Quaker History - period ended 1.1.2006

Quaker History/Philadelphia/Franklin, Benjamin/Reed, Deborah/Franklin's Philly/Chicago Tribune/Chicago/IL/USA/18-Dec-05//….PHILADELPHIA -- The bedraggled teenager had just arrived in Philadelphia, a young boom town in 1723 compared to old, established Boston, the city of his birth. He had little money, few clothes and no friends here. As he walked by a young woman standing in her father's doorway, she thought he made "a most awkward, ridiculous appearance."

The 17-year-old wandered the streets, eating a loaf of bread, until he saw a group of well-dressed people walking with purpose. He followed them into the main Quaker meeting house and sat down.

"Being very drowsy thro' Labor & want of Rest the preceding Night, I fell fast asleep, and continu'd so till the Meeting broke up, when one was kind enough to rouse me," he recalled several decades later in his autobiography. "This was therefore the first House I was in or slept in, in Philadelphia."

Things turned out all right for Benjamin Franklin. The young woman, Deborah Read, became his wife, and his printing business prospered so mightily that he was rich enough to retire at age 42. He then devoted the rest of his life to philosophy, science, civic improvements and the cause of American independence.

Things haven't turned out too badly for Philadelphia, either. True, it has suffered its share of blows. After a brief spell as the nation's capital and largest city at the end of the 18th Century, it has steadily moved down the column of America's biggest cities, now ranking fifth with a population of 1.5 million. Its glamor quotient dropped accordingly, famously becoming the butt of W.C. Fields' crack about spending a week here one day.
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Quaker History/Penn, William//Annual First Night event puts state's notables on ice/Centre Daily Times/State College/PA/USA/30-Dec-05//... He'll be in illustrious company. William Penn, the English Quaker who received the original charter for Pennsylvania, will glisten nearby. ...

Quaker History/Pacifism/Fox, George/Troubled times/EducationGuardian.co.uk/London/England/UK/19-Dec-05//... The facts that the George Fox building was named after a Quaker and that a company with arms links was the target made the issue starker, but the vice ...

Quaker History/Native Americans/Dickinson, Jonathan/Quest for a historical treasure intensifies in Atlantic's depths/Stuart News/Palm Beach/FL/USA/30-Dec-05//…. HUTCHINSON ISLAND — Comparing centuries-old nautical maps, eyes sparkling with the prospect of finding a famed shipwreck off Martin County's coast, it seemed underwater archaeologists and local historians were preparing for a great treasure hunt Thursday.

But instead of gold, they're on a mission to find the final resting place of Jonathan Dickinson's Reformation, which sunk near local reefs in the fall of 1696. ......Ais Indians burned the ship and took Dickinson, his family and crew captive before marching them up the coast to St. Augustine. Although Dickinson's famed journal — written after he escaped — pinpoints where the ship foundered, no one has ever found it or really looked for it until now.

Gadgetry that could have saved the Quaker pioneer will be used to locate what's left of his vessel, "if anything," said Gordon Watts, director of the Institute for International Maritime Research. ......Shifting sands and mud likely have blanketed the wreck, "but that's good," Watts said of the materials' preservative qualities. "Sand is good. Mud is better."

The Washington, N.C.-based nonprofit group matched a $40,000 state grant landed by the Martin County Historical Society for the 14-day project, set to begin in early summer.

Finding the Reformation could bring new historical perspective to the first encounters between the English and American Indians, Watts said.

Still, Watts and state underwater archaeologist Roger Smith hope to uncover other shipwrecks in the seven-mile survey area just north of the St. Lucie Inlet.

Coastal waters from the inlet south to Lake Worth have been protected for their historical value since the late 1960s, Smith said.

Anything uncovered during the excavation will become state property but will go on display at the Elliot Museum in Stuart.

With plans to raze and rebuild the 26,000-square-foot museum to almost three times its size, enhancing the collection with new finds would help establish the Elliot as one of Florida's top museums, said Renne Booth, director of development for the historical society. ...

Quaker History/Meetinghouse//American Revolution Program At Scarsdale Historical Society/Westchester.com/White Plains/NY/USA/28-Dec-05//... surrounds us. All sessions will begin at 10:30am, last for about an hour, and take place at the Quaker Meeting House Museum. The ...

Quaker History/Business//Father-son photography team focuses on two views/Norristown Times Herald/Norristown/PA/USA/19-Dec-05//… "I relearned what just about every small town in America is about," he continues. "It starts with one man's vision. In this case, that would be Mr. Isaac Norris, a Quaker who settled here with his family in the 1700s to start a mill.
"The river gave him a means of transportation for his products. But he needed raw materials and other supplies, so somebody else came along and set up shop to provide him with that stuff. His business attracted workers, then they set up housekeeping nearby so they could get to their jobs. They needed somewhere to buy food and other goods, so the shopkeepers got established. And so on. Next thing you know, there's a village. And it just goes on from there.
"Back in those early days, all the stores and businesses were family-owned. And in a number of the photographs we used you have the owners and in some cases their families posing in the picture. They took a lot of pride in those businesses, too.….

Quaker History/Architecture//Signs of neglect/Newsday/Long Island/NY/USA/28-Dec-05//…. MALCOLM FARM BARN

An early surviving barn built in 1804 in an important Quaker community, Jericho Preserve.

The report: "The Malcolm Barn has seen no improvement in the last four years. It is simply older, less stable, its roof and façade boards more rotten ... The county has recently found a benefactor willing to contribute to a restoration of this building for adaptive equestrian use." ….

Quaker History/Abolition/Repatriation/Haverford Professor's Book Uses Letters to Explore Local Quaker .../Collegenews.org/Washington/DC/USA/21-Dec-05//…IHAVERFORD, Pa., Dec. 21, 2005 - In the sunlit office of Professor of History Emma Lapsansky-Werner, on the third tier of Magill Library, Benjamin Coates seems to belong. Coates, a Quaker wool merchant and cotton fabric maker from Philadelphia and sometime officer of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, keeps watch from a portrait in the center of the wall, his face forever unlined, his gaze quiet and unflinching, a smile never quite moving beyond the corners of his mouth. It’s this same visage that graces the cover of Lapsansky-Werner’s new book, Back to Africa: Benjamin Coates and the Colonization Movement in America, 1848-1880, co-edited with author and Quaker historian Margaret Hope Bacon and published by Pennsylvania State Press in November.

The book offers new insight into the ideas and intellect of one of the most well-known white advocates of African colonization in 19th-century America, and part of a group of leading abolitionist thinkers that included Joseph Jenkins Roberts, the first black president of Liberia; Mary Ann Shadd Cary, the first black woman newspaper publisher in North America; Henry Highland Garnet, a militant and outspoken black agitator for African American justice; and ex-slave and orator Frederick Douglass. At the heart of the work is a collection of more than 150 recently recovered letters, both written by and to Coates between 1848 and 1880. ...