of all the Signers had read to him by the author, H. B. Latrobe, the sketch of his life as it appears in Sanderson's Lives. " He listened with marked attention and without a comment until I had ceased to read," wrote the author of the sketch, "when, after a pause, he said, 'Why Latrobe, you have made a much greater man of me than I ever thought I was and yet you have said nothing, in what you have written, that is not true.' " Unfortunately the same tribute to the correctness of this particular biographical sketch cannot be bestowed on some others of the Signers. As the nine volumes approached completion it was necessary to employ someone to write those for whom there seemed no specially qualified biographer, and the sketch of Joseph Hewes, one of the Quaker Signers, was written by Edward Ingersoll of Philadelphia. Fifty years was too early a date to write a satisfactory biography of most of these conspicious men. The great mass of historical documents, letters and journals, which have since then been made available to students of history, are full of facts which were not accessible to these early writers. Exact information was meagre, and tradition and memory in too many cases supplied distorted and inadequate...