Jonathan Sassi 2013 Gest Fellow sits at 18th-century abolitionist Anthony Benezet’s writing desk

Gest Fellow Jonathan D. Sassi is Professor of History at the College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His project is entitled “Toward Gradual Emancipation in New Jersey.”

I am studying the political struggle that eventuated in New Jersey’s gradual emancipation act of 1804. New Jersey was the last state to pass such a law during the period of “the first emancipation” that followed the American Revolution, with Pennsylvania having been the first in 1780. New Jersey’s gradual emancipation statute was the result of a decades-long campaign by antislavery activists, many of whom were Quakers. I have been trying to learn how the eighteenth-century antislavery movement functioned: how it fashioned winning arguments and rebutted the opposition’s; mobilized supporters and built coalitions; went to court and won legislative victories; all with the ultimate goal of uprooting an entrenched institution and liberating people held in bondage.

The Quaker Collection holds a rich variety of primary source materials that illuminate various facets of the struggle against slavery. To cite a few examples, the correspondence of several key individuals along with the records of abolition societies reveal the inner workings of the movement. The minutes of various Quaker meetings also provide insight into the drive to eliminate slavery, both within the Society of Friends and in society at large. Manumission certificates and legal depositions open up fascinating stories about how particular men, women, and children escaped the snares of enslavement. Moreover, I discovered that the Quaker Collection also contains unexpected finds. For example, a wedding certificate or business receipt — documents that on the surface seemingly have nothing to do with the antislavery movement — can lay bare the personal ties that connected several of the major historical actors and bring their eighteenth-century world into focus.

My research will require me to visit a number of other archives in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. The full tapestry of New Jersey’s antislavery campaign will only become visible as I reconnect the scattered strands of evidence. My time at the Quaker Collection has been enormously productive and provided me with an abundance of findings and leads for further investigation. I am grateful to have been awarded a Gest Fellowship and to the library’s expert staff for their manifold assistance.

Geoffrey Plank, author of the new book John Woolman’s Path to the Peaceable Kingdom: A Quaker in the British Empire, will be giving a series of talks in the Philadelphia area in early October.  His complete schedule follows:

October 4, 7:00 p.m., Swarthmore College Science Center 199: “The Other Woolmans: Family Life and the Ideals of an Eighteenth-century Abolitionist”

October 6, 2:00 p.m.,  Mount Holly Friends Meeting, 81 High Street, Mount Holly, New Jersey: “The Other Woolmans” (as above)

October 7, 3:00 p.m., The Barn at the Pendle Hill Conference Center, 338 Plush Mill Road, Wallingford, Pennsylvania: “John Woolman and the Utility or Futility of History”

October 8, 4:30 p.m., Special Collections, Magill Library, Haverford College: “The Other Family Living with the Woolmans: African-Americans and Quakers Living Together, and the Process of Gradual Emancipation”

For more information you may contact Geoff at g.plank@uea.ac.uk

Gest Fellow Ben Wright is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History at Rice University. His research is on “American Clergy and the Problem of Slavery, 1750-1830: Form the Politics of Conversion to the Conversion to Politics.”

Ben Wright 2012 Gest Fellow

My research explores the connections between religious conversion and antislavery activism in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  Cutting off at 1830, when antislavery hardened into immediate abolitionism, I argue that the Americans and Britons who attacked slavery in this early period, did so primarily out of broader motives than simply a hatred of human bondage.  The push to convert the colonies, the new American republic, and eventually the world trumped nearly every other ambition for the growing population of evangelical Protestants in the Anglo-Atlantic world.  Quakers, however, offer a powerful counter-example.  My study argues that Quakers demonstrated an unrivaled commitment to antislavery because of their inward quest for communal purity.  It is no coincidence that the Quaker antislavery crusade coincided with what Jack Marietta has called the Quaker Reformation, a mid-eighteenth century renewal movement among Friends to refocus religious life around the principles of modesty, anti-materialism, and communal discipline.

While working in the Quaker Collection, I have investigated the letters, diaries, and other private writings of dozens of Quaker reformers, the minutes of numerous monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings, and the antislavery publications of numerous Quaker societies.  My research has confirmed many of my suspicions, while also revealing several surprising new insights.  The writings of early to mid-eighteenth century Quakers like John Fothergill, George Churchman, John Pemberton and others illustrate my arguments regarding Quaker anxieties by revealing a great preoccupation with internal purity and a fear that moral failures among Friends will lead a winnowing of the faithful.  I was surprised, however, to find seeds of dissention among mid-to-late eighteenth-century Quakers that would later sprout into the antebellum schisms.  I found that reformers were very much aware of these dissentions and used antislavery as a tool to maintain unity.  The private letters of several Quaker reformers reveal their relief at the refreshing unity among Friends in the antislavery cause.  Another surprise came from a close reading of Quaker conversion narratives.  Conversion in the early eighteenth century was a deeply fraught process that often took months if not years, whereas by the end of the century, conversion was a quicker process.  In the early nineteenth century, the language of conversion almost completely drops out of Quaker memorials.

It will take more time to integrate these findings within my larger analysis, yet I am grateful to say that the remarkably helpful staff and impressive holdings of the Quaker Collection have given me a treasure trove of evidence to inform my project.

On June 29, 2012, the National Museum of American Jewish History on Independence Mall in Philadelphia opened an exhibition called “To Bigotry No Sanction: George Washington & Religious Freedom.” Included in the exhibition are letters from 1789 between George Washington and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, which are part of PYM records here at Haverford.  The exhibit will run through September 30, 2012.

Federal Hall in New York is likely where the meeting took place (image from The New York Public Library)

The letter to President Washington was composed on October 2, 1789 by a group of nineteen Quakers led by George Churchman and approved the next day during the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. The meeting then selected a group of six Friends who “proceeded to New York” and, joined by a delegation from the New York Meeting for Sufferings, the path was cleared “for their personal attendance on the President” during which time “the address was read by one of the number, and [...] they were respectfully received.” Meeting records indicate that the delegation presented a copy of Robert Barclay’s Apology, the famous scholarly defence of Quaker practices, to Washington during the visit. Washington’s response, while critical of Quaker practice in some regards, was generally positive. News of the meeting spread quickly and on November 4, 1789, one Susanna Dillwyn reported in a letter to her father that Washington read his reply himself instead of leaving the task to his secretaries so that “he gains the esteem of everybody—those who agree in few other things all unite in admiring General Washington”(Dillwyn and Emlen family correspondence, Library Company of Philadelphia).

Washington from around the time the meeting occurred (image from Bryn Mawr College Collections).

The meeting with Washington followed the English Quaker tradition of making similar presentations upon the coronation of a new monarch. However, this letter had particular significance given Washington’s rocky history with the Friends. Washington’s first encounter with Quakers occurred as a young officer in Virginia when he faced the problem of what to do with six Friends who were among his conscripted men but refused to fight, work, or do anything to support the army. Though he treated them leniently, Washington resented the Quakers’ refusal to help with common defense. Washington’s distrust continued during the Revolution, as he believed the Quakers’ refusal to fight with the colonists stemmed from political sympathy for the British, and consequently he refused Quaker relief parties passage through colonist lines on a number of occasions. Still, Washington treated Friends with respect including entertaining a group of Quaker ladies, who had come to petition for the release of seventeen Quaker leaders, over dinner.

Washington became more friendly to the Quakers after coming to understand that the Friends’ pacifism stemmed from religious feelings not political leanings. Indeed one of his most trusted generals was the former Quaker Nathanael Greene. Given this history, the most explosive statement in the Friends’ letter is “As we desire to be filled with fervent charity for those who differ from us in faith and practice [...] we can take no part in carrying on war on any occasion, or under any power.” The duality of Washington’s feelings on this issue and for the Quakers in general comes through in his response, as he says of the Quakers that “except their declining to share with others the burthen of the common defence, there is no denomination among us, who are more exemplary and useful citizens.”  Washington believed that religion was valuable because it supported good citizenship, so, while Washington respected their freedom of belief, he rebuked Quaker practice for making for less useful citizens. Still, given their history of persecution, receiving Washington’s respect for their beliefs and the freedom of conscience must have been a remarkable moment for Quakers.

Anyone curious about these materials can contact Thomas Littrell (tlittrel@haverford.edu) for more information.

Camera stand and lighting with an Ethiopic Old Testament

This past week we were visited by two scholars from the Textual History of the Ethiopic Old Testament (THEOT) project. Made up of scholars from around the world, THEOT’s director Steve Delamarter and his assistant Jeremy Brown, both from George Fox University, spent a day examining and digitizing our Ethiopic manuscripts from the J. Rendel Harris Collection.

Steve Delamarter examines a small Ethiopic codex

The goal of the THEOT project is to reconstruct the textual history of the Ethiopic Old Testament by sampling passages from each book of the bible from a couple dozen important manuscripts from around the world. While one particular manuscript at Haverford was of great interest to the project team, they were kind enough to digitize all six of our Ethiopic texts.

Steve and Jeremy began their day by setting up their digitization equipment in the library’s group study room.  They came loaded down with laptops, cameras, camera stands and tripods, and got to work imaging the manuscripts and creating quire maps of the page signatures.  Taking the better part of the day to get through all six manuscripts, they imaged the works from cover to cover (including, of course, the covers), shot additional close-ups of important details, and analyzed the foliation of each manuscript by creating “quire maps.” The resulting digital files, such as these images of a prayers and hymns manuscript (RH 23a), will be a great boon to our faculty and students, as well as to scholars from afar.

Steve Delamarter examines a 14th-century Samaratin Pentateuch

At the end of the day while the images were being processed on their computers we were able to show them a few other gems from the J. Rendel Harris Collection, including a rare 14th-century Samaritan Pentateuch.  We’re grateful to Steve and Jeremy for making time in their schedule to visit and work with our manuscripts.  This type of cooperative work in collections digitization is a win-win for all involved!

She was born into the “weighty” Quaker Elkinton family of Philadelphia. Her parents, Howard (Haverford, class of 1914) and Katharine Wistar Elkinton, both descendants of notable Quaker families, were among the first to work for the newly-formed American Friends Service Committee as relief workers in France during World War I, then again in Germany during World War II, he as director of their Berlin office, while she enabled over 1,000 professional Jewish women to emigrate to Australia. They witnessed Kristallnacht and wrote letters describing it. That’s just going back one generation from the vibrant Theodora Elkinton Waring, who was born in 1927 to Howard and Katharine. She lived a comfortable life in the bosom of her loving family, attending Germantown Friends School, making friends, but when her father was sent to Germany, she and her brother, Peter, were sent to a Quaker school in Holland for the duration. After their return to America, “Dody” went back to Germantown Friends, then to Smith for two years. In the meantime, she met and married Thomas Waring after his two-year duty as a conscientious objector, 1944-46.

As a couple, they went to do relief work in Finland for refugees in Karelia in 1947. After returning to America, with a family now consisting of five children, having always been solicitous of her husband’s career needs, Dody finally went back to school, finishing her undergraduate degree, then a master of divinity from Harvard, and finally a doctorate from Boston University School of Theology in the 1980s. This education prepared her to serve as a chaplain at the New England Baptist Hospital and later at the Danbury State Hospital. Although her family life changed, she is today still surrounded by loving family and friends.

About five years ago, Rev. Elkinton Waring began sorting through a box of WWI letters from her mother, and since 2010, she says she became totally preoccupied with her family papers. Primarily, these are from her grandmother, Katharine Evans Mason, her mother, Katharine Wistar Mason Elkinton and her mother-in-law, Grace Warner Waring. The large topics are the relief work in France and later in Berlin in which her parents were engaged, and her husband, Tom Waring’s correspondence as a conscientious objector.

Theodora Elkinton Waring and her family papers. Courtesy of Jim Roese, photographer

We were contacted in November 2011 about the potential of receiving these family treasures. Dody had by that time processed them in their entirety, including genealogical charts, photographs, documents of all sorts, and, of course, the letters. Dody came down from Massachusetts this past weekend with her granddaughter, Sarah Waring (Haverford 2001) in a mini-van packed with the 13 cartons of her treasures which were received in Special Collections. In the afternoon, there was a celebratory event with some of Dody’s family in attendance as well some staff of the college. On the following day, we were privileged to conduct an oral history interview with Rev. Elkinton Waring, which will soon be available from our website. All in all, an extraordinary weekend tied to a treasure trove collection of Elkinton and Waring family papers, which have such great potential for future scholarly use.

A generale mapp of the Isles of Great Brittaine, 1669

Over at the Philadelphia Area Center for the History of Science’s PACHSmörgåsbord blog, Haverford Professor Darin Hayton discusses his recent assignment utilizing maps from Special Collections in his course on the Introduction to the History of Science.  Each student picked a pre-1700 map from the collection (some were facsimiles of older maps) and visited several times to study their map.  They were to analyze the map both for what it actually presented as well as by delving into the context of its creation and use.  The end result was a short report on their findings, a Biography of a Map.  Please read on for Darin’s analysis of the assignment:

Biography of a Map—Further Experiments in Pedagogy

Marketing a Colony—William Penn’s Maps of Pennsylvania

Mapping Our Way Forward—More Experiments in Pedagogy

2011 Gest Fellow Matthew Reilly posts on the University of Texas Viz. blog about the anti-Quakeriana materials he encountered at Haverford this past summer. An excerpt and link to the full post follows:

Over the past summer, I spent a month as a Gest Fellow at Haverford College’s Quaker & Special Collections, where I was researching an eighteenth-century female preacher. The most entertaining and unexpected find over that month pertained to an image archive classified as “Anti-Quakeriana.” One of the more interesting aspects of Quaker history (in my opinion) is their retention of documents released by rivals and detractors. Hence the origin of the classification, “Anti-Quakeriana.” As a result of such practices, scholars and historians now have an archive rich in cultural contexts and historical negotiations that mark the transitions from a seventeenth-century “schism” to an eighteenth-century “sect.” Below, I briefly discuss a series of paintings and engravings of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century female ministers.

Continue reading on Matthew’s blog at Viz.

From time to time, we will be posting profiles of our Gest Fellows.  Susan Hanket Brandt is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Temple University.  Her dissertation is entitled “Gifted Women and Skilled Practitioners:  Gender and Healing Authority in the Mid-Atlantic Region, 1740-1830.”

2011 Gest Fellow Susan Hanket Brandt

My dissertation complicates the current declension model that narrates women healers’ prominence in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and their subsequent loss of authority in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries due to the rise of enlightened science, male-authored medical texts, man-midwifery, and clinical-anatomical education in the increasingly numerous medical schools.  Instead, I argue that some women found new sources of healing authority in female education, manuscript authorship, the culture of sensibility, access to print media, and the antiauthoritarianism of dissenting religious groups like the Society of Friends.  The dearth of female practitioners’ medical recipe books and papers has contributed to their misleading invisibility. A goal of my dissertation is to uncover women healers’ hidden practices and their vital role in the American healthcare marketplace.

The Gest Fellowship allowed me to analyze the recipe book, garden book, diaries, business papers, and thousands of family letters penned by healer Margaret Hill Morris (1737-1816) and her family. The letters are a particularly rich source, as they chronicle Morris’ day-to-day healing practice as it changed over the course of her adult life, from a benevolent ministry to a profitable medical/apothecary business. Morris’ writings demonstrate how she constructed her healing authority as she participated in therapeutic social networks, examined medical books, and cared for extended family members and patients in her community. Morris’ profound Quaker beliefs were a source of spiritual comfort for patients and family members as they faced frequent illnesses and the deaths of loved ones. The letters chart an Atlantic exchange of healing information and medicinal plants between Quakers in Philadelphia, Madeira, and the British Isles.  In addition, the papers of traveling ministers Rebecca Jones and Mary Swet include medicinal recipes, raising the question of healing practice as part of their transatlantic ministry.

The Special Collections staff’s assistance was invaluable in my research. Professors Emma Jones Lapsansky and Susan Mosher Stuard also offered helpful suggestions. My Gest Fellowship research will help me to analyze the scope of Quaker women’s healing practices and authority in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century Delaware Valley.

–Susan Hanket Brandt

From time to time, we will be posting profiles of our Gest Fellows.  Matthew Reilly ’06  is a Ph.D. candidate in English at University of Texas, Austin.  His research is on “The Literary Life of May Drummond, Female Preacher.”

2011 Gest Fellow Matthew Reilly '06

My research in Haverford’s Special Collections focused on an eighteenth-century female preacher, whose conversion to (and later expulsion from) the Society of Friends caused a sensation among both Quakers and non-Quakers. Although May Drummond has fallen out of the purview of scholarship on eighteenth-century British history, she achieved a remarkable degree of celebrity and infamy during her lifetime. Her passionate and eloquent oratory drew crowds en masse, and London periodicals often published her whereabouts along with invitations goading eminent clergymen to public disputation. As a result, she earned a private audience with Queen Caroline and sympathetic citations from some of the pre-eminent authors of her day. Not only was Drummond noteworthy for her spoken ministry, but also for her status as a literary heroine and a cultural icon.

Drummond’s broad-based popularity distinguishes her from a Quaker establishment that was increasingly formalizing norms of doctrinal stability and communal exclusivity. Her touring presence foreshadowed the revivals that would soon sweep Britain, Ireland, and America, but she actually drew inspiration from late seventeenth-century Quakers, who had adopted tactics of combining scriptural precedents with more eclectic, interfaith, and cosmopolitan appeals. In her mission as a public Friend and an occasional combatant against England’s religious elite, Drummond stands apart from the sort of sentimental heroine that pervades the literature of mid-eighteenth century Britain. Her sermons were printed, and she indirectly moved others to write about her exploits. The height of Drummond’s literary fame, I argue, is in her role as the protagonist (if not the author) of a pseudonymous castaway tale by Unca Eliza Winkfield, entitled The Female American.

While working with Haverford’s extensive collections of Quaker documents, I charted Drummond’s social networks and rivalries, tracked controversies following in the wake of her travels, and recorded the reception of her life and ideas. Although Drummond’s certificate to preach was revoked just prior to her expected departure for America, the library’s holdings of Philadelphia journals and letters of emigrated British Friends show the blight of subsequent generations, which were unfriendly to her legacy. The expertise of Haverford’s librarians and specialists helped me re-frame my research on Drummond in relation to a transatlantic Quaker community in transition during the years prior to the American Revolution. I look forward to writing “The Literary Life of May Drummond” alongside my dissertation, “False Learning: Alexander Pope and the Afterlive(s) of Scriblerian Satire,” as a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin.

–Matthew Reilly ’06