CFHA is pleased to announce that the ‘Friendly Friday’ program presentations will launch Friday, October 02, 2020 at 1:30 PM Eastern Daylight Savings Time (Toronto).
Everyone is welcome to participate. Sessions will be held via Zoom, and will typically last approximately an hour.
The first set of sessions will be of particular interest to anyone seeking an understanding of the spiritual experiences, epiphanies, and testimonies as related in the Journal of George Fox. These came to form the foundational principles of the Religious Society of Friends.
Although the Journal of George Fox has served for centuries as the creation account of the Quakers, it is relatively little read among contemporary Friends. Many find the book difficult and lengthy. It is nonetheless richly rewarding and relevant to contemporary seekers. This is especially so for the first 40 to 50 pages. These include the context and content of all of George Fox’s foundational “openings” and formative experiences through childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. It will be our objective to read and discuss this portion of the Journal.
Photo of George Fox from the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-pga-11433).
The readings and discussion will be facilitated by CFHA Co-Chair Gord Thompson. The text of the Journal has been broken into short manageable readings for willing participants to read aloud. Experience has shown that short readings followed by discussion, questions, and comments allow a thorough unpacking of the text. Our aim is to foster a personal tone of sharing which facilitates individual and collective understanding. It is anticipated that 5 or 6 sessions will see us through the essential first chapters. These will be scheduled for every other Friday following October 2nd, through to early December. Ideally most participants will be able to take part in all sessions, but even occasional participants will find the experience worthwhile.
Those interested in participating are asked to register here via the link provided in order to receive the Zoom meeting invitation and admission to the session.
Please note that readings will be based on the John Nickalls edition of the Journal of George Fox. Text annotated to identify the respective individual readings will be provided to participants. If you have any questions please contact [email protected].
In this month’s Founders and Builders Series, we introduce you to one of the CFHA’s early supporters. Our third essay features Elma McGrew Starr and is written by David Newlands.
Elma McGrew Starr by David Newlands
Elma McGrew Starr (1890-1985) was a birthright Quaker and well-known member of the Canadian Yearly Meeting. She and her twin sister, Edith McGrew Smith, were born on 21 September 1890 on their parent’s farm near Harrisville, Ohio. Her parents were Gilbert and Eliza (Hall) McGrew. The family was part of the Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative).
In 1898 Elma and her sister attended the Friends School near Harrisville Meeting House. She attended the Friends’ Boarding School (now Olney Friends School) in Barnesville, Ohio, graduating in 1909. In 1911 Elma Starr attended the Normal School of Scio, Ohio, where she attained her teacher training. In the fall of the same year she accepted the post of teacher at the Friends School at Norwich, Ontario. Here she boarded a week at a time at each of the pupils’ homes. Her pay was $200 a year. There were fifteen pupils in the school. The school building is now on the grounds of the Norwich Historical Museum.
Elma met her future husband, Elmer Starr, of Newmarket, Ontario during sessions of Canada Yearly Meeting in 1912. In May of the following year they were engaged; they were married in 1915. Elma recalls, “With $30 of my teaching money, I bought a sewing machine and made my wedding clothes, and some for sister Edith.”[1] The couple eventually settled in Newmarket at ‘Starr Elms’, a farm to the east of the town. They attended Yonge Street Meeting regularly throughout the following decades. Although often quietly taking her place in Quaker meetings, she was considered a ‘weighty’ Friend, and other Friends often sought her advice and leadership, both locally and in the Canadian Yearly Meeting.
They had five children: Francis (1916–2000), Gilbert (1918, d. at age 8 ½ days of Spanish influenza), Harriet Starr Cope (1920–1967), Huldah Starr Stanley (b. 1923) and Stuart (b. 1927).
Throughout her long life Elma Starr was an indefatigable supporter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. She attended provincial temperance conventions and participated in Youth Oratorical Contests that encouraged speaking about temperance in schools. She was leader of the contest in schools for eighteen years, until her retirement in 1955. She continued to be active in the York County unit of the Ontario Temperance Federation until the local unit was dissolved in 1971.
Elma Starr was also an ambassador of Friends Peace Testimony, supporting in her dealings with others and encouraging Friends to be faithful to this testimony.
Elma was confident and constant in her Christian faith and testified to this in meetings and her beloved Yonge Street Meeting. She was actively involved in the Sunday School movement and was a teacher of the Intermediate Class at the Pine Orchard Sunday School. In 1941 she became the President of the Whitchurch Sunday School Convention. She gave the Sunderland Gardiner Lecture at the Canadian Yearly Meeting on ‘Why I am A Christian.’
For many Quakers and the people of the Newmarket community, Elma is best remembered for her simple Quaker piety, her faithful Christian witness, and her commitment to simplicity in daily life. In her autobiography, Contented, she writes, “all my life I have truly desired to know and to follow Jesus, and often I have been blest with a small measure of consciousness of his presence and guidance in various situations.”[2]
Learning at an early age how to make traditional Quaker bonnets, she continued to make them for her own use and for the many people who asked her for one. She could be seen at the Yonge Street Meeting or at special Quaker or community events wearing her Quaker bonnet, a witness to her commitment to simplicity.
Elma Starr was always interested in Quaker history. No doubt her family’s connections with Quakers and her love of Quaker traditions encouraged her. In 1936, when convener of the History Committee of the Pine Orchard and Bogarttown Women’s Institutes, she oversaw the production of Pine Orchard History, 1800-1936. At the inauguration of the Canadian Friends Historical Association, Elma was one of the loyal supporters, eager to see the work of the Association prosper. Elma’s involvement with the restoration of the Yonge Street Meetinghouse is also part of her contribution to the preservation of Canadian Quaker history.
Her beloved Elmer Starr died on 7 July 1973 at the age of ninety-two years. They had been married fifty-eight years. In the following years, Elma lived at Walton Home, a retirement residence of the Ohio Yearly Meeting of Friends (Conservative) in Barnesville, Ohio. For a number of years she returned in the summer months to her beloved Yonge Street Meeting.
Elma Starr died peacefully at the Walton Home on 15 June 1985, ending a “life well loved, to the glory of God and her Savior.”[3]
[1] Elma M. Starr, “Contented.” Canadian Quaker History Journal 73 (2008), 69.
[3] This article is based on Elma Starr’s biography, “Contented,” republished in the Canadian Quaker History Journal 73 (2008): 64-79 (This article can be found online at: http://cfha.info/journal73p64.pdf), and Raymond W. Stanley’s memorial, “A Son-in-law’s Memories of Elma McGrew Starr,” 40-41, and the author’s own reminiscences.
The executive committee is thrilled to announce that our speakers for the CFHA Annual General Meeting to be held on September 26th will be Ben Pink Dandelion of the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Bournville, England, and Stephen W. Angell of the Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana.
Ben and Steve have been instrumental in the explosion of interest in Quaker history and other aspects of Quaker studies in the past ten years. They have led the way in working with a number of university presses, and have encouraged scholarship in a way that has fundamentally changed the scholarly landscape in Quaker studies.
We have invited Ben and Steve to speak about their experience in reframing Quaker studies, the impact of the scholarship that is being done, and the ways that scholarship reaches both the academic community as well as interested lay researchers and well-read Friends. Along with our speakers we will inquire about the role for a group like the CFHA in this larger discussion, and ask how we through CFHA can better support the work of academic researchers, genealogists, and Canadian Friends.
We hope you will be able to join us for this important program. Ben and Steve will speak beginning at 11 a.m. Eastern time, and the business portion of the AGM will follow. Please RSVP to the link below:
Please note that there is no charge to register and only contact information for member verification is collected when you register. Individuals not currently in membership are welcome to become members before the meeting, or to attend as guests. Please contact [email protected] if you wish to attend as a guest, or if you require additional information.
In this month’s Founders and Builders Series, we introduce you to CFHA co-founder Grace Pincoe. This essay is written by her daughter Ruth Pincoe and Jane Zavitz-Bond.
Grace Pincoe – A Faithful Founder and Pillar of CFHA by Ruth Pincoe and Jane Zavtiz-Bond
Grace Lillian Cochrane, the third and youngest daughter of Eliza (née Falconer, Lizzie) and Henry Cochrane was born on 22 June 1906 at 12 Boustead Avenue, in the west end of Toronto. Eilza’s Scottish family had been farming in Ontario for several generations; Henry’s family emigrated from Ireland in the mid-1800s. Henry’s death from typhoid in January 1912 left the family in difficult circumstances. There was no social safety net in those days, but Lizzie was a practical and determined woman. Her eldest daughter, Beatrice, left school at age thirteen to take a secretarial job while Eliza took in boarders and cleaned floors in a local bank. Her middle daughter, Edna, finished high school and then worked at the Post Office. Nonetheless, books, music, and education were respected in Lizzie’s household. The three Cochrane girls were also mentored by an elder cousin who encouraged them to learn through reading.
Grace’s love of books, libraries, learning, and boats focussed her life. Unsatisfied after a year in Normal School (her mother’s choice), she completed a short library course and found work, but her real desire was to go to university. Her cousin helped to persuade Lizzie, who finally agreed to one year. Grace enrolled in Victoria College, University of Toronto, completed her first year as a full-time student, and continued with night classes and summer school to graduate with her class in 1930. She was an intelligent and determined young woman.
Grace met Roland Pincoe in 1930 when she was working at the newly-opened Runnymede branch of the Toronto Public Library. They shared a love of music and art. They also shared an enthusiasm for Northern Ontario, and Grace had a canoe. At the depth of the Depression, marriage was out of the question, but they both had jobs and could save a little. They were married on 3 February 1937 and moved into a small house Ellis Park Road, on the west side of Grenadier Pond. Money was short, but their time there was happy. For low-cost holidays they took canoe trips in northern Ontario, first in Algonquin Park, later in Temagami, and in 1943 down the Moose and Abitibi Rivers to James Bay. By 1941, however, Grace’s mother was in her last years and her sister Edna was not well. Grace and Roland moved to 12 Boustead Avenue to care for her mother and her sister. The move was unavoidable, and they stayed for the rest of their lives, but their deep regret of the loss of theirhome remained.
As a city employee during the Depression, Grace had to leave her library job when she married, but she was not a “housewife.” She had other gifts. Grace found part-time and occasional jobs with a variety of organizations that had libraries, including the Art Gallery of Toronto (now Ontario), Marani & Morris (an architectural firm), the School of Missions (later the Ecumenical Institute), and a private library in the home of Robert and Adelaide McLaughlin in Oshawa.
Grace and Roland’s daughter Ruth was born in 1946. In the mid 1950s Grace went back to full-time employment as head of cataloguing for Etobicoke Public Library. She was a gifted cataloguer with a passion for subject analysis. After the launch of Sputnik in October 1957, she argued for moving space travel from the Dewey 500s (theoretical physics) to the 600s (applied science), arguing that “the future is longer than the past.” In the mid-1960s Grace moved to a cataloguing position at the Toronto Board of Education Library. She also worked with the Board’s Historical Collection, her first involvement with archives, and she attended an archives course at the University of Toronto Faculty of Information Science. She retired from the Board in 1971.
Grace had come came to the Religious Society of Friends around 1950 through her friendship with Kathleen Savan (née Green) and began to attend Meeting for Worship at 60 Lowther Avenue. (Kathleen, her two sisters, and her brother had been good friends with Roland and Grace since the in the 1930s, and Kathleen spent he war years in China with the Friends Ambulance Unit.) Care and service were natural for Grace and these aspects of Friends cemented her commitment. She became an active member of Toronto Monthly Meeting, and of course served on the Library Committee. (Jane Sweet, another member of that committee met Grace when they both worked at the Board of Education, and came to Friends through Grace.)
After her retirement Grace devoted an increasing amount of time to the Friends House Library. By this time she had developed a deep interest in the history of Friends in Canada. One thing seemed to lead to another. Jane Zavitz remembers that Grace and Kathleen Hertzberg both told her about their conversation on the stairway at Pickering College during Yearly Meeting, after a session that included Canadian Quaker history. They both saw a need for an organization that could to find, preserve, and publish research on the history of Quakers in Canada.
Grace wrote to a number of Friends and other individuals who might assist with undertaking a Friends historical body, asking them to identify factors that would allow such an organization to flourish, and what they would be willing to undertake. Responses were positive but only a few individuals agreed to fill major roles. After some months, however, a nucleus of individuals was assembled. In August 1970 there was a presentation at Canadian Yearly Meeting and, in November, Representative Meeting approved the concern for the formation of a Canadian Friends Historical Association. The CHFA was underway. It sounds easy, but establishing even a basic structure required energy and patience. The elderly Arthur Dorland (author of The Quakers in Canada) was unable to play a major role, but as honorary chairman his reputation carried weight and helped to give the new organization recognized standing.
When CFHA was launched in 1972, forty-one individuals paid their annual dues, and for the princely sum of two dollars, received the newsletter that Grace helped to prepare. She could take advantage of the holdings of the Friends House Library to support CFHA work, and her skills and experience were a perfect fit. She always had more ideas to carry out, and her enthusiasm for new projects abounded. She soon attracted others who became involved and in turn made important contributions to CFHA’s success.
Almost immediately, Grace began collecting biographical information about Canadian Friends in a rapidly expanding card file. She was always ready to respond to research questions and any new details that turned up were entered on the cards in pencil. She also began indexing the occasional biographical accounts published in The Canadian Friend. Grace’s index and card file was the beginning of one of CFHA’s most significant projects.
During CHFA’s first decade (1972–1982), Grace planned tours of Quaker sites in conjunction with the annual meetings, and sometimes during Canadian Yearly Meeting. Locations included the early meetinghouses and burial grounds of the Norwich, Niagara, and Yonge Street Monthly Meetings. Information was distributed in advance to encourage participation. Jane sometimes drove Grace over the planned route so that she could determine travel time, and spot interesting highlights. Grace also prepared related bibliographies that were published in the newsletter, along with the accounts she had enlisted CHFA members to write. The year that CHFA met in the Maritimes, Ralph Green was invited to speak about of the Nantucket Quakers who came to Canada following the American Revolution. A tour was not possible, but Grace made maps and display boards to illustrate the talk.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of Grace Pincoe’s influence on CFHA. She was a primary force in its creation and continuing existence. Her work is carried on today in the Canadian Friends Biographical File and the Register of Canadian Quaker Sites. Her spirit and imagination modeled the generous nature of the organization. She greeted all inquirers, and welcomed their questions. She was fully present for each person she met. As was said at her Memorial Meeting for Worship, she brought others into the fellowship of Friends and the CFHA.
Grace’s retirement years were not completely devoted to the CHFA. Some years earlier, she had purchased a small wooden sailboat from Kathleen and David Savan, called the Hermit Crab (because it went sideways). She stored this boat (and its successor) at a club on the Toronto Island where she spent some of her happiest days. She also investigated the genealogy of her family, and did research on Irish immigrants to Canada.
In the early 1980s Grace’s health declined. She suffered from osteoarthritis and also developed dementia. She remained at 12 Boustead Avenue, the house where she was born, lovingly cared for by her husband Roland and her daughter Ruth. She died on 18 October 1987.
Jane Zavitz remembers: “In my work in the CYM Archives, supported and encouraged by CFHA, I sensed Grace’s solid support in the presence of an old library storage unit that holds supplies for our work and some files. Her daughter, Ruth, passed it on to us after Grace’s death. As we move into a new technological era, Grace’s spirit of search and her care and love for Quaker history remains the foundation of our association and our work. She showed the way. May we continue in that spirit.”
“The Best Man for Settling New Country…”: The Journal of Timothy Rogers Edited by Christopher Densmore and Albert Schrauwers
This guest post is contributed by Albert Schrauwers and includes his reflections on editing Timothy Rogers’ journal alongside Christopher Densmore. Rogers’ journal can be found here:http://www.cfha.info/journalrogers.pdf
Photo of Timothy Rogers’ journal
Timothy Rogers is a subject of perennial interest to genealogists and historians, and I welcome this opportunity to broaden its availability. Rogers’s Journal contains a riveting narrative of his spiritual development and (unsuccessful) attempts at the ministry; his travels across the north-eastern states to Maine, Nova Scotia and PEI in service of the ministry; and his role in opening new Quaker settlements in Vermont, Newmarket, and Pickering. It is the most extensive first-person narrative of an early nineteenth century Quaker pioneer outside the manuscripts of David Willson, leader of the Children of Peace. It is thus of interest to Quaker and local historians in both Canada and the US, and to a very large number of descendants (including those who went on to create Rogers Communications).
Timothy Rogers’s Journal was published by CFHA twenty years ago, the product of years of careful preparation. The choice of Rogers’s Journal seemed obvious at the time. As a major source of historical and genealogical information, it was the single largest subject of interest to visitors of the Dorland Room. The journal itself, however, was in a fragile state and could not withstand heavy usage. The Yearly Meeting had decided not to allow the Archives of Ontario to microfilm its collection, but lacked the resources to do so itself. Producing an easily accessible copy was a pressing need.
Producing the journal was a complicated matter. Making a photocopy of the fragile journal from which the transcription could be made without damaging it was only the first step. Decisions also needed to be made as to how the transcription would be made. Rogers had little formal education, used erratic spelling and no punctuation. A copy of a page and its direct transcription were given in the published journal to indicate the actual tenor of his writing. It was decided, however, to make the journal as accessible as possible to a modern audience by following modern orthographic conventions. In doing so, some valuable information was lost. It was clear, for example, that Rogers spelled phonetically, hence the original journal conveyed his pronunciation and speaking style. Given the spiritual journey that Rogers recorded, it was also considered important to highlight to modern (perhaps secular) readers how grounded the journal was in biblical references. This entailed adding quotation marks to biblical passages, and providing footnoted citations. Further extensive footnotes were added drawing on Monthly Meeting minutes and secondary sources that clarified references made by Rogers; two appendices, containing journals by his descendant Wing Rogers, and fellow traveller, Joshua Evans, were included for the same reason. The preparation of the transcription was thus a long, laborious process.
As the copyright for the journal itself (as opposed to the transcription) was retained by the Yearly Meeting, it was decided that CFHA would self-publish the result, giving Friends greater control over it use. Unfortunately, we lacked the means of promoting it as it deserved. Dissemination on the web will at last make the work generally available, and further evidence the impact of early Quakers on Canadian history.
We recently received a genealogy question in regard to the ancestry of Thomas William Henry Young Bunnell (1860 – 1896) from Susan Bunnell.
Thomas Young Bunnell listed his birthplace as Toronto and Ontario on two documents, but on his death notice his place of birth is left blank. In another document, he lists his parents as Henry and Hannah Bunnel. The Bunnell/Bonnell family appear to be active in the Yonge Street Monthly Meeting (this includes Henry and Margaret Bonnell and their children). However, there is no birth record for Thomas in Ontario and no mention of him in any census until 1891 (after his marriage to Ellen Guard in 1888).
Susan Bunnell has suggested that perhaps Thomas came to Canada through the British Home Child Program and was adopted into the Bunnell family, as she found a record of a Thomas Young entering Canada at the age of 14.
Do you have any information about Thomas Young Bunnell or the Bunnell/Bonnell family?
In its almost fifty-year history, CFHA has come a long way! From the association’s publication of its first newsletters in the year it was established to our very recent entree into the digital world of blogging, the goal has remained the same: preserving and communicating the on-going history and faith of Friends in Canada and their contribution to the Canadian experience. This month we are beginning a series on CFHA’s founders and builders. Each month we will introduce you to one of the individuals who played an important role in creating or maintaining CFHA over the years. We hope that you will enjoy meeting these dedicated people. We look forward to your comments and memories on these posts. Our first essay is about one of CFHA’s co-founders, Kathleen Hertzberg, written by her daughter, Eve Schmitz-Hertzberg.
Kathleen (Schmitz-) Hertzberg nee Brookhouse
by Eve Schmitz-Hertzberg
Kathleen Brookhouse was born in 1916 near Preston, Lancashire, England. She became a member of Stafford Meeting in 1935 and attended Woodbrooke College for one academic year through 1937-1938. She experienced a leading as a young person to give service in the Society of Friends, which led her to travel to Germany in 1938/39 under the auspices of the Friends.[1] It was there she met her future husband Fritz Schmitz-Hertzberg. However, they were separated for ten years by the events of the war and his time in Russia as a prisoner of war.[2] She worked under the Germany Emergency Committee as a case worker helping refugees from Germany. She also served in the Friends Ambulance Unit in London during the war and with the Friends War Victims Relief Committee. After the war, Kathleen travelled with Fred Tritton to visit Friends in Germany and then did relief work in Berlin. Fritz and Kathleen were married in the Stafford Meeting in 1949 before immigrating to Canada in 1951.
Toronto Friends were very helpful, and Kathleen worked in Friends House Toronto until she and Fritz moved to Pickering where Fritz started his medical practice. They became members of Toronto Monthly Meeting. Kathleen was active in the Society of Friends and in the local community with the Red Cross and Community Care. She was chairman of Canadian Friends Service Committee from 1965 until 1972. She represented Canadian Yearly Meeting (CYM) at FWCC and was involved in ecumenical work. She gave the Samuel P. Gardiner (SPG) lecture at CYM in 2002: Doing the Work: Finding the Meaning. She lived in Pickering in the house that she and Fritz built together in 1963. In 2012 she self-published her memoirs: From My Demi-Paradise.
Kathleen Hertzberg, left, stands beside her mother, Edith Brookhouse. In her arms is her son Andy, and her daughter Eve is at their feet. This photo is believed to be taken on the porch of the Yonge Street Meeting House, c. 1954.
Living in Pickering, Kathleen discovered that in the 1800s the earliest settlers of the area were Quakers. In 1969 she learned that the Quaker meeting house in Uxbridge (1820) was about to be moved to the USA to be used as a child’s playhouse. Through Toronto Meeting, Kathleen had been in contact with Arthur Dorland, professor of history at University of Western Ontario. Through this connection, she became aware that much of the Quaker heritage in Canada was gradually disappearing. In 1970 Grace Pincoe and Kathleen declared that what was needed was a Canadian Friends Historical Association (CFHA) to work to collect, research, and preserve Quaker heritage in Canada. From the beginning CFHA was separate from Canadian Yearly Meeting. This allowed those outside of Friends to belong to CFHA.
In the fall of 1972 CFHA sent out an invitation outlining its objectives and encouraging interested individuals to join. The inaugural meeting of CFHA was held on 19 August 1972. Kathleen became the first clerk with Walter Balderstone as chairperson and Grace Pincoe as secretary. Arthur Dorland gave his blessing and was made honorary chairman. Walter died in 1978 and Kathleen became chairperson until 1995. Kathleen wrote A Short History of the Canadian Friends Historical Association 1972 – 1992 (CQHJ summer 1992) to celebrate the association’s first twenty years. She remained a life member of CFHA until her death in 2019.
In the excitement of CFHA’s first year, five executive meetings were held in 1973. A newsletter, Canadian Quaker History Newsletter, was established. Three or even four issues were published annually. Kathleen often wrote an editorial introduction to the issue. In 1989 a bound edition of historical articles called Canadian Quaker History Journal was started.
During Kathleen’s tenure as chairperson many tasks were undertaken. Historical Quaker materials from the University of Western Ontario were indexed and microfilmed. A grant was obtained to do this work. The materials were moved to Pickering College in Newmarket and The Quaker Archives and Dorland Room were established. Materials of historic interest, especially journals by individual Quakers, now had a potential home and were donated to the archives. The Newsletter and Journal encouraged people to write Quaker history for publication. Meetings were encouraged to collect historical documents such as minute books and to write their meeting histories.
CFHA has been an active voice and advocate for Quaker history. It has been involved in the placing of several historical plaques in Canada at Quaker historical sites. Connections to other historical organizations, nationally in Canada and internationally as well, were established. CFHA met annually and, as part of each AGM, a pilgrimage or tour of Quaker historical sites was organized. These bur tours have been inspirational as guides related stories of Quaker history at the sites where they occurred.
CFHA honoured Arthur Dorland in 1979. He had planned to give a talk at the AGM but died before it could take place. A brochure was printed to promote CFHA. A Guide to Quaker Sites in Canada was planned in 1982. Kyle Jollife received a grant to do oral histories. Yonge Street Meeting house was restored in 1975. The Journal of Timothy Rogers was donated in 1974 to the archives and was later transcribed and published (2000). Many of the dreams of the founders like Kathleen have been realized.
Kathleen was an enthusiastic and dedicated contributor to the Canadian Friends Historical Association since its inception. She quotes from T.S. Elliot: “A people without history/ Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern/ Of timeless moments” (Four Quartets, “Little Gidding”).
[1] See report in the Canadian Quaker History Journal 74 (2009).
[2] Fritz’ account of his time as a POW in the Soviet Union translated from the German by Kathleen is published as The Night is Full of Stars (Sessions of York, 2009).
It is with great pleasure that we welcome Robynne Rogers Healey and Sydney Harker as the new CFHA Blog Editorial Team. Together they will build and expand on the work that has been accomplished by Allana Mayer since the blog was launched four months ago.
Many of our members will remember both Robynne and Sydney. Robynne is currently Professor of History, and Co-director of the Gender Studies Institute at Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia. She is the author of From Quaker to Upper Canadian: Faith and Community among Yonge Street Friends, 1801-1850 (McGill-Queens University Press, 2006) and multiple articles and chapters on Quaker history. Her book, Quakerism in the Atlantic World, 1690-1830 (in which she and Sydney have a co-authored chapter) is forthcoming from Penn State University Press this year.
We are delighted to have the assistance and support of Robynne and Sydney and encourage members and viewers to submit contributions of posts and feature articles to them. For more information contact [email protected]
Plaque of the Dunkerron Quaker cemetery. Image from LostCemeteries.blogpost.com.
Friends gather to worship in their Meeting Houses. They do Meeting business there and obviously socialize. Although members may live some distance away, they are said to come from their Meeting, in this case from Tecumseth Preparative Meeting.
Researchers might prefer the Lot and Concession of a family, where births and deaths occur. What we learn from this document is that Friends set their sights on the Meeting House. Weddings happen here, and social life revolves around the pulse of Quaker worship as much as of the seasons. Indeed, Joseph John Kiteley is appointed “to dig graves,” a measure of permanence.
Preparative Meetings are devolved from Monthly Meetings. As the minutes show, the MM has considerable authority and is equally devolved from the Yearly Meeting and so on, even to the Philadelphia YM or the London YM. These levels of organization produce Minutes, Directives, Devotional Tracts, Assessments and a set of querulous Queries, which are a study in themselves. All of these elements are seen and revealed in the Minutes.
Much else can be deduced (and, with caution, inferred).
In the Tecumseth Minutes [TPM] evidence is available to link with the larger history of the area, add specifics to government documents and confirm family connections and history. Equally the minutes are a stark, often awkwardly formal documentation, too sparse to be a genealogical goldmine.
Here is a sample of what can be gleaned both personal and general from these pages.
TPM is a spin off from Yonge Street Monthly Meeting. Two members are appointed to attend the MM “and to report.” TPM would meet on Wednesdays, the time apparently designated by MM as 10:00AM. This schedule is not held rigidly, as the reading will show.
Here is the geographic difficulty Tecumseth representatives faced. Three possible routes to Meeting can be seen. The shortest route is to take highway 9 south of Dunkerron east to Yonge Street and south a piece to the Meeting House. That counts as some 18 kilometres, which takes 22 minutes as the car drives. Horse and buggy are another matter, as is the realization that Friends were living in 19th century conditions. If you have Googled the map, the presence of the Pottageville Swamp looms. It bestrides the easy route to Meeting. A more southerly passage on the Lloydtown line to Kettleby is no more promising. In winter, the route would be possible, but several instances in the minutes show that “impassible roads” and Simcoe County’s well-documented spring blizzards and floods make the shortest route adrift or a quagmire. That most roads throughout Ontario were a quagmire is well understood.
The north route makes sense when conditions required, but it is 22 kilometres at least. North on 27 is Bondhead, the Post Office, where a traveler would go east on 88 and find the bridge at Bradford over the Holland River down to Holland Landing, where Yonge Street begins, and thence to Newmarket and the Meeting House. Sunday is a good time to travel and evenings paced by a prime horse or team would be pleasant.
The isolation is real for this small community of Friends. The minutes show them under long-term leadership but an ever-diminishing membership. The self census of 1871 and 1875, the only detailed reports recorded, show a heavy drop in members. From 106 the complement falls to 44. One wonders to where and why 62 Friends left the fold. Yet their urge to carry on is poignant.
Assessment reports show a dedication to local needs and to principles of a global calling. Cash amounts are collected on a progressive basis, it appears, and suggest a frugal but growing economy.
By the 1890s the minutes become spotty, meetings are not held, representatives more often do not make it to MM. The Men’s and Women’s meetings combine and switch to Sunday meetings.
And then the Minutes stop.
More directly and personally, figures show up. Peter Doyle stands out almost until his death in 1888. His land is used for the cemetery and the Meeting House. His firstborn is buried there as is his first wife, Phoebe Minn, before the House is built. Peter is “in care of the House” institutionally. He seems to hold out for his $12 fee for service, with the Committee charged with “finding a Friend to care for the House” taking as long as three months to reappoint Peter. The fourteenth time Peter is faced with the care of the house, the decision is deferred eight times until Peter is removed and Jacob Doyle is appointed. Peter is 82 years old.
As his name fades away, another long-time caretaker is found. Jacob Doyle, already established as Clerk, takes on the role at $6 per annum, or “50 cents per month” as he must have preferred.
Jacob is the only lived child of Peter and Phoebe. His story goes beyond the Minutes and is recorded as a bachelor of dedication, wealth and generosity.
There are a number of Hughes men who contribute to the community. Amos Hughes teams with Peter Doyle regularly as representatives of TPM to MM. His name disappears suddenly, as does his presence on the census. Has he returned to Pelham or even New York? Then, Samuel Hughes appears on the record.
In addition, new members are installed as their requests are recorded.
Here a simple wisdom is shown. Rookies are welcomed and in a moment are teamed with veterans to represent TPM at MM. Commitment is strengthened and a new member is introduced to the larger parent Meeting. The six new members recorded between 1873 to 1888 is sparse growth indeed. They, of course, represent families, but the dwindling character of the experiment is felt.
As a last reflection, the case of Henry Doyle is curious. Henry is the 6th of Peter’s five boys and two girls. Rachel Haight, of American stock from the Haights of Pickering Township by Duffin’s Creek, marries Peter at MM in 1836 and carries on the frontier tradition with energy and success.
Their first born, John Haight Doyle moves to Pilkington Township near Elora, and breaks the bush there. Margaret [Doyle] Wilson researched her great-grandfather and notes that he became Methodist. Elora was well away from his co-religionists. The need for a religious community placed them in the hands of the burgeoning, evangelical Methodists, where John is active. His first born, John Alan, becomes a Minister in the Great North West, covering the Prairie region.
Henry stays in Tecumseth Township to take over the homestead and the adjacent farm. He shows in the minutes as a mature adult, active as Clerk, on committees, representative to MM, organizing various assessments, even caring for the House and a repair project. The Homestead is parts of Lots 24 and 23, Concession 3 Tecumseth. Immediately south on Lot 23 Concession 2 another Irish family is settled.
James Manning is the son of Joseph, an Anglo-Irishman who was “a pay master of the forces in Ireland” and a Methodist. Now there’s an incentive to emigrate, as the Pale becomes unsafe after the Great Rebellion of 1798. James is an Evangelical Wesleyan Methodist preacher with energy. He builds the Dunkerron Methodist community, represents the church in General Conference and sends three sons into the ministry.
James has a daughter, Ann Jane, or “Annie”, who lives, as the farmers say, “within buggy distance.” Henry and Annie are married in 1875. Peter Doyle resisted the Hicksites. John has gone Methodist and Henry has married one. But Henry is not disowned. He carries on, showing frequently in the Minutes as active and an office holder. There is the curiosity. Certainly, Annie does not convert. She dies at 35 and is buried in the Dunkerron Methodist Cemetery beside the new red brick Methodist Church.
Henry marries again, ten years later, returning to an Orthodox Quaker family, with Jennie Lynd. Henry’s eldest, Manson Doyle, only ten when his mother is taken, is said by his daughter “to have broken his father’s heart” and became a Methodist Minister, although he married a West Lake MM Quaker, Augusta Belle Saylor. Manson journeyed west, as well, and became an energetic builder of Union, after which he became Youth Secretary of the United Church until age 75.
But Henry was never “disowned,” as so many Quakers were for “marrying out.” He is buried in the Tecumseth PM burial ground with Jennie Lynd. Nearby are Joseph and Peter and Rachel, representatives of the faithful Orthodoxy.
“Tecumseth Prep meet of Friends Held 7 mo 4th 1888: It was proposed & united with that this meeting be held in joint scession after this month.”
Simply, without flourish or regrets, the Meeting begins its final years, exactly 5 months after Peter’s death.
The Joint meetings carry on until 1898. Names such as Susannah, Delia, and Martha Ella Hughes appear as William Chantler and Margaret, the newer Friends, take on responsibility. By 1895 Annie Molison is in “care of the House” for $6 per annum. Henry’s last reference is 11-4-1885, although he is an energetic 37. Jacob Doyle remains active to the end.
A comparison to the Yonge Street MM minutes will build on these insights. Good stories never end.
All over the world, digital research collections are being prioritized to ensure continuing access to people working from home, self-isolating, or sheltering in place. Ancestry is no different: they’ve made their usual Library Edition (only available at the computer terminals of contracting public libraries) available from home.
Go to your local public library’s website and see if Ancestry Library Edition is now available for you from home. All you need to do is enter your library card number. Libraries from Halifax to Vancouver Island are offering this service.
I logged in through my own library (from Hamilton Public Library – thanks!) and was able to find a few resources of note. One is of course the collection of microfilmed books from the Canada Yearly Meeting Archives:
Our partners at Swarthmore College Library have shared their collection of annual reports and proceedings including many from Canada.
If you search “Quaker” you will find a variety of results from both overseas and close to home.
