From 1519 until 1836, parts of Texas were under Spanish, French and Mexican rule.  Mexico itself was under Spanish rule until 1821, but after independence, it governed Mexican Texas until 1836, when the Texas Rebellion separated it from Mexico. In 1830, Mexico had ordered all slaves to be freed, but many Texas colonists ran around this law by making their slaves indentured servants for life. By the time it became a Republic in 1836, there were 5,000 slaves in Texas.

The annexation of Texas into the U.S. was thus controversial for those who did not want to bring a slave state into the union (it became a state in 1848).

A new document has just been acquired by Special Collections.  It is a “memorial” (petition) to the Senate by the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery protesting the annexation of Texas into the Union and setting forth its reasons, including the creation of a new market for slaves and promoting the trafficking of slaves. This they surmised from similar circumstances in Louisiana and Florida. The document is an unsigned draft, though on the verso is the signature of Edith Stackhouse. Among the society’s members were several Quakers and, as the writer notes, such lights as Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush. It is inferred that the writer is Stackhouse’s husband, Powell Stackhouse (1785-1863). They were both received into Philadelphia Monthly Meeting in 1843, and he served as an overseer of this Quaker meeting, though he did not appear on lists of members of any committees, including those relating to African Americans.

In 1842, James Buchanan (1791-1868), 15th president of the United States, was serving as a Democratic senator from Pennsylvania and he presented this petition.  At the conclusion of his presentation, the document was ordered to be printed (see: The Weekly Herald, April 9, 1842).  One would expect that the petitioners would have presented their senator with a finished copy to read, rather than a draft, and that the document had been printed as ordered, but an exhaustive search through such resources as the U.S. Congressional Serial Set and the Making of America website provided no such evidence.

With this knowledge in hand, this seemingly rare document was acquired for our Quaker Collection.

Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections and the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College announce the completion of the Quakers and Slavery Project, a publicly accessible database of primary source material on the topic of Quakers and Slavery, and an interactive website to accompany the online material.  Among the types of material included are photographs and lithographs, organization records, personal correspondence, and other publications. The interactive website includes commentary contributed by eminent scholars, Quaker researchers, and project staff.

Initial discussions about a joint digitizing project between the Quaker repositories at Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges began in 2007, when both were preparing for the 300th anniversary of the end of the slave trade in North America. Abolition was a cause whose beginnings and sustenance came largely from Quakers in northeastern America and England. The two colleges also began plans to join with the McNeil Center of Early American Studies at University of Pennsylvania to host an international conference on Quakers and Slavery in November 2010. This digitization project is timed to correspond with the conference, which will include material exhibitions by both Quaker repositories.

The materials selected for this project are available for research within the confines of our two Quaker repositories. However, these materials are unique or rare, and as such should receive limited physical handling in order to ensure their longevity. Digitization of these materials supports their long term preservation by reducing the amount they are handled, as well as providing greatly increased access to researchers who are not able to visit. Moreover, within each repository the documents span a range of material types and come from several collections, such that there is no easy way to bring them together physically. This project allows for the virtual reunification of these materials and collections.

The Religious Society of Friends was the first corporate body in Britain and North America to fully condemn slavery as both ethically and religiously wrong in all circumstances. It is in Quaker records that we have some of the earliest manifestations of anti-slavery sentiment, dating from the 1600s. After the 1750s, Quakers actively engaged in attempting to sway public opinion in Britain and America against the slave trade and slavery in general. At the same time, Quakers became actively involved in the economic, educational and political well being of the formerly enslaved.

The earliest anti-slavery organizations in America and Britain consisted primarily of members of the Society of Friends. Thus much of the record of the development of anti-slavery thought and actions is embedded in Quaker-produced records and documents. Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College and the Quaker Collection at Haverford College are jointly the custodians of Quaker meeting records of the Mid-Atlantic region, including Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, New York and Vermont and these records illuminate the origins of the anti-slavery movement as well as the continued Quaker involvement, often behind the scenes, in the leadership and direction of the abolitionist movement from the 1770s to the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865, and beyond.

Funding for the Quakers and Slavery Project was provided by the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services, through a program stipulated by the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). This program is administered in Pennsylvania through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries for assisting libraries in providing all users access to information, developing partnerships, and increasing information access for persons who have difficulty gaining it.

There is always more work to be done in Special Collections than can be done by the full-time staff.  To complete some projects additional short-term staff is needed.  Below is a profile of a part-time librarian, Anne Moore, who has been often seen in Special Collections in the last year.

I am a recent Library Studies graduate from Drexel University and currently working in Haverford College Special Collections Library on my second project.  The first project took place during the spring of 2009.  I worked with Manuscripts Librarian & College Archivist Diana Franzusoff Peterson, updating and encoding a finding aid for the Baltimore Yearly Meeting records.

I returned in December of 2009 to work on a digitization project about Quakers and slavery with Digital Collections Librarian David Conners.  This is a joint project with the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College.  Materials relating to Quakers and slavery have been digitized, transcribed, cataloged, and uploaded to Triptych, the Tri-College Digital Library.  In addition to the digital library, an exhibit webpage is also being created that will highlight featured resources, a timeline, and scholarly essays on various topics related to Quakers and their role in abolishing slavery and the slave trade.

When I first joined the project, I spent my time digitizing and transcribing manumissions books from Philadelphia Meetings.  These manumissions document the freeing of slaves.  Entries include the name, age, and date of the release of the slave as well as the Quaker releasing them.  Another interesting and noteworthy item is the first organized protest against slavery in the Americas from 1688.  More recently I have been coding webpages and providing materials for the Quakers & Slavery exhibit website (coming soon!)

Parthenia is set free by her owner Hannah Dawes

Antoinette Brown defended her post as Reverend of the Congregational Church in Wayne County NY in The Liberator on December 15, 1854. Brown was the first woman in the United States to be ordained a minister and was an associate of Susan B. Anthony and Julia Ward Howe.

The Liberator was an abolitionist periodical read by a broader spectrum of the reading public than subscribed to general interest journals and was more liberal in its perspective. The readership was sympathetic to Brown’s defense of “the position which Woman can now occupy in the clerical profession.”

Quaker, Margaret Fell, wrote on the right of women to preach two centuries earlier in 1667. Incongruously, Brown decries the Quakers for rejecting her as a “hireling minister.”

The Liberator is part of the Rare Newspaper Collection at Special Collections that contains over 250 titles from the US and Britain from the 18th through 20th centuries. The research value of these newspapers lies in the contemporary reports of what is now considered historical and their topical strengths of reform and anti-slavery activities.

Quakers have had an uneasy relationship with music since the late 17th century.

Although singing was recognized as an authentic expression of the connection with Spirit, too much music could become amusement and a diversion. Popular culture played with this dichotomy as demonstrated by this sheet music cover of 1919. Special Collections’ online exhibit ‘Sing ye in the spirit’ : Music & Quakerism in Harmony will show you more on the subject.

Some of the newest notes among Friends are being sung by Jon Watts who blends spirituality, Quaker history and rap. Listen to him and watch to see if your shoulders don’t begin to shake, too!