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, andwe 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.
This guest post is contributed by Christopher K. Starr. Starr was born in Newmarket, Ontario, but has spent the bulk of his adult life in the tropics of Asia and the Caribbean as an entomologist.
These are some reminiscences of my early years in an unwavering Quaker family. They are reflections on a way of life that was once a major part of some English-speaking societies but has now largely passed from among us. It was already fading when I was a child. The title is a mild play on words drawn from the formal name of the Quakers, the Society of Friends.
In the beginning:
My father, Francis Starr (1916-2000) was from a traditional conservative Quaker family near Newmarket, Ontario. His schooling ended after one year of high school. Formal education did not especially engage him, and it was during the Depression. He thought it would be better if he were out earning. Still, he remained an avid reader and discussant his entire life, and we can fairly call him an intellectual. If I were to seek a single phrase to say what he was all about, I would call him a peace activist.
My mother, Dorothy Schlick Starr (1922-1977) came from a Methodist family in Iowa, but after they were married she had no difficulty transferring into the Society of Friends. (To call it a “conversion” would be regarded by all concerned as misleading and rather vulgar.) She was a nurse with an MA in Nursing from Yale University, and after moving to Canada she worked in the health profession and made use of her administrative acumen in various tasks for Canada Yearly Meeting.
My parents were believers, but I would not say that either was especially religious in the common-speech sense. They had met as relief workers in India and Pakistan, Francis with Britain’s Friends’ Service Council (FSC) and Dorothy with the American Friends’ Service Committee (AFSC). I was already an adult when I learned that that these two organizations shared the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize back when it was not yet hopelessly compromised. I expect my parents were aware of this, but I don’t recall either of them ever mentioning it. At the time that they met, Francis had already spent two years in China with the FSC’s Friends’ Ambulance Unit in what was plainly his personal heroic period. In India, Dorothy was for a time seconded to Mohandas Gandhi’s household as a nurse. They were both great admirers of Gandhi.
Francis Starr in China and Dorothy Schlick in India during the 1940s.
As a result, my younger siblings and I grew up in a household with a strong sense of social activism as an integral component of Quakerism.
In 1954, when I was four years old, our family moved to a house adjacent to my paternal grandparents’ farm on which my father had spent his early years. My grandparents were Elmer (1881-1973) and Elma McGrew Starr (1890-1985). A stand of stately elm trees flanking the entrance to the farm, which was cleverly known as Starr Elms.
The iconic elm trees at the entrance to Starr Elms, and Francis & Dorothy Starr in 1953 with me and my sisters.
One cannot be sure at this remove, but it feels like I spent more time on the farm up the hill than at our own house. Certainly, I have many more and stronger memories from the farm. To me, it was a grand place, and when we moved away shortly before my seventh birthday I felt like I had been cast out of paradise. Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill” probably resonates more strongly with me than any other poem.
My grandfather was an affectionate but stern man with a distinctly patriarchal manner. I especially noticed this when he read the Bible out loud. In particular, when reading from the Old Testament his voice would drone up and down, while I sat there transfixed by how utterly prophetic he sounded. At the risk of offending some kinfolk, I would say that he struck me as quite mechanical in his religious responses, while my grandmother seemed more creative. She was a nature lover, who introduced me into a lifelong interest in insects.
The Starr grandparents reading the Bible, and the Yonge Street Meeting House as it was and is.
We worshipped at the Yonge Street meeting house, now recognized as a historical site. When I last visited it a few years ago it seemed not at all changed from how it had been in my childhood. At some times of year, if no others were expected at meeting and the weather was not clement, we would hold meeting in the Starr Elms parlour. Although we children were not praying, and an hour is a long time at that age, the warm sense of familial closeness and the hypnotic ticking of the tall grandfather clock made the occasions quite pleasant.
Sunday (First-Day) was of course not a day to work or to cause others to work, except for chores that could not be postponed. Livestock must be fed and cows milked, but crops were not to be planted or harvested on that day. I loved to hunt groundhogs with a .22 rifle, but this was forbidden on Sunday. I don’t know whether it was because groundhogs were regarded as vermin, so that exterminating them counted as work, or just that the discharge of firearms seemed unsabbathly.
To Ottawa:
Shortly after my seventh birthday in 1956 we moved to Ottawa. Together with the family of Gordon & Betty McClure, we went at the urging of the Yearly Meeting in order to serve as the nucleus of a new monthly meeting. Ottawa had several Quakers or persons who wished to become Quakers, but the organizing service of experienced Friends was needed. One could say that the two sets of parents felt a calling.
For the next year the Starrs and McClures lived as one family in a big house in the Glebe neighbourhood. I don’t know the details, but we were apparently a coop or collective. The elder McClures were teachers, who did not draw a salary during the summer months, and I once heard my father mention to an acquaintance that they supported us in the winter, and we supported them in the summer. As far as I know, it was never the plan that this should be a long-term arrangement, and after a year we occupied separate houses.
I would not say that I felt isolated or in any way alienated in Ottawa, although I had only infrequent contact with Quakers outside of my own family and the McClures. Still, I admit that I sometimes felt a bit awkward at the oddness of being a Quaker in a sea of those who were not. Without making too much of it, at times I vaguely regretted that we were not something more “normal”, like Methodists or Anglicans. In white Protestant North America that was about as normal as it got.
Olney:
This changed abruptly when, at the age of 13, I went to attend high school in Ohio. The Friends’ Boarding School (now Olney Friends’ School) was established by Ohio Yearly Meeting (OYM) in 1837 and had apparently been known informally as Olney throughout. There I became conscious for the first time of being part of a long tradition. Elma Starr attended Olney, as did my father (for one year) and his two sisters, and so did I and all of my siblings. We chose to go there. The historic, imposing Stillwater Meeting House was at one end of the campus, and every week we went to meeting there along with the local Friends. William P. Taber in The Eye of Faith relates how Quakers in Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio once formed such a substantial society that it could be almost self-containing to many.
Olney’s Main Building and Stillwater Meeting House as they were then and are today. Photos by J. & R. Klotz.
As detailed by Arthur Dorland in The Quakers in Canada, Canada Yearly Meeting is an outgrowth of Ohio Yearly Meeting. In one sense, at Olney I immediately felt right at home. In another way it was quite a different milieu. For one thing, I was surrounded by Quakers in everyday life (although Olney also took in students of backgrounds). For another, the conservative Quakers of Ohio (including some of our teachers) manifested a distinctly stronger sense of tradition than did those in Ottawa. At least in many of the older Friends from the local meeting, one could see this at a glance. While in Ottawa we dressed like normal people, including on Sunday, some in Ohio dressed in what I learned was the plain manner.
There was also the matter of plainspeech, the most salient manifestations of which were the use of thee for the second-person singular (similarly thy and thine) and the days of the week and months of the year named by number, avoiding even the most casual invocation of pagan deities. My grandparents addressed as “thee” all whom they knew personally. My father used this form with all family members and other Quakers. My own habit was to use it only with older Quakers and the few of my generation that I knew preferred it. However, in conversing or corresponding in French, German or Spanish I have a decided preference for tu/du/tú; an advantage of my present advanced age is that I am almost always older than the other person and so have liberty to go to the familiar form.
Quakers have always laid much emphasis on education. Olney’s scholastic strengths, I would say, were not only on religion but also on history and language, including English. It was there that I got my start toward being a good Spanish speaker, and through the school’s exchange programme with our sister school in Gaienhofen-am- Bodensee I gained fluency in German through spending the 1965-66 school year there.
Lying outside the town of Barnesville, Olney had a definite feeling of apartness. We did not see ourselves as a part of the town, and the school administration evidently wanted it that way. During my four years there, I hardly knew any of the town’s residents personally, and I regret that I never went to the trouble to ask them how they viewed the school. It was not a state of mutual hostility, just going different ways.
At that time, then, Olney was still strongly stamped by the Ohio Yearly Meeting (OYM) and conservative Quakerism. I believe that most of my Quaker schoolmates were on much the same page as I was. We are the last generation with a familiarity with traditional quaker customs of daily life. We would not be baffled if we were magically set down in Ohio in the earlier age described by Bill Taber.
However, already in my childhood such things as plain dress, plain speech and the separation of women and men on different sides of the meeting house were coming to have an archaic feel. While not alien to us (at least in Ohio), they were something that we associated more with earlier generations than ourselves. Although there were still many women who wore the traditional bonnet in the Ohio strongholds of conservative Quakerism, I believe my grandmother was the last in Canada who still wore it as a matter of course. If my sisters or cousins wore it, it was a fun exercise in exoticism, not a badge of who they were.
I will mention one other thing that struck me at Olney. I arrived entirely ignorant that Quakerism in the USA was and is divided into three autonomous tendencies known by their founders’ names. The three had been re-united into a single Canada Yearly Meeting soon after I was born, so I didn’t even know that there was more than one kind of Quaker. (Again, see Arthur Dorland’s book.) The school was a creature of the OYM of the Wilburite tendency. However, the Hicksite tendency is so similar to it that I wasn’t aware until years later that some of my schoolmates were of this persuasion. On the other hand, I don’t believe there were any Gurneyites among us. One can fairly say that the Gurneyites had departed much more from the practice of traditional Quakerism than had the other two, and we didn’t consider them authentic. The fact that Richard Nixon was from a Gurneyite family sufficed to consolidate this attitude.
A secular Quaker looks at himself:
I was never especially spiritual, and by my early 20s I realized that religious feelings had entirely fallen away. No existential crisis, no dark midnight of the soul, nor any particular relief, just a feeling of some aspect no longer there. Even so, more than 50 years later I remain a conservative Quaker in a meaningful way.
Although Sigmund Freud was never religious — the non-practice extended back at least to his parents, I believe — he did not deny his Jewishness. I once asked my friend, the late Richard Nowogrodzki, whether his parents were very Jewish, to which he responded “Oh yes. Very Jewish and very atheist.” That made perfect sense to me, as they did not lose their ethnicity by taking off the cloak of Judaism. The Freuds and the Nowogrodzkis were secular Jews, a well-known concept.
We are like the Jews in some ways, although of course we have not been persecuted as recently or as severely they have. And even if the term is unfamiliar to most or all readers, I and most of my same-generation relatives are secular Quakers. That is, we partake of a certain ethos and even some manners that came from our lineage.
What are these? Foremost is a social consciousness, including egalitarianism. I don’t know whether Quakers had a large role in the American Civil Rights Movement, but we were unhesitatingly in favour of it. A little while later came at least passive acceptance of equal opportunities for women. Equal rights for gays and lesbians came later.
And what about religious tolerance? This is very easily answered. Tolerance is almost total. I observed this at Olney, as well as on many occasions elsewhere. A rather striking example arose around the time I was 12 or 13. My father, knowing that some of my friends sang in the Anglican Church, remarked to me one day “Why doesn’t thee go down to St Matt’s and join the choir?” Which I did. (Disclosure: Unlike most in the all-male choir, I could not read music and was not much of a singer. One wonders if I contributed to the drop in church membership.) He evidently thought it would be good for me and was not in the least concerned about doctrinal differences or that on Sunday mornings I would be in church and not in meeting.
When I am asked what my parents were doing in Asia in the 1940s, I usually say that they were medical missionaries. This is close enough in a list of jobs, but it can also be very misleading. Quakers almost never proselytize, and FSC and AFSC were no exception. If asked about their motivation, the answer would certainly have been that it was a Christian’s duty to alleviate suffering. While other religious organizations undertake medical missions as a way of fishing for converts, in the FSC and AFSC this would have seemed quite vulgar. Friends were happy to embrace new members, but they would have to come to us. I suspect that this overall disinclination to proselytize has been a major contributor to Quakerism’s increasing reduction in size and influence in the face of vigorous competition.
And tolerance of internal heterodoxy? I once heard the question raised at a Young Friends forum whether a Quaker could be an atheist. I don’t recall that the question got much traction, but the fact that it was not dismissed out of hand tells us something. I was never privy to the discussions of membership applications in the Society of Friends, but I rather suspect that one could be a Quaker in good standing without an explicit affirmation of faith as long as one was discreet in one’s near-agnosticism. This is in contrast to the time when the great naturalist John Bartram (1699-1777) was expelled from his meeting in Pennsylvania for denying the divinity of Jesus.
The most lasting stamp of my Friendly childhood is probably a serious attitude toward language and utterances. One said what one meant and meant what one said. Or, as my father expressed it on several occasions, “Let thy yea be yea, and thy nay be nay.” One day when I was perhaps four years old, my grandmother was making apple sauce. She gave me a taste of it before she put in the sugar, and I remarked that I liked it better that way. Later, if she was making apple sauce she put an unsweetened portion aside for me, telling people that “Christopher prefers it like that.” Even at that age it was assumed that if I said it, I meant it. Part of our family’s legend is an occasion on which a workman exclaimed “Well, I’ll be damned.” Grandma’s instant reaction was a mild “I hope thee won’t.” However, another part is her sly dictum (which one of my uncles loved to quote) that “Thee can tell the truth without telling everything thee knows.”
I have never been able to accommodate to some other peoples’ indifference to language. As an example, I was once riding in a bus in the Philippines with a prominent “No Smoking” sign at the front. When another passenger lit up I leaned over and, squinting as if not seeing very well, asked him if he could read that sign for me. Without a touch of irony he told me it read “No Smoking”. Let me note that I didn’t care whether he smoked, I just objected to this indifference to language.
Analogous to this respect for language, at least on an emotional level, is a distaste for ostentation, including in personal adornment. I well recall that, when we moved to Ottawa and I was around Catholics for the first time, I found the earrings and other decorations of even many very young girls vaguely unsettling.
In the early days in England many Quakers, being excluded from the universities and some professions, went into business, some with marked success. (All readers will have heard of Cadbury’s chocolates.) An undoubted contribution to this success was Quakers’ reputation for fair dealing, along with a tendency toward frugality. One did not waste capital on frivolous things. This tendency has come down to those of us who are not in business. I am perhaps a rather extreme example of this, something about which all of my ex-wives complained.
Quakerism is traditionally associated with sobriety, and I am confident that my grandparents and those before them never had a drink or a smoke in their lives. The explanation that I heard as a child was that one ought never to be intoxicated in case the “Still Small Voice” of God spoke to one. However, I suspect that it was more about maintaining a clear view of the world and one’s place in it. This is one aspect of my heritage that has largely been lost over the last couple of generations. I doubt that there are many teetotalers among today’s secular or even religious Quakers, although habitual drunkenness or heavy smoking seem to be unknown.
Similarly, we seculars do not observe the Sabbath or First-day. And, while we oppose going to war, for the most part we are not pacifists. We understand the Peace Testimony that some see as the heart and soul of Quakerism, but we do not uphold it. Many of my male schoolmates at Olney registered as conscientious objectors and so did Alternative Service. I could be wrong, but I suspect that some blushed inwardly as they did so. At that time membership in one or another meeting served as a convenient get-out-of-Vietnam card, regardless of whether one really, truly objected to all bearing of arms.
It would be dreadfully snobbish to imply that any of these features is peculiarly mine or ours. Still, in a real sense in my secular senior years I have never stopped being a Quaker.
For everyone hoping to attend the AGM on September 14th (either in person or for the online portion), please remember to renew your membership with CFHA. We hope you’ll join us for the guided tour of the Sharon Temple, catered lunch, and for our AGM guest speakers hosted at the Yonge Street Meeting House.
Your support through membership provides the financial resources to keep CFHA an active and healthy association. CFHA is incorporated under the auspices of the Ontario Historical Society (OHS).
You can now complete your membership registration or renewal online!
By 1656, George Fox was sending some of his followers as missionaries to early colonies in North America. Puritans had sought asylum from religious persecution for themselves in New England but, unfortunately, they persecuted, imprisoned, whipped, expelled, and hanged those who differed from them in religious belief. John Endicott (ca1588-1665), first Governor of New England, was a strong opponent of Quaker heretics and along with Puritan ministers championed their persecution. In 1656 when Quakers Mary Fisher and Anne Austin arrived at Boston, they were detained in gaol for five weeks, then deported to Barbados.
An early convert to the Society of Friends was a young man named Christopher Holder (1631-1688) who readily embraced taking Friends’ beliefs to North America. In May 1656, Holder and other converters set sail on the “Speedwell” to spread the Quaker message. When these first Quaker missionaries arrived in Boston (July-August 1656), Holder and friends were imprisoned, brutally treated, expelled and sent back to England. As a result of their visits, the Massachusetts General Court imposed penalties on Quakers entering the colony. They passed a law inflicting a fine of £100 on any ship’s captain who knowingly conveyed a Quaker to the Massachusetts Colony. When Holder returned in 1657, the law was strengthened: if a male Quaker returned again to New England after he had been banished, he was to suffer the loss of one ear and to be imprisoned, and a female Quaker was to be whipped. In 1658 Holder was one of three men who had their ears cut off. In 1658, Puritans forbade Quaker meetings and imposed the death penalty for Quakers who returned in defiance of expulsion. Holder was banished again in October 1659. A few days after his release, two returning Quakers, William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson, were hanged on 27th October 1659. Mary Dyer was reprieved, but the next year 1660 she was put to death for refusing to renounce her beliefs and adhering to the cause of Quakerism.
After Cromwell’s death in 1658, with the Declaration of Breda in 1660 Charles the heir promised religious toleration if restored to the throne. Following the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, with King Charles II (1630-1685), Fox and others called Quakers, issued the Declaration of Friends; this later became known as their Peace Testimony: “We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatsoever, and this is our testimony to the whole world.” When Fox and f/Friends were imprisoned in 1660, Margaret (Askew) Fell (1614-1702), widow of Judge Fell who died in 1658, wrote a letter to the King regarding persecutions of Quakers, requesting that Fox be released. Hers and other messages brought a brief suspension of Quaker persecutions with many being freed from gaols. But persecutions of Quakers continued.
“A Declaration From the Harmles & Innocent People of God Called Quakers” (1660), courtesy of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection
After her husband’s death in 1657, Elizabeth Hooton, no longer restrained by wifely duties, was able to express her opinions and continue her ministry. In 1660 while walking on a road, she was assaulted by a priest. After hearing about the wicked acts committed by the Puritans in New England, Elizabeth Hooton decided to sail for America in 1661 with companion Joan Brocksopp. Because of costly fines, masters of ships were not willing to carry Quakers to New England. The women found passage to Virginia, then travelled north by small boat and overland to Boston. When the women went to the gaol to visit their friends, the gaoler took them to Governor Endicott who called them witches. Elizabeth stated that she had come “To warn thee of shedding any more innocent blood.” The Governor’s angry reaction was to send them to prison with their friends, afterwards to carry them for two days’ journey into the wilderness where they were left to starve to death. Undaunted, they managed to make their way to Rhode Island where some Friends were living. While there, they attended the first general meeting of Friends in America. They then journeyed to Barbados where they took a ship for New England and returned to Boston. Included in many examples of the cruelty with which Quakers were treated in New England was the hanging of William Ledda in March 1661.
Upon her return to England in summer 1662, she found that in her absence, much of Hooton’s property had been confiscated, sold to pay fines to the government. On her own initiative, Elizabeth Hooton searched out the king in London to discuss problems with him. To arrange to have conversations with the King, Hooton even pursued him to the tennis court. She took the liberty of contact with the King but she was not in awe of him; she did not kneel to the king, to the amazement of courtiers. In order to satisfy this woman who was stalking him so persistently, the king sought a solution. Realizing that Elizabeth Hooton was a determined woman, the king decided that the solution might be to grant her wish that she might be able to provide a safe haven for Quakers in America.
In the early struggle for religious freedom in America, John Bowne (1627-1695) featured prominently. With his father, John Bowne emigrated from England to America in 1649, going first to New England, and soon to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam where he purchased property at Flushing on Long Island. In 1656, New Amsterdam published an ordinance against illegal meetings outside of the Dutch Reformed Church. In response, in December 1657 the citizens of Flushing, affronted by the persecutions of Quakers and religious policies of Governor Stuyvesant, signed a demand for religious freedom and sent it to the Dutch governor. Known as the Flushing Remonstrance, it is considered to be the precursor of the Bill of Rights guaranteeing freedom of religion in the constitution of the United States. The home of John and Hannah (Feake) Bowne, built in 1661, became a place of worship for Quakers. After a complaint was made to Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant in New Amsterdam in 1662 that Quakers were holding meetings at the house of John Bowne, he was arrested, thrown into gaol, and after his refusal to change his ways, was banished to the Netherlands. On his way to court in Holland, John Bowne was in England in 1663 where he met George Fox and Elizabeth Hooton. After learning that Elizabeth Hooton was preparing to sail to Boston, he sent a letter to his wife with her. In 1664, the Netherlands ceded New Amsterdam to Britain and it was renamed New York.
Strengthened with the letter of permission from King Charles II allowing her “to purchase land in any of his plantations beyond the seas,” Hooton determined to make a second visit to New England, this time taking her young daughter Elizabeth (1640-1693) with her. At Boston, her letter of permission from the King to purchase a house there was not accepted. She then went to Cambridge where she was thrown into a dungeon for several days. A man who took pity on her plight and gave her some milk was also cast into prison and fined £5. The Court ordered her to be whipped with a three-string whip with knots at each end, at three towns with ten lashes each town: Cambridge, Watertown, and Dedham. After being publicly whipped with great severity in the depth of winter, she was again taken into the wilderness and left to starve. Again, she found her way to Rhode Island and f/Friends. Not daunted, she made the 80 mile journey back to Cambridge for her clothes and other possessions which had been taken from her when she was whipped. She was again taken prisoner and with her travelling companions, daughter Elizabeth and Sarah Coleman, the three women were whipped at cart’s tail.
In 1663-64 England appointed Commissioners to visit the colonies of New England to determine all complaints. The Royal Charter granted to the Rhode Island colony in July 1663 created a place which guaranteed some religious freedom regardless of differences of opinion. Rhode Island became a refuge for those who had fled from the intolerance and cruelty of Puritans. But the Conventicle Act 1664 (repealed 1689) forbade religious assemblies of more than five persons outside the Church of England.
Elizabeth Hooton stayed in New England until spring when she attended the funeral of Governor Endicott in March 1665, then returned to England. While his mother was travelling on Quaker missions and being imprisoned in England and America, her son Samuel Hooton had encountered many financial difficulties with fines and losses of their property in England.
Still determined, Elizabeth Hooton wrote letters of complaint to have some justice, for her goods which were taken away in her absence to be restored. She mentioned her service to God, to king, to the commissioners in New England. In December 1666 she received a certificate stating that Elizabeth Hooton had been very serviceable to His Majesty’s Commissioners; it was re-affirmed 4mo 1667. After her return to England, Elizabeth continued her missions, going farther afield, and was again imprisoned at Lincoln in 1665 and 4mo1667 at Leicester.
In the mid 1660s, England was terror-stricken by several disasters. In 1665 the Great Plague of London killed approx 80,000 people. In September 1666, the Great Fire of London gutted the city. In October 1666, a tornado struck Lincolnshire with a path of destruction through many villages.
In 1666 Margaret Fell (1614-1702) wrote “Women’s Speaking Justified,” presenting arguments against the patriarchal interpretations of the Bible which prevented women from being included in religion. In 1669, Margaret Fell married George Fox. Elizabeth Hooton intervened in a dispute between Margaret (Fell) Fox and her son. The following year, in 1670, she sent a letter to Margaret Fox in Lancaster Castle Prison. Friends in Nottinghamshire appealed to king and parliament for relief of sufferings. Margaret Fox was released in April 1671.
In an attempt to continue his mother’s mission to bear witness against cruelty in New England, Elizabeth’s eldest son Samuel Hooton (1633-1709) decided on a religious visit to America in 3mo/May 1666. Later, in the 1680s, Samuel and his family emigrated to New Jersey. Like his older brother, Elizabeth’s son Oliver Hooton (163?-1686) was attracted to life in America. By 1670, Oliver had settled as a merchant in Barbados. Perhaps visiting her son Oliver was one of the reasons that his mother Elizabeth Hooton decided to accompany George Fox to America.
In 1671, Elizabeth Hooton was one of two women, the other Elizabeth Miers, who joined George Fox and a number of men, including James Lancaster, on a trip to the West Indies and North America in order to encourage Friends across the Atlantic. They attended London Yearly Meeting in August 1671, and set out 13 Aug 1671. After landing at Barbados on 3 October 1671, George Fox was extremely ill for some weeks, cared for by Elizabeth Hooton. After three months there, Fox decided to set sail for Jamaica on 8th.11mo/January 1671. A week after their landing in Jamaica, Elizabeth Hooton departed this life on January 8, 1672 at Jamaica, West Indies. She was well the day before she died. Fox described her as “a woman of great age who had travelled much in Truth’s service and suffered much for it.”
Sources:
Hooton, Oliver (16??-1686). A short relation concerning the life and death of that man of God and faithful minister of Jesus Christ, William Simpson, who laid down his body in the island of Barbados the 8th day of the 12th month 1670. Written by Oliver Hooton in Barbados, 16th 12th month 1670.
Manners, Emily. Elizabeth Hooton (1600-1672), First Quaker Woman Preacher. With notes etc by Norman Penney. London: Headley Brothers, 1914.
In early February, Martin Kelley (Quaker writer and senior editor at Friends Journal) wrote a blog post responding to an event titled “The New History of Quakerism.” The free Zoom event was hosted by Haverford College and featured talks from historians Ben Pink Dandelion and Robynne Rogers Healey (the talk is available to view on Vimeo). Kelley’s response focused on the price inaccessibility of academic publishing, asking, “I understand we’re all caught in these capitalist and academic systems. I just wonder what we can do.” The entirety of Martin Kelley’s post can be found on his blog, Quaker Ranter, but will also be reposted below with the author’s permission.
Comments from CFHA’s Eve Schmitz-Hertzberg: “The founders of CFHA in the early 1970’s felt that Canadian Quakers were forgetting their history. CFHA was founded in an attempt to bring Canadian Quaker history to Quakers. It is important for Quakers to know where they came from and where they are going. CFHA was a mix of Quakers, others interested in history, and academics interested in furthering Quaker history. It seems today that it is the academics who are not connected to CFHA who are taking up what study of Quaker history is taking place. It has not all been said before and history can be revisited to find further understanding.
Martin Kelly is very concerned that leaving the study of Quaker history to the academics and publishing to academic institutions is making this information inaccessible to the average person. Quaker meetings have small libraries that are loaned on a trust basis. They cannot afford to buy the expensive academic books and once on their shelves they easily disappear.”
I watched a great Zoom talk this week, hosted by Haverford College and featuring Ben Pink Dandelion and Robynne Rogers Healey. The topic was “The New History of Quakerism” and its focus was on the shifts happening in Quaker academic histories since the 1990s. Dandelion did a fantastic job putting the last 150 years of Quaker historiography in context and laying out the positives of more recent developments: more academic rigor, a wider diversity of voices, changing foci of topics, and strong interest by academic publishers.
Healey identified three major fields in which the new histories are challenging what are often comforting apologetics of previous Quaker studies: the equality of women, slavery and indigenous relations, and pacifism. All these are much more complicated than the stories we tell. She then listed three trends: decentering London and Philadelphia, reevaluating the so-called quietist period, and including academics and histories of the Global South.
Dandelion said these changes were “all for the better,” and while I agree wholeheartedly with him in regards to content, there’s one way in which the new publishing opportunities are failing us: to be blunt, price.
Take the Penn State University Press series, “The New History of Quakerism,” that both panelists have written for.The Creation of Modern Quaker Diversity, 1830 – 1937edited by Stephen W. Angell, Dandelion, and David Harrington Watt is $125.Quakerism in the Atlantic World, 1690 – 1830edited by Healey is $90.Quaker Women, 1800 – 1920, edited by Healey and Carole Dale Spencer is $125.
Both Healey and Dandelion acknowledged the problem of inaccessible prices in their talk. Dandelion suggested that meeting libraries might be able to purchase these books but I think that’s more hopeful than realistic. My small meeting certainly couldn’t. I went to the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Library and they wouldn’t let me check outThe Quaker World(FJreview), the 2022 collection edited by my friends C. Wess Daniels and Rhiannon Grant. It’s got a lot of great authors and I heartily recommend it, but onlyin absentiabecause at $250 I’m never going to read it.
As an amateur Quaker history lover, these are all volumes I would love to read, but I’m not writing this because of my own personal anguish (real as it is!) but because the prices are breaking what has been an essential transmission system for new histories. In the late 1980s, Thomas Hamm publishedThe Transformation of American Quakerism, 1800 – 1907with Indiana University Press. It was $25 and I splurged. It became an important source in my understanding of Quaker divisions and nineteenth-century quietism. Still, decades later, when I write blog posts, or teach Quakerism 101, or answer an online question, I’m often regurgitating perspectives I learned from Hamm.
Go to Facebook, go to Reddit, and people aren’t sharing these groundbreaking histories. Just now, randomly opening Facebook, there’s a post by someone asking about James Nayler, with someone answering it by referencing Hugh Barbour’s mid-1960s history. I love Barbour but he had his own filters and we’ve learned a lot since then.
Every meeting I’ve been a part of had a small number of history nerds in residence who led the Quakerism 101 classes or hosted book groups or Bible study, and they brought their nerdiness to their meeting tasks. To use Healey’s list, many Quakers in the benches still think of Friends’ race relations in terms of abolitionism, still consider early Friends as unalloyed feminists, and rarely give a thought to Friends in the Global South. I recently read a new article about a local meeting that was founded by one of the largest slaveholding families in the area and the only mention of slavery was its much-later anti-slavery society; I really want these kinds of stories to be too embarrassing to publish. Quakers in the benches need the perspectives of these new historians to understand ourselves.
Are there ways that academics can repurpose their inaccessible work so that it can trickle down to a general audience? I’m glad this Zoom talk was open to the public and well publicized: at least some of us could watch it and know the outlines of the changing historiography. But how else can we work to bridge the gap? Blog posts, articles in general publications, podcasts, Pendle Hill pamphlets? What are we doing and what more could we do? I’m in Quaker publishing, obviously, and so part of the problem if there’s a breakdown in transmission. We review the books andQuakerSpeakoften dives into history. My friend Jon Watts’sThee Quakerpodcasthas some wonderfully nerdy episodes. But all these feel like snippets: ten minutes here, 2000 words there. When I go to learn more, I’m stuck by the limitations of the open internet, caught in JSTOR articles I can’t access, or histories only available in print for $100-plus.
I’m not blaming anyone here. I understand we’re all caught in these capitalist and academic systems. I just wonder what we can do.
Also, special shoutout to Rhiannon Grant, who is the only Quaker academic I know of who is seemingly everywhere:Blog,articles inFJ, installments in the“Quaker Quicks” series,podcast segments on the BBCandThee Quaker(she even guested on one of myFJ author chats!). Plus she’s onMastodon,Bluesky, andTikTokand has her ownwelcome-to-Quakers page. I don’t think this ubiquitous approach is at all replicable for other academics. Even I’m not a proponent of social media ubiquity, preferring to focus on a few platforms.
“Assimilate or Be Exterminated” Presented by David Raymond (Mi’kmaw descendant)
December 4, 2023, 7pm Eastern Time
David Raymond, a Quaker from Ottawa, will be giving a talk titled “Assimilate or Be Exterminated” this coming Monday, December 4th. David used the CFHA transcription of the Genessee Yearly Meeting minutes and other CFHA resources in his research. He has collected a trove of supporting documents found at other online sources.
For much of their existence, the Quaker Yearly Meetings of Turtle Island and Britain pursued the eradication of Indigenous Peoples’ cultures and matriarchies as a means to save Indigenous Peoples from the supposed necessity of their extermination (mass killing).
In his presentation, David Raymond will examine Quaker writings and deeds from the late 18th century to the present and will offer reflections on the impact of the truth on his faith journey.
David is a Quaker from Ontario, Canada. He is of European and Mi’kmaw ancestry and is reconnecting to Mi’kmaw culture. For several years he has been researching Canadian Quakers’ historical role in the attempted forced assimilation of Indigenous Peoples.
“Assimilate or Be Exterminated” December 4, 2023 8 pm Atlantic time 7 pm Eastern Time 6 pm Central time 5 pm Mountain time 4 pm Pacific Time
Quaker Theological Discussion Group (QTDG) is welcoming registrants for their 2023 meeting. These panel discussions will be held via Zoom on December 1–2, 2023 at 8–10am PST / 11am–1pm EST / 4–6pm GMT (find the time in your time zone). These events are free!
The theme for QTDG 2023 is “Tradition & Transformation: Quakerism 400 Years After the Birth of George Fox.” This will be part of a year-long conversation and celebration organized by Friends World Committee of Consultation, with events all over the world recognizingGeorge Fox’s 400th birthday.
Image credit: Marcela Teran, Liberation Works
Panel 1, Dec 1:Reconsidering Fox’s Rejection of Rituals Panelists: Alice Elliott-Sowaal and Diego Navarro, Barbara Birch, George Busolo Lukalo, Welling Hall
“Why We Need to Return to Practices that Can Move Us Beyond Inadvertent Somatic Individualism,” Alice Elliott-Sowaal and Diego Navarro
“Throwing out the Baby,” Barbara Birch
“Worship Tradition and Transformation Among Kenyan Friends,” George Busolo Lukalo
“Insights into Quaker Silence from Otto, Thurman, and Panikkar,” Welling Hall
Panel 2: Dec 2:A Great People Gathered? Quakers in Global Context Panelists: Emma Condori Mamani, Mark Russ, Rhiannon Grant, Robert J. Wafula
“Bolivian Indigenous Quakerism,” Emma Condori Mamani
“Whiteness and the Roots of the Quaker Universalist Discourse,” Mark Russ
“Theological Diversity as Growth and Foundation,” Rhiannon Grant
“New forms of orientation for the 21 century Africa Quaker movement,” Robert J. Wafula
Business meeting, Dec 2: if you can, stay after the panel on Saturday to learn more about Quaker Theological Discussion Group andQuaker Religious Thought, and help us brainstorm topic ideas for next year.
We are excited to share this guest post by Daphne Davey. In the Winter 2016 Meetinghouse, Daphne wrote about the New London settlement of English Quakers in Prince Edward Island. Her original article can be read here (pg 12–13).
“THE CANADIAN FRIEND,” AROUND THE FAMILY
NEW LONDON QUAKERS: A CODA
The Winter 2016 issue of the Meetinghouse carried an article I had submitted, “The Lost Dream Revived,” briefly outlining the story of the first settlement of Quakers on Île-Saint-Jean/St. John’s Island (now Prince Edward Island). My summary was based on the then just-published history of this settlement, New London: The Lost Dream, the Quaker Settlement on PEI’s North Shore 1773–1795, by Island historian John Cousins. The publication of this book in 2016, dedicated wholly to a little-known and -explored chapter of PEI and Quaker history, was truly exciting. But fast-forward to 2023 for a delightful coda.
Wendell Feener with the John Adams clock. Photo courtesy of Doug Sobey
I recently visited the Bedeque Area Historical Museum having learned that our Lieutenant Governor had just opened two new exhibits, one of which was the “Wendell Feener Clock Collection: Clocks of the Island 1770–1960.” Mr. Feener donated 173 clocks from his enormous collection to the Museum, all restored by him and in working order.
As the Museum website notes, “[The collection includes] especially significant clocks such as the Adams [longcase or grandfather] clock, brought out from England in 1774 to New London by John Adams …” The clock has been made a focal point for the whole exhibit. It is also reputed to be the oldest known clock extant on PEI. There is a definite thrill (if not a tingling at the back of the neck) when coming face-to-face with an artifact of such historic significance – not to mention craftsmanship and beauty – especially meaningful to PEI Quakers.
The John Adams longcase clock Photo courtesy of Doug Sobey
John Cousins records in his book that Robert Clark, the London Quaker merchant who sponsored and led the settlement expedition, sent a recruiter to Derbyshire who was successful in persuading John Adams and his family (wife and five children, according to a list of settlers dated 1775) to make the transatlantic crossing in 1774. The Adams family were not Quakers, but arrived on the Island in the mixed group of Quaker and other settlers aboard Robert Clark’s ship, the Elizabeth, and were a part of the company which established the Quaker settlement of New London on the north shore, a short distance west of the present-day town. John Adams was one of those who put down roots in the area after many had left, as he is mentioned as being a “farmer” in nearby Springbrook in 1795.
It is very moving to stand at the grave in Charlottetown of Robert Clark, who faced many heartbreaking setbacks to his vision. It would be equally moving to stand at the grave of John Adams (local Friends are hoping it might be located) and contemplate how he would have been pleased to know that his clock has survived right down to the twenty-first century and is giving such pleasure to Museum visitors.
This coda to the story will be especially meaningful to historians and local Quakers who are more deeply familiar with the New London story. My thanks to historian Doug Sobey who recognized the significance of this historical gem and for his permission to use his photos.
On Sunday, 11 June 2023, the Committee of Friends’ Meeting House, Uxbridge, Ontario, held its 214th anniversary service.
A video of the service is available online thanks to Olivia Croxall, and thanks to Sandra Fuller for passing this information along to CFHA.
Built in 1820 on Quaker Hill to replace the former log meeting house, the current Uxbridge Quaker Meeting House is the oldest building in Uxbridge Township, Ontario.
To read more about Uxbridge heritage, you can find Allan McGillivray’s talk on Uxbridge Friends from CFHA’s 2004 annual meetinghere. If you’re interested in reading about how CFHA co-founder Kathleen Hertzberg became involved with the Uxbridge Meeting House, her 2004 account can be foundhere.
Thank you to Carman Foster for transcribing the minutes and to Randy Saylor for overseeing the transcription process. The CFHA is grateful for their generous donation and time.
Beginning in 1845, this Orthodox-held minute book details the business of Pickering Monthly, reorganized in 1842 by the Canada Half Yearly Meeting to combine Uxbridge and Pickering. Meetings were held alternatively at both the Uxbridge and Pickering meeting houses. According to Arthur Dorland, Pickering Monthly Meeting changed to Pickering Executive in 1886 due to the general decline of the meeting and the movement of younger generations to other districts.[1]
Pickering Township was settled by families from Yonge Street, most notably Timothy Rogers. In 1809, Rogers and his family left Yonge Street and settled at Duffin’s Creek. Friends in the area were devastated soon after by an epidemic in 1809–1810 that killed many. At the end of 1810, Rogers returned to the United States and brought back with him more friends to settle the area.
Photo of the Uxbridge Meeting House, May 2019. Photo courtesy of the Uxbridge Quaker Meeting House Facebook page.
Photo of the Pickering Meeting House, built in 1867. The brick building replaced the former two-story meeting house, used from 1833–1866. Photo courtesy of Ajax.ca
[1] Arthur G. Dorland, The Quakers in Canada: A History, 2nd ed. (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1968), 174.
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. 
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.
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!
