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.
This minute book follows the minutes from the Norwich Monthly Meeting, 1834 – 1852. Both books were held by Orthodox Friends. Like many meeting minutes, the transcript reports on the general state of the meeting, as well as meeting business.
The township of Norwich was originally settled by Quakers when Peter Lossing and his brother-in-law Peter DeLong purchased 15,000 acres of land in 1810. A year later, a group of Quaker families from Duchess County, New York, moved with Lossing to the area.
According to Arthur Dorland, the earliest families in the area included the Lossings, DeLongs, Moores, Curtises, Stovers, and Lancasters.[1] They were closely followed by the McLees, Sackridges, Cornwells, McAuleys, Palmers, Siples, and the Hillikers.[2] A meeting was set up in the home of Joseph Lancaster in 1812, and by 1819, Norwich became its own monthly meeting, no longer under the authority of Pelham Monthly.
Photo of the “Old Brick” Quaker meeting house in Norwich, first built in 1850. The building was demolished in 1949. Photo courtesy of the Norwich and District Museum and Archives.
[1] Arthur Dorland, The Quakers in Canada: A History (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1968), 84.
[2] Mary Beth Start, “Peaceable Kingdom – Unsound Friends: Norwich Monthly Meeting Divided,” Canadian Quaker History Journal 75 (2010): 3.
Join us Saturday, May 7th, for the penultimate lecture in CFHA’s Quakerism in the Atlantic World series. The previous eight lectures have proven wonderful opportunities for thoughtful dialogue and engagement in the broader Quaker scholarly community. We’re excited to welcome our next presenter, Dr. Rosalind Johnson. She will present on her chapter, “’Quakers and Marriage Legislation in England in the Long Eighteenth Century.”
The virtual series runs every second Saturday. All lectures will take place at 0900 Pacific / 1200 Eastern / 1700 UK on Zoom. Following the chapters of the volume, each short lecture will run for thirty minutes and include a discussion period at the end. All are welcome to attend the lectures and are we encourage you to share the registration link with friends and colleagues who will find the series of interest. Please register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cfha-lecture-series-quakerism-in-the-atlantic-world-tickets-241366051357
Rosalind Johnson is visiting fellow at the University of Winchester, UK. She works as a researcher for a county history project in Wiltshire and previously taught at the universities of Winchester and Chichester. Her principal research interests lie in the field of religious history in the long eighteenth century, particularly the history of Quakers. She is currently working on the history of Quakers and marriage, and on the history of Quakers in the city of Salisbury, UK, and is particularly interested in the position of women in religious groups, in expressions of popular piety, and in examining how nonconformists interacted with their conformist neighbours. Her publications include “The Case of the Distracted Maid: Healing and Cursing in Early Quaker history,” Quaker Studies (June 2016) and “The Lives of Ejected Hampshire Ministers After 1662,” Southern History (2014). She is currently researching the extent of Quaker faithfulness to the tithe testimony.
We are deeply saddened by the recent passing of our dear friend and Co-Chair of CFHA, Gordon Thompson. Gordon was a tireless advocate for CFHA and provided dedicated leadership which furthered the mission of CFHA.
Below is a link to Gordon’s obituary, which includes a link to the recorded memorial service.
Gordon Thompson, August 26, 1950 – January 14, 2022
As part of last year’s Founders and Builders series, CFHA published a blog about Gord and his incredible work with CFHA. Gord served as chair for many years, wrote countless articles for the Canadian Quaker History Journal and The Meetinghouse, served as The Meetinghouse Editor, singlehandedly organized many Annual General Meeting tours, and was wholeheartedly committed to sharing the story of Quakers in Canadian history. In the past year, he lead the Friendly Fridays sessions, and served as co-chair with Jeffrey Dudiak. Gord’s unwavering dedication to the CFHA has ensured its continual growth and success. To read the full article on Gordon, please see the original post:
This photo of Elma Starr, taken 29 June 1974 by Keith Beaty for the Toronto Star, shows Elma in front of the Yonge Street meeting house. The photo was taken in anticipation of the 1810 meeting house getting central heating, electric lights, and running water. In the photo, Elma is holding Dylan Horvath in her arms, and Jennifer Horvath is on the left.
“The 1810 Quaker meeting hall in Newmarket…” by Keith Beaty, 1974. Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library.
Elma McGrew Starr (1890-1985) was a well-known member of the Canadian Yearly Meeting. You can read more about Elma’s life in an article written by David Newlands in our Founders and Builders series, and in Elma’s autobiography, Contented.
Hannah Doan (alternatively spelled Doane) was born 13 April 1812 near York, Ontario, and died 6 February 1901. Her parents, Ebenezer Doan and Elizabeth Paxson, emigrated from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to Upper Canada in 1808 where they joined the Yonge Street Monthly Meeting.[1]
Hannah married Jacob Lundy, a farmer, in 1833. Both Hannah and Jacob were raised in the Children of Peace sect, a group that broke away from the Yonge Street Monthly Meeting over doctrinal disagreements in 1812.
Photo of Jacob Lundy (left) and Hannah Doan Lundy (right) in 1864. Photos courtesy of Gordon K. Doan at https://www.wikitree.com/photo.php/4/4f/Doan-1093.pdf
Born in East Gwillimbury, Jacob (1809-1878) was the son of Israel Lundy and Rachel Hughes. According to Robynne Rogers Healey, Rachel Hughes Lundy was instrumental in encouraging David Willson, leader of the Children of Peace, in his prophetic visions. Rachel and her mother Eleanor Hughes became Willson’s ardent supporters and joined the Children of Peace after the 1812 schism.[2]
The families of Hannah and Jacob were already intertwined at the time of their marriage. Hannah’s aunt, Mary Doan, married Samuel Hughes, Jacob’s uncle, in 1819. After the death of Mary Doan in 1827, Samuel Hughes married Anna Armitage in 1829. Anna was the daughter of Amos Armitage and Martha Doan, making her Hannah’s cousin and the niece of Samuel’s late wife, Mary.
Photo of Hannah’s father, Ebenezer Doan. Photo from the Sharon Temple Museum Archives.
The Doan family also generally sided with the Children of Peace. Healey notes that Ebenezer Doan, the father of Hannah, was a key member of the Children of Peace and an active reformer. As an architect, he served as the master builder for the ornate Sharon Temple that the group used for meetings. However, he returned to the Society of Friends after disagreements over members engaging in military service during the 1837 Rebellion, including his son-in-law.[3]
Jacob Lundy took part in the Rebellion of 1837. He was taken prisoner at the Gallows Hill ambush and later pardoned by the lieutenant governor.[4] At the time of Jacob’s imprisonment, Hannah and Jacob had two young children, Oliver and Elizabeth. They had five children altogether, Oliver (1834), Elizabeth Paxson (1837), Rachel (1842), Charles Ezra (1846), and Sarah Doane (1850).
A photo of homespun fabric made by Hannah Doan Lundy, 1833. The fabric is held by the Forge and Anvil Museum, photo from the Elgin County Archives and Museum.
Hannah was apparently quite skilled at making homespun fabric. Held at the Forge and Anvil Museum in Sparta, this photo shows three textiles made by Hannah around 1833. Hannah hand-spun, dyed, and wove the fabric.
Along with most members of the Children of Peace, both Hannah and Jacob were buried at the Sharon Burying Ground in East Gwillimbury. Inscribed on their gravestone is Psalm 40: 1, “I waited patiently for the Lord and he inclined unto me and heard me cry.”
[1]History of Toronto and County of York, Ontario, vol II (Toronto: B. Blackett Robinson, Publisher, 1885), 492.
[2]Robynne Rogers Healey, From Quaker to Upper Canadian: Faith and Community Among Yonge Street Friends, 1801-1850 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006), 71.
[4] Albert Schrauwers, Awaiting the Millennium : The Children of Peace and the Village of Hope, 1812- 1889 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 224.
This week on the blog, we’re featuring two photos from the Elgin County Archives. The photos, taken in 1954, depict Friends after the 1954 Half-Yearly Meeting at Yarmouth meetinghouse in Sparta, Ontario. The photos were originally taken for an article in the St. Thomas Times.
The current meetinghouse was built on Quaker Road in 1865 to replace the former log structure.
Photo courtesy of the Elgin County Archives, Archives Storage Rm. 105, C1 Sh2 B3 F11 1.Photo courtesy of the Elgin County Archives, Archives Storage Rm. 105, C1 Sh2 B3 F11 1.
A few weeks ago at the Conference of Quaker Historians and Archivists, I connected with Kyle Jolliffe, a scholar who has written extensively for the CFHA. Part of the paper I gave at the conference discussed the Norwich Monthly Meeting and its progenitor, Peter Lossing (1761-1833). Kyle reached out to me to share his family history: he’s a direct descendant of Lossing through Lossing’s daughter Paulina Lossing Howard Southwick. His line continues through Paulina’s daughter Augusta Malvina Southwick Marshall, her daughter Janet Marshall Estabrook, to Kyle’s maternal grandmother Alice Lossing Estabrook Simpson, and then to Alice’s daughter and Kyle’s mother Pauline Jolliffe. Kyle has generously sent me a number of documents about the Norwich Friends he has inherited over the years from his mother. This series on Norwich Friends will highlight some of these documents and the stories of the Friends who created them.
In 1846, Hannah A. Lossing gave a pamphlet to her sister-in-law, Paulina Southwick. The pamphlet, titled On the Christian Doctrine of the Teaching of the Holy Spirit, as Held by the Society of Friends, was first printed in Baltimore in 1839 by Orthodox Friends. Both Hannah and Paulina were active in
First page of the Pamphlet Hannah A. Lossing gave to Paulina Lossing Southwick in 1846.
the Norwich Monthly Meeting (Orthodox), the only meeting in Upper Canada at the time that had a minority of Orthodox members after the 1828 Hicksite-Orthodox schism.
Hannah A. Lossing (1801-1854), née Cornell, married Benson Lossing (1799-1881) in 1819.[1] Their marriage was recorded in the Norwich Monthly Meeting Record Book, 1819-1842. Benson Lossing, the seventh child of Peter Lossing and Hannah Brill, was active on meeting committees and was often sent as a meeting representative. Similarly, Hannah was active in the women’s Norwich Monthly Meeting, and served over the years as clerk, was often on committees to visit families, and served as an overseer for many years beginning in 1839. In 1842, Hannah was appointed elder.[2]
Hannah Lossing was connected to Paulina Lossing Howard Southwick (1787-1864) through both family and the Norwich Meeting. Paulina Southwick, née Lossing, was the sister of Hannah’s husband Benson Lossing. According to family records, Paulina was widowed in 1810 soon after her first marriage in 1808 to Henry Howard. They had one daughter, Hannah Howard. It’s worth noting that their daughter Hannah Howard married Solomon Jennings in 1830 and was the mother of Emily H. Stowe, the first woman physician to practice in Canada.
After the death of her first husband, Paulina married George Southwick in 1815. Together, they had four children: Mary Ann, Henry, Caroline, and Augusta (1828-1904). Paulina also served as an overseer in the Norwich Monthly Meeting, and often was part of meeting committees and attended the Canada Half Years Meeting as a representative. Paulina and Hannah often served on committees together.
Where Hannah Lossing first received the pamphlet she gave to Paulina is unknown. Given her status within the Norwich Meeting, it’s likely she brought it back from a quarterly or yearly meeting.
The pamphlet contained a discussion about the inspiration of God through scripture, the doctrine of the Trinity, and a note about early Friends maintaining “that some measure of the light of the Spirit of God has been immediately granted to man ever since his fall” (5). The pamphlet went to great lengths to clarify doctrine on the Holy Spirit in particular and the doctrine of Atonement, an unsurprising feature given doctrinal differences that came to a head in the 1828 Hicksite-Orthodox schism.
Elias Hicks, an early leader in what would come to be called the Hicksite faction, was suspicious of the trend towards evangelicalism among North American Friends. In Thomas D. Hamm’s overview of Quakerism in the nineteenth century, he argues that Hicks “saw problems in biblicism that made the Bible the ultimate authority, rather than the Holy Spirit,” and to the Light Within.[3] This grappling with evangelical doctrine can be found in the pamphlet.
In Edwina Newman’s article, “John Brewin’s Tracts: The Written Word, Evangelicalism, and the Quaker way in mid Nineteenth Century England,” she briefly discusses this pamphlet and the stance on scripture expressed within, noting that it “argued that a belief in the divine inspiration of the Bible did not preclude ‘immediate revelation,’ but this only meant that the truths of the Bible could be transmitted directly to the soul, not that there was any message other than that of Scripture.”[4] This is clarified in the pamphlet where the author argues that early Friends believed in the “inward knowledge of Christ in all his gracious offices; not in opposition to the outward knowledge, but certainly in opposition to the resting in the outward knowledge” (9). Their ability to do good work came, the pamphlet claimed, through redemption in Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit as “revealed in the Old and New Testament.”
[1] Not to be confused with American historian Benson Lossing (1813-1891), son of John Lossing. The two Bensons were cousins through their fathers.
[2] Norwich Monthly Women Meeting, 1828-1843, 9 February 1842.
[3] Thomas D. Hamm, “Hicksite, Orthodox, and Evangelical Quakerism, 1805-1887,” in The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies, edited by Stephen W. Angell and Ben Pink Dandelion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
[4] Edwina Newman, “John Brewin’s Tracts: The Written Word, Evangelicalism, and the Quaker way in mid Nineteenth Century England,” Quaker Studies 9 (2005): 243.
Portrait of Lucretia Mott by Joseph Kyle, 1842. Painting located in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.
Know an undergraduate or graduate student interested in Quaker history? The second annual Lucretia Mott Student Essay Award is being hosted by Azusa Pacific University’s Quaker Studies program.
Students are invited to submit papers for the “Lucretia Mott Student Essay Award.” Outstanding student paper submissions that demonstrate creative analysis and/or introduce a new field of research and make an original contribution to the field of Quaker studies will be considered for the award:
$200 award for winning graduate/undergraduate paper
Winning paper may be recommended for publication in the journal Quaker Studies
Submissions must meet the following criteria to be considered:
no more than 3,500 words (including footnotes & bibliography)
in 12-point font and double-spaced
formatted according to Chicago Manual of Style
free of clerical or grammatical errors
the candidate must be enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program at the time of paper submission
Submit electronically by October 31st, 2021 to Jon Kershner ([email protected]). Awards will be announced at the Quaker Studies Program Unit Business Meeting during AAR.
Last month, the blog featured articles by German Friend Lutz Caspers detailing early Quakerism in Germany, nineteenth century Quakerism, and Quakers in twentieth-century Germany. CFHA’s co-founder Kathleen Hertzberg (then Kathleen Brookhouse), spent time in pre-World War Two Germany with British Friends, and her daughter, Evelyn Schmitz-Hertzberg, has provided the blog with two photos of Kathleen’s time there. Reports of travels with an introduction by Robynne Rogers Healey can be read in the Friends Journal, and in Kathleen’s autobiography, From My Demi-Paradise: Memoirs.
Evelyn wrote the following about Kathleen’s time in Germany in her article for our Founders and Builders series:
Kathleen 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. 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. 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.
Every June 13th, the Uxbridge Quaker Meeting House hosts an annual service. This year, on its 212th anniversary service (and 201st anniversary of the meeting house), Chair Rob Croxall and several committee friends worked to provide an online service that can be viewed via YouTube.
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 meeting here. 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 found here.
Photo of the Uxbridge Meeting House, May 2019. Photo courtesy of the Uxbridge Quaker Meeting House Facebook page.
Rosalind Johnson is visiting fellow at the University of Winchester, UK. She works as a researcher for a county history project in Wiltshire and previously taught at the universities of Winchester and Chichester. Her principal research interests lie in the field of religious history in the long eighteenth century, particularly the history of Quakers. She is currently working on the history of Quakers and marriage, and on the history of Quakers in the city of Salisbury, UK, and is particularly interested in the position of women in religious groups, in expressions of popular piety, and in examining how nonconformists interacted with their conformist neighbours. Her publications include “The Case of the Distracted Maid: Healing and Cursing in Early Quaker history,” Quaker Studies (June 2016) and “The Lives of Ejected Hampshire Ministers After 1662,” Southern History (2014). She is currently researching the extent of Quaker faithfulness to the tithe testimony.
