Canadian Friends Historical Association

Category: Canadian Quaker History Journal

  • “Spiritual Life” by Charles Zavitz

    “Spiritual Life” by Charles Zavitz

    From the estate of Gordon Thompson, we have received a large volume of papers relating to his work with the CFHA and his personal search for meaning in Quaker principles and thought. While the archiving of these papers is ongoing, we have also acquired a few non-archival items of interest. In some special cases, we will take books that are small press, old, or otherwise limited in run, ideally local to areas of Canadian Quaker concern, and explicitly on topics of interest to our members and researchers. 

    In this case, we accepted a beautiful small-press chapbook by Charles Zavitz. In broader history, Zavitz is known as the man who introduced soybeans as a crop to Canadian agriculture. In Quaker terms, he was born into the Coldstream meeting and was a noted peace activist. At the end of the Boer War, Zavitz founded the Canadian Peace and Arbitration Society, the first such organization explicitly in Canada. When president of the Ontario Agricultural College (now part of the University of Guelph), Zavitz refused to let World War One recruitment or drills occur on campus. After his retirement from agricultural work in 1927, he became the first president of the Canadian Friends Service Committee in 1931.

    Around this time, he released this serene book. Spiritual Life was published in 1932 by “A. Talbot & Company” in London. It is a small volume, about five by six inches, with 15 pages containing one short meditation each. The start of each passage is illuminated in red, matching the red and gold cover; the pages are thick and rough-edged.  

    The real value of the human soul under the guidance of the Divine Spirit is much greater to the individual than that of all the other things in the in world combined.

    …

    Quiet, sincere and habitual prayer enriches the soul and prepares the individual to fill worthily his place in life and to serve best his fellow man.

    …

    Being a Quaker with Quaker parents I learned early in life to listen in silence to the “still small voice” of my Spiritual Father. During and since my forty-one years of very active service in college teaching and in scientific research in agriculture, the Christ Spirit within me has been the most precious thing in my life.

     

    In our journal, issue 67 (PDF), James R. Zavitz contributed “Recollections of my Grandfather, Charles Ambrose Zavitz” and mentions the publication of this book:

    “In 1932 Grandfather published a booklet containing his personal thoughts from over the years. The result was “Spiritual Life.” He had 1000 volumes printed and distributed them, free of charge, to his relatives, friends and associates. I was ten years old at the time and often accompanied him to the printer in London. On one visit the publisher showed us three prototypes for the cover; they had various combinations of gold, red and green. In hindsight I don’t know if Grandfather had made up his mind or not, but he turned to me and asked which I preferred. I liked the red and gold combination and that is what was eventually used. Grandfather had a way of making me think I had had some input in the final choice.”

    Our copy of this book is in reasonably good condition for being 92 years old. It has some water staining and some foxing (the reddish-brown points of rusty-looking stains). As Charles Zavitz died in 1942, this book is now firmly in the public domain, and we are sharing a fully digitized version here, so that you can enjoy each meditation it contains. (This is a cellphone-camera-quality digitization assembled into a PDF; we may pursue higher-quality digitization at a later date.) Enjoy!

     

    If you think you might have similar items that could qualify for permanent collection by the CFHA – unique or rare, and relevant to the Quaker life in Canada – please get in touch.

  • Canadian Friends and Black History Month: William Allen

    William Allen (1821–1898)

    William Allen, a Black American Quaker, spent his later years as a minister in Canada and the pastor of Newmarket Friends Church. Allen first visited Canada in 1875, though his return in the 1890s was permanent. A gifted orator, Allen spent five years preaching to different meetings in Canada and was described in his memorial as a “man of sterling character, noble in spirit,” and “firm in his conviction for the truth.”[1]

    Born in Tennessee in 1821, Allen’s father was an Irish plantation owner and enslaver, and his mother was enslaved. He lived his early years under the bondage of his own father, and according to the writings of his ministerial companion Fred L. Ryon, his mother was sold when he was a young boy.[2] Allen spoke often of his experience living in slavery and the cruelties he witnessed growing up. This included the racism he faced when he preached.

    Ryon’s memories include an incident that took place in a New York meeting where a group of men had gathered to stop Allen from speaking. Ryon recalled that Allen, upon being unable to continue due to the noise caused by the gathered group, “poured forth such a deluge of oratorical denunciation of infidelity as I had never heard before. The very foundation of the house seemed to tremble neath the tread of his indignant feet. The large part of the congregation was spellbound.”[3] Ryon also noted that when Allen travelled, many families that hosted him at first “felt a hesitancy about receiving him into their homes,” further demonstrating the racial inequalities that Allen faced. This never stopped Allen from sharing his story, and a pamphlet about Allen’s life recorded that Allen’s “reference to slavery days was full of pathos, and his graphic word-picture of his mother and his parting with her, burning into the memory of his audience.”[4]

    In Allen’s memorandum book, he recorded lecturing on slavery in the following Ontario townships: Hibbert, Hatchley, Mariposa, Colebrook, and Moscow.[5] He also spent time in Pelham, Toronto, Gowrie, Uxbridge, Plymouth, Wellington, Bloomfield, and Pickering. On the subject of his calling to preach, Allen wrote:

    My motto is to preach the preaching that the Lord bids, [re]guardless to what men may say, or what they may think. For it is God I am working for and not man. So I hold up a free salvation, every person can have it by repentance towards God & faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. If we keep on the straight line with God we will have power to do his will. He will bless us in so doing.[6]

    Allen also believed wholeheartedly in social reform and valued the role Quaker women played in public ministry. When he fell ill during his travels, he recorded that Alma Dale, a minister from Uxbridge, was able to take over his work and run the meetings. He stated: “the Lord blest us in sending us Alma Dale.”[7]

    William Allen was an influential Friend and upon his death in 1898 he left behind a lasting legacy of great faith. Described as an outstanding leader, Ryon wrote that Allen’s “eloquence and sincerity left a lasting impression upon the large audiences which gathered wherever it became known that he would hold service. As the years passed, his ministry, broadened by diligent and continuous study, won for him the distinction of being known as the ‘traveling theological seminary of the Society of Friends.’”[8] Allen’s life and his work are a testament to the continual importance of anti-racism work and learning from the work of Black leaders.

     

    [1] “A Memorial Concerning William Allen, An Esteemed Minister of Yonge St. Monthly Meeting of Friends,” Canadian Quaker Archives and Library, Newmarket, ON.

    [2] Fred L. Ryon, “William Allen, Evangelist of the Society of Friends,” Bulletin of Friends Historical Association 47 (1958): 94. Ryon’s memoirs can also be read in the Canadian Quaker History Journal 65 (1999): 37-53.

    [3] Ryon, “William Allen,” 99.

    [4] Jessie M. Walton, From the Auction Block of Slavery to the Rostrum of the Quaker Ministry: The Life of William Allan (Aurora, ON: J. M. Walton, 1938).

    [5] William Allen’s memorandum book was transcribed by Jane Zavitz Bond and can be read in the CQHJ 64 (1999): 54-73.

    [6] “William Allen’s Memorandum Book 1887-1891,” CQHJ 64 (1999): 71.

    [7] “William Allen’s Memorandum Book 1887-1891,” 59.

    [8] Ryon, “William Allen,” 105.

     

  • Verifying a Quaker Presence in American Television Westerns

    How many times have you seen a Quaker in a television program or movie? How often have Quakers, the Amish, and Mennonites been conflated into stock characters? We are thrilled to share this guest post from Stephen D. Brooks who is researching representations of Quakers in television and film as part of a PhD in Quaker Studies at the University of Birmingham (UK). If any readers would like to discuss Stephen’s post, or if you have suggestions where he may find representations of Quakers in film or tv, please drop him a line at [email protected].

     

    Verifying a Quaker Presence in American Television Westerns

    Stephen D. Brooks

    At first glance it would appear that representations of Quakers in the mediums of film and television are sparse. Collectively, James Emmett Ryan’s Imaginary Friends (2009) and David N. Butterworth’s Celluloid Friends (2015) found forty-nine cases of either motion pictures or television programs that included some portrayal of Quakers. These vary from significant Quaker characters, or some reflection on Quakerism, to secondary or walk-on characters who can be identified as Quaker. These include silent-era features and shorts, plus those that use Quakers to provide one-liners and jokes such as Woody Allen’s Sleeper (1973).

    Miles Monroe (played by Allen): “I’m telling you. You got the wrong man. I’m not the heroic type. Really. I was beaten up by Quakers.”

    This was my starting point. From there I cross-referenced these forty-nine instances with the web-based resource The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) along with self-compiled lists put together by Quakers online. These lists included the “Friends Media Project” and “Quakers On Film” from pendlehill.org plus the michiganquaker.org entry of “Quakers in Popular Culture.” This resulted in 171 examples, ranging from a quarter of a reel (no more than three minutes) silent comedy called Topsy-Turvy Dance of Three Quaker Maidens (1900) up to the BBC TV series Fleabag (2019).

    These representations of Quakers also covered numerous genres: romance, comedy, adventure and drama to crime thrillers, science fiction, and musicals. In this post I am focussing on the western genre, especially American television westerns. According to the IMDb, between 1958 and 1970, Quaker characters appeared in nineteen different episodes of various shows. I am currently in the process of tracking these shows down and verifying the presence of a Quaker. There are three types of validation that I have found so far: explicit, implicit, and negative.

    To establish that a character is actually a Quaker in any of the examples I’ve examined, I look for explicit confirmation either by the character themselves or by another character. In the case of silent movies, I look for a title-card. The reason for an explicit verification is because it has become apparent that descriptors on the IMDb will use “Quaker” when a character may exhibit one or more of the following tropes: identifying as pacifist because of religious beliefs, using plain language, or wearing plain dress. Careful viewing has demonstrated that the character in question may not be a Quaker at all; they could be Amish, Pennsylvania Dutch, or a member of another Mennonite group.

    An example of an explicit confirmation can be found in Wagon Train: The Patience Miller Story, NBC, first shown 11 January 1961. In the opening scenes, a wagon train is attacked.  There is a close-up of a family—a man, a woman, and a child. The man is killed. It transpires that this is the Miller family who are missionaries on their way to Arapaho territory to open a school for indigenous children. Some of the men on the train urge wagon master Flint McCullough (Robert Preston) to convince the widowed Patience Miller (Rhonda Fleming) and her young daughter (Terry Burnham) to abandon her plan to continue to the mission without her husband. He replies, “ever tried arguing with a red-headed Quaker?” Patience for her part uses plain “thee” and “thou” language, dresses plainly, and often quotes William Penn.

    An illustration of what I term as implicit confirmation occurs in Bonanza: The Hopefuls, NBC, first shown 8 October 1960. Here a religious group is crossing the Ponderosa as settlers on their way to new territory. A wagon train is carrying both the community members and the money they had pooled to pay for the land. Adam Cartwright (Pernell Roberts), who is smitten by the daughter of the group’s leader, and his stepbrother Hoss (Dan Blocker) escort the train across the Cartwright’s territory. In turn, they are stalked by a gang intent on stealing the community’s money. Members of the group display the familiar traits associated with depictions of Quakers: they are a pacifist religious group and they dress plainly and use the term “Friend.” Yet, at no point is there a verbal verification or use of the word “Quaker” by them or any other character.

    Finally, a negative confirmation is evident in The Restless Gun: Strange Family In Town, NBC, first shown 20 January 1958. Here, a family of new settlers—the Hoffmans—fall foul of the locals when their belief in non-violence is misinterpreted as cowardice. Along with their pacifism they do dress plainly. However, they do not use plain language, and, at no point as with Bonanza or The Hopefuls, is there any verbal confirmation by them or any other characters that they are Quakers. Moreover, they have a German-language Bible, speak German at home, eat ‘hasenpfeffer’, and are insulted by the local townspeople as “squareheads.” So, despite the listing on the IMDb including this as a Quaker family, it appears after viewing that these characters are more likely (although of course, there is no explicit confirmation) to be members of a Pennsylvania Dutch community.

    Stephen D. Brooks

    As I continue to look through the results from IMDb, it will be interesting to see just how many films and programs will contain explicit confirmation that characters are Quakers rather than members of another religious group. The other side to this of course that merits consideration, is the possibility that listings stating that a story contains an Amish, Anabaptist, or another non-conformist representation of characters is in fact a Quaker?

    Bibliography.

    Butterworth, David N. (2015) Celluloid Friends: Cinematic Quakers real and imagined (1922-2012) USA, Amazon Press LLC.

    Ryan, James Emmett. (2009) Imaginary Friends: Representing Quakers In American culture 1650 -1950. Studies in American Thought and Culture. Series editor Paul S. Boyer. Madison, Wisconsin, The University of Wisconsin Press.

    Filmography.

    Bonanza: The Hopefuls. October 1960 [TV] James Nielsen dir. USA. National Broadcasting Corporation.

    Restless Gun, The: Strange Family in Town. January 1958. [TV] Earl Bellamy dir. USA. Window Glen Productions.

    Sleeper. 1973 [Film] Woody Allen dir. USA.  Jack Rollins & Charles H. Joffe Productions.

    Topsy-Turvy Dance of Three Quaker Maidens. 1902 [Film] George Albert Smith dir. UK. George Albert Smith Films.

    Wagon Train: The Patience Miller Story. January 1961 [TV] Mitch Leisen dir. USA. Revue Studios.

  • Help transcribe ships’ logs from the Nantucket Historical Association

    The Nantucket Historical Association is asking for volunteer help to transcribe handwritten documents. Their collection currently available for transcribing includes ships’ logs and particularly eleven logs written by women, likely captains’ wives.

    The Nantucket area is of particular interest to Canadian Quaker enthusiasts as their whaling and fishing fleets had many connections with Barrington and Dartmouth, NS, which are home to some of the earliest Quaker settlers.

    You can find ships’ logs and other materials to transcribe here: https://fromthepage.com/nharl/

    Setting up an account and getting started is easy.

    If you’d like to look through the NHA’s collection for materials of interest, start here: https://nha.org/research/

    And if you’d like to see if historical Nova Scotian and New Brunswicker Friends are relevant to your inquiries, read this great article from Sandra Fuller in the Canadian Quaker History Journal about the 1787 census:

    Census of Quaker Families in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, 1787 (PDF)

  • Textiles in Upper Canada

    Anne Adams on Three Generations of a Quaker Family and Their Textiles

    Published in the 2006 edition of the Canadian Journal of Quaker History, Anne G. Adams’ article, “‘Done Without Spectacles…’ Three Generations of a Quaker Family and Their Textiles,” follows the textile trail of the British-born Mullett family who settled in Upper Canada in 1821. The Mullett family quickly integrated themselves in the Quaker community of Adolphustown and their eleven children married into local Quaker families, including the Haights and Bowermans.

    Adams’ article includes letters sent between family members across the Atlantic and their many discussions of knitting, sewing, and spinning. Of particular interest to textile enthusiasts are the letters sent between the children of William and Mary Mullett and their grandmother, Hannah Clothier, who lived in Somerset, England. In some of their early letters, the Mullett children sent samples of their own spinning and requested their grandmother send pieces of cloth in return. Adams includes an 1825 letter sent from Deborah Mullett in which she notes that her and her sisters were “becoming tailoresses since being in Canada” (39). For those who have recently taken up a craft while staying at home, the letters and diaries of the Mullett family are an exciting window into early and mid-nineteenth century textile making in Upper Canada.

  • Learn about Black Quakers for Black History Month

    Happy Black History Month! The CFHA has numerous documents and publications that can help you with historical research and inquiry about Black people in Canada.

    One such document is the Memorial written about William Allen, a man who was born as a slave in Tennessee and died as a minister at the Yonge St. Meeting.

    In the death of our dear friend and brother William Allen, a valued minister, who deceased the 21st of 5th month, 1898, at the residence of Wm. Colquhoun, Gowrie, Ontario, this Meeting would record the deep sense of its loss, and the loving memory of his life and service.

    – William Allen Memorial

    Linked in the introduction of the Memorial are some research articles in various Canadian Quaker History Journal issues:

    1. William Allen: Friends Minister and Evangelist, Jane Zavitz Bond, No. 64, p. 51, 1999
    2. William Allen’s Memorandum Book, 1887-1891, Jane Zavitz Bond, No. 64, p. 54, 1999
    3. Memoirs of William Allen, Fred L. Ryon, No. 65, p. 37, 1999

    We know of many who were born into the Kingdom through his instrumentality, and we are satisfied that many will rise up in the last day and bless God for the life-work of William Allen. May his example be an impetus to us all.

  • CFHA Updates and Changes

    Efforts during the past year to enhance CFHA member website capability are nearing completion and activation. Once implemented, members will be able to perform many actions via the website, which up until now required printing and mailing of forms and fees. The following is a summary of the changes which can be expected as the website upgrade project is implemented.

        New member privileges will figure prominently going forward. Membership renewal and new memberships will be able to be accomplished on-line, as will payment and purchase of items which may be offered for sale. Website visitors and members will also be able to complete and submit various CFHA forms and program applicants on-line.

        The new website will feature a regularly updated blog where we will post the types of materials you have been receiving in your newsletters and Journal. This will vastly increase our capacity to share important event information on a timely basis. We will also share articles of interest to our members. This includes historical articles, articles about genealogy and finding your Quaker ancestors, and primary sources that come to our attention. Importantly, the new website will offer members the opportunity to dialogue with one another. It will also give us the opportunity to connect members who want to share information, especially on genealogy. The new website capabilities will also facilitate an expanded CFHA footprint on various social media platforms.

    Members only website section. The added website features will include a ‘members only’ capability. The specific access and benefits to be provided exclusively to members are still being determined, but anticipate that this will probably include a genealogy forum or “chat room” where members can ask questions and connect with others interested in Quaker ancestry. All website content that is now freely accessible, including transcriptions and back-issues of publications, will remain so. Additional information will be provided as soon as possible.

    New Publication Policy. Please note that with the introduction of the CFHA blog neither the Canadian Quaker History Journal nor The Meetinghouse newsletter will continue as regular organization publications. In place of these intermittent publications members will receive timely and stimulating articles on the blog. Blog posts will include current event details and announcements and longer researched articles and transcriptions contributed by members and others. CFHA members will gain the benefits of greatly increased information flow and sharing plus the ability to comment on and participate in on-going and informative blog dialogues and discussions.

    A number of CFHA members elected to receive and paid for printed copies of the Canadian Quaker History Journal issues that would normally have been published in membership years 2017-2018 and/or 2018-2019 respectively. For all such members we are pleased to announce the publication of a double issue (Edition number 82/83) will be available shortly. In the next six to eight weeks, printed copies of this last regular issue of the Canadian Quaker History Journal will be mailed to all members who ordered and paid for them. Pre-paid copies may also be provided for pick-up at the upcoming AGM at Friends House. Please see AGM 2019 details in this issue.

    From time to time, CFHA may publish a special monograph that it considers of interest to its members. These monographs will be available for purchase on the website. . Commencing membership year 2019-2020 (Ninth Month 01, 2019 to Eighth Month 31, 2020) membership will include a member subscription to the CFHA on-line blog in place of the electronic or printed versions of publications.

    Be sure to renew your membership for 2019-2020!  All members currently on record will have CFHA online privileges extended to them once the new website is activated. Among the first items to be posted and distributed to members via the blog will be the electronic version of the Canadian Quaker History Journal number 82/83. Other interesting and significant recent items are already lined up in preparation for posting to members. You will not want to miss these! Membership fees for the 2019-2020 membership year are unchanged from previous years. Please download and complete a membership renewal form available under the “Membership’ tab at www.cfha.info. Better yet, plan to attend and renew your membership at the AGM.