I was pleased to receive in the mail recently a copy of Pierpaolo Polzonetti’s Italian Opera in the Age of the American Revolution, published in 2011 by Cambridge University Press.  The cover of this excellent book displays a copy of our striking oil painting of The Quaker meeting: woman preaching from a tub by Egbert van Heemskerck.

Given the delicate and sometimes strained relationship that Quakers have had with music—especially in the religious movement’s earliest years—few would suspect that the cover of a book about Italian opera would be graced with an image of a Quaker meeting.  Yet 18th- and 19th-century Europeans were fascinated by Pennsylvanian Quakers.  Voltaire is noted for extolling their virtues in a series of letters.  And when Benjamin Franklin went to Paris he was mistaken for being a Quaker and did little to correct the misunderstanding.  Polzonetti’s book explores issues of American identity, including the depiction of Quakers, through the receptive lens of Italian opera.

Our painting by van Heemskerck is one of several from the late 17th century by the Dutch artist living in England.  These were copied frequently, especially as engravings.  It seems depictions of Quakers were popular no matter the medium, and in this case, at least, the treatment is dramatic, even worthy of opera.

Mary Esther Williams Dasenbrock spent her early years in Michigan and graduated from Vassar College in 1943. While a student there, she happened to hear a speech by Haverford professor Douglas Steere, who was also to head up the Relief and Reconstruction (R&R) program at Haverford College. Later, the chaplain at Vassar recommended she join R&R and that’s how she ended up in the R&R masters’ degree program at Haverford in the fall of 1943. There were 22 members in that first group of R&R students, all but one of whom were women. Only two of them were birthright Quakers, but by 1990, almost all of them were Quakers, which Dasenbrock felt demonstrated the impact of the program. The group was unified by age and socio-economic background and they were well-received by Haverford students. They lived in Language House (2 College Lane) and Professor Manuel Asensio and Elisa Asensio were their house parents.

The R&R curriculum included language (she took Polish & advanced German) and area studies, international relief administration, social case work, bookkeeping and an “applied work” program, as well as philosophy taught by Douglas Steere. Dasenbrock thought Haverford was lenient with them. She wrote her thesis on “Camps for Migrant Laborers…” in 1945, which is now in the college archives. The following summer she spent in a Federal migrant labor camp in Texas, both screening people for communicable diseases and running a day care – even though she never liked children – where everyone spoke Spanish and she didn’t.

Directly after, she was sent to Puerto Rico for 11 months to work in a Quaker Civilian Public Service health clinic. She averred “I never have felt that I was capable for what I was supposed to do….” Upon returning home in 1946, she began work with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and was sent to Poland working on clothing and food distribution. After the relief effort was disbanded, she helped establish a work camp in Poland that succeeded in building a school.

Mary Esther Williams married Henry Dasenbrock in Poland in 1947. Shortly thereafter, they returned to the U.S. and spent a year as directors of a work camp in Mexico. After their children were born, they lived in Ohio and she was asked by the superintendent of schools to help found a college, now a branch of Wright State University. She was on the Board of that college and thought that one of the most worthwhile activities she had ever undertaken. When Henry got a job with AFSC as a fundraiser, they moved to Baltimore, and Dasenbrock volunteered in the local AFSC office. Under the auspices of the AFSC, she was able to go to Poland again in 1958 to lead an international work camp, again building a school. She was the executive of the World Federalist office in Baltimore, then worked with UNICEF. Finally, the family came to live in Haverford and she became a member of Haverford Monthly Meeting. She served on the board of Haverford College from 1979-1990 and worked to raise an R&R Scholarship for the college, all the while keeping the R&R group together through a newsletter that she wrote continuously from the early 1950s. Toward the end of the 90s, she and Henry moved to Quadrangle, a Haverford retirement community. She was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters from Haverford in 2004. Mary Esther Williams Dasenbrock died in March 2011.

This information primarily comes from an oral history interview recorded in 1990. What this summary cannot convey is Dasenbrock’s lively intelligence, self-effacing character and personality so full of a zest for life, but which the interview so amply affords. The interview can be heard at: thesis.haverford.edu/dspace/handle/10066/1644 Unfortunately, the very beginning of the interview conducted by Carolyn Tolles is not on the recording but it is set down here:

Q. I understand, Mary Esther, that you were brought up in Grosse Point, Michigan and graduated from Vassar in 1943. What did you major in?
A. I majored in euthenics and nobody ever knows what that is. It’s from the Greek “well-being.” It was a catch all. I didn’t know what …

More than 40 years before women achieved the vote in the U.S. in 1920, Emily Howland (1827-1929), a Quaker reformer, educator and philanthropist was petitioning the New York legislature to act equitably. In an 1876 letter just added to our collections,
Howland reminds the Honorable A.S. Russell that under the Constitution as written, the legislature has the power to give women of New York the right to vote. To encourage him, she suggests that grateful women would vote for those who empower them, and, conversely, refers to the historical outcome of “taxation without representation”: peril to a government that disallows the vote to women. By the time this letter was written in 1876, Howland had already accomplished a great deal — as a teacher in a school for African American girls, as an organizer of the Freedom Village for refugee slaves during the Civil War, as an advocate for women’s rights alongside Susan B. Anthony; she would later also become a champion of world peace.
The letter takes its place alongside Haverford’s other Howland materials, including the Emily Howland Papers, which illustrate her interest in African American education.

Paul Cuffe (1759-1817) was born on an island near New Bedford, Massachusetts, the son of John Cuffe who was brought as a slave from Africa and Ruth Moses, a Native American. After becoming a free man, John Cuffe bought a 100-acre farm in Westport, Mass. and built a public school on his property.

Paul Cuffe, who had earned a sizable fortune as a trader and merchant and became a sea captain with his own ship, two brigs and several small vessels, petitioned the Massachusetts Legislature and was granted all the privileges available to white male citizens, including the right to vote, a privilege denied most African Americans at that time. In 1808, when few African Americans were accepted into membership in a Quaker meeting, Cuffe not only joined Westport Monthly Meeting, but also became a minister in the Society of Friends.

In a letter from Haverford’s Charles Roberts Autograph Letters Collection dated Westport 1st [month=January] 27, 1815 directed to Perry Lockes, Cuffe writes (using the Quaker form of address) that he believes in working toward the freedom “of our Beloved countrymen, the Africa[n]s who are yet in Bondage,” and that the existence of the slave trade, abolished in 1808, should not be forgotten. Envisioning a commercial exchange between America and Africa, he suggests that there may be people of color who could invest money and build a ship for African trade. He imagines establishing a colony in Sierre Leone, known for its relative economic and political stability, where he believes African Americans would enjoy freedom. Cuffe sailed for Sierre Leone in 1815 with a group of African Americans to establish a colony there.

The letter is of particular significance as it provides a date for trade between the U.S. and Africa one year earlier than historians had determined previously.

This letter is a part of the Charles Roberts Autograph Letters Collection. A full list of letter writers may be seen at: www.haverford.edu/library/special/aids/rare_books_and_manuscripts/cralc_in_pdf.pdf

What about parody?  Check out this new-ish online student publication, The Bi-Co (On A Budget), which includes a clever send-up of the Descartes letter discovery from 2010.  Professors, administrators, and school traditions are lampooned on the pages of this Tumblr microblogging site.  Even the Cricket Library isn’t spared!

One hundred and fifty years ago today, President-elect Abraham Lincoln passed through Haverford, PA, on his journey by train to the presidential inauguration in the capital city of Washington, DC. His trip began on February 11, 1861 as he and his wife boarded a train at the Great Western Railroad depot in Springfield, IL. That day, he gave brief remarks along the way in Springfield, Tolono, and Danville, IL, at the Indiana State Line, and in Lafayette, Thorntown, and Indianapolis, IN.

The inaugural route from Illinois to Washington, DC, is now famous for its avoidance of what has become known as the “Baltimore Plot.”  As the first president to be elected from the Republican Party and with Southern states threatening to secede over the issue of slavery, there was considerable tension over a possible plot to assassinate the President-elect on his journey to the capitol. The Pinkerton National Detective Agency was hired to provide security on the journey and a route that took the President-elect through Baltimore at night (and in disguise) was secretly planned to secure his the safety.

The inaugural route wound its way through seventy towns and cities, from Illinois through Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania and on to New York State. Arriving in the City of Brotherly Love from New Jersey, the President-elect gave several speeches including those to the Mayor and the citizens of Philadelphia and to a delegation from Wilmington, DE. He gave two rousing speeches at Independence Hall on February 22 before continuing his journey to Harrisburg and on to Washington, DC.

We know from A History of Haverford College For the First Sixty Years of Its Existence (1892) that Lincoln “appeared on the rear platform of the train and bowed to the students assembled at the station” and student Thomas Battey, class of 1863, later remarked in a letter that “As the train passed by the successive groups that had gathered along the bank sloping down to the road bed, the tall form of ‘Old Abe’ appeared on the rear platform, hat in hand, and bowed graciously to each group” (Providence, 5 mo. 4, 1927).  At the time, Haverford Station on the Pennsylvania Railroad was located at the edge of campus on what today we call Railroad Avenue. While there is no evidence that his train stopped or that he gave a speech, his brief appearance must have made a deep impression upon the 65 male students enrolled in the College. For a time there was a historical marker on this spot.

Another  who saw the President-elect was Charles Roberts, class of 1864. Soon to become an avid collector of autograph letters, the young Roberts had received Lincoln’s signature from November 17, 1860, just 11 days after he won the presidential election. This letter would become the nucleus of an extensive collection of autograph letters collected by Roberts over the course of his life.  In 1903, his collection of over 12,000 items was donated to the College by his widow, Lucy Branson Roberts.

The brief passage through Haverford would not be the only time that the students would get to see Lincoln. Sadly, on April 22, 1865 the assassinated President’s body would again pass through Haverford Station, this time retracing the inaugural route in reverse. Haverford Professor (later President) Thomas Chase spoke at Collection on the day of his assassination and his wife, Alice, remembered receiving the news:

Was it not a terrible blow on Seventh day. A student, Allan Thomas, came before we had left our room in the morning. Thomas [Chase] went down to see him and soon returned so overcome with grief that I knew something unexpected and dreadful had happened, but could not prepare myself for anything so horrible as the truth, and when he told me I was almost as much overwhelmed as himself (Lawnside [Haverford], April 19, 1865).

Special thanks to Diana Franzusoff Peterson, Manuscripts Librarian and College Archivist, and Anne Upton, Quaker Bibliographer and Special Collections Librarian, for providing assistance researching this event.

There were 25 graduating members of the class of 1889, and through a gift of Betsy Rawle Slattery in November, we received carte-de-visite photographs of 21 of them. The magnificent Biographical Catalog of the Matriculates of Haverford College published in 1922, provides sketches of the lives of these Haverfordians. Among them were physicians (T.F. Branson, W.R. Dunton, W.C. Goodwin), lawyers (Charles Burr, S.P. Ravenel), professors (W. Fite),  and businessmen (A.N. Leeds, D.C. Lewis, L.J. Morris, J.S. Stokes) and others.

Franklin Butler Kirkbride was one of them. While a student, he was class historian and made Phi Beta Kappa. A businessman, he was affiliated with a large number of companies, often as president or director, including President of the Empire Cream Separator Co., 1912-20. He was decorated by the King of Sweden as Commander of the Order of Vasa in 1921.

During their time at Haverford, the class of 1889 was witness to many events.  To name just one per year while they were students: 1885: the Haverford College Grammar School opened; 1886: the first college tennis tournament was held at Merion Cricket Club; 1887: Isaac Sharpless became president; 1888: Haverford beat Swarthmore in football; 1889: the Gustav Baur collection of books was received by the library, the largest book donation to that point.

If you would like to see images of other members of the class of 1889, please visit: tinyurl.com/4w8aalb

Each year, Quaker Bibliographer Ann Upton compiles a list of publications received with acknowledgments given to Haverford College Quaker and Special Collections.  Just as these scholars thank us for assisting them in their research, we’d like to thank them for their contributions to the scholarly literature that sustains research in Quaker history. The publications they produce affirms the value of the collection and the efforts we make to preserve and enhance it.  So, thanks for the thanks, from the staff of Special Collections!

Allen, Richard C., “The Origins and Development of Welsh Associational Life in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia,” in Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, Vol. 15, 2009.

Connerley, Jennifer, Friendly Americans: representing Quakers in the United States, 1850-1920, Chapel Hill, NC : University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2006.

Fea, John, Rural religion: Protestant community and the moral improvement of the South Jersey countryside, 1676-1800, Stony Brook, NY : State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1999.

“The good education of youth” : worlds of learning in the age of Franklin, New Castle, DE : Oak Knoll Press, 2009.

Griffith, Sally F., Liberalizing the mind, two centuries of liberal education at Franklin & Marshall College, University Park, PA : Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010.

The having of Negroes is become a burden : the Quaker struggle to free slaves in revolutionary North Carolina, [edited by] Michael J. Crawford, Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 2010.

Kimball, Elizabeth, ‘A perfect knowledge of our own tongue’: language use and learning in Philadelphia, 1750-1830, Philadelphia, PA : Temple University, 2010.

Kinney, Byron W., John Bowater (1629-1704): his life as a Quaker and his “Sermons from prison,” 2010.

Kinney, Jill, “Letters, pen and tilling the field” : Quaker schools among the Seneca Indians on the Allegany River, 1798-1852, Rochester, NY : University of Rochester, 2009.

Muchnick, Barry Ross, Nature’s republic: fresh air reform and the moral ecology of citizenship in turn of the century America, New Haven, CT, : Yale University, 2010.

Ricks, Thomas M., Turbulent times in Palenstine: the diaries of Khalil Totah, 1886-1955, Jerusalem; Ramallah : Institute for Palestine Studies, 2009.

Scott, Job, Essays on salvation by Christ and the debate which followed their publication, Farmington, ME : Quaker Heritage Press, 2010.

Shelton, Kenneth Andrew, The way cast up : the Keithian schism in an English enlightenment context, Boston MA : Boston College, 2009.

Wamsley, Douglas W., Polar Hayes: the life and contributions of Isaac Israel Hayes, M.D., Philadelphia, PA : American Philosophical Society, 2009.

Wittman, Barbara Kathleen, A community of letters: a Quaker woman’s correspondence and the making of the American frontier, 1791 – 1824, Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest, 2008.

Gest Fellow Katharine Gerbner is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University. Her research is on Protestantism and Slavery in the early Atlantic World.

Katharine Gerbner 2010 Gest Fellow

During my month at Haverford, I have examined the early Quaker stance on slavery. Quakers—renowned abolitionists by the late eighteenth-century—were deeply conflicted about the significance of slavery in the seventeenth-century. Hundreds of slave-owning Friends lived on Barbados, the sugar-rich British island in the Caribbean, and most found no contradiction between owning slaves and preaching equality. In Pennsylvania, Quaker merchants were active participants in the slave trade and a number of Quaker families held slaves.

Using the resources at the Haverford Quaker Collection, I have sought to understand and contextualize seventeenth-century Quaker views on slavery. My primary sources include Meeting Minutes from Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, as well as epistles and books of discipline. In these documents, I have examined not only Quaker slavery and antislavery, but also other contemporaneous debates and controversies within the Quaker community. By comparing debates on slavery to debates on other topics, I have developed a better sense of the cultural and political context that accompanied seventeenth-century Quaker slave owning.

Having the opportunity to spend a month studying Quakers and slavery at Haverford has been both productive and fascinating. I am very grateful to the staff at the Quaker Collection for welcoming me so warmly and offering such excellent advice about how to proceed with my research!

The Fall 2010 issue of the Haverford Alumni Magazine features treasures from Quaker & Special Collections and focuses on the use they receive in the college’s curriculum. We had a great time working with the communications staff  to produce this story and are particularly happy to see the focus on the students we welcome everyday.  The issue also includes profiles of three Haverford alums who are themselves collectors of special collections materials.  An online copy of the magazine is available here.