Many organizations have their own creation story, and CFHA is no exception. It came into being out of a concern for the preservation of a small, somewhat decrepit little meetinghouse out in the countryside west of Uxbridge, Ontario. When word that this meetinghouse might be purchased and moved to the United States reached Toronto Monthly Meeting, Kathleen Schmitz-Hertzberg made it her goal that the building and its heritage not be lost. Out of this a wider concern for the preservation and appreciation of Quaker legacy in general developed. Together with fellow Toronto Monthly Meeting member Grace Pincoe, the concept of the Canadian Friends Historical Association took shape. Establishment of the Association in 1972 provided an organization where non-Quaker academics, Quaker descendants, and historians could join members of the Religious Society of Friends in shared concerns and activities.
Photo of Uxbridge Quaker Meeting House
The rest, as they say, is history. A viewing of the CFHA website contents reveals the significant and numerous accomplishments of CFHA during the past 48 years. This includes many scholarly articles, outreach resources (including our new “Who are the Quakers?” panels), plus an ever-growing library of searchable transcriptions of minute books and documents.
While much has been accomplished, many more areas of concern remain. Modern technology now opens possibilities to preserve and promote appreciation of Quaker faith and heritage that Kathleen and Grace could not have imagined. Like many similar volunteer organizations, CFHA has been challenged to adapt and modernize. This work is being diligently pursued. That CFHA has survived 48 years is itself a remarkable achievement. We trust that new generations of members and supporters will help sustain and realize the great potential and important work of CFHA in years to come. As for that little meetinghouse near Uxbridge, it has been lovingly embraced by the wider community and is cared for by the Friends of Uxbridge Meetinghouse.
The Canadian Friends Historical Association is a similar success. As we celebrate 48 years of achievements, we wish to thank the very many members, contributors, and supporters who have made CFHA an unique, fun, and enriching community.
“The Best Man for Settling New Country…”: The Journal of Timothy Rogers Edited by Christopher Densmore and Albert Schrauwers
This guest post is contributed by Albert Schrauwers and includes his reflections on editing Timothy Rogers’ journal alongside Christopher Densmore. Rogers’ journal can be found here:http://www.cfha.info/journalrogers.pdf
Photo of Timothy Rogers’ journal
Timothy Rogers is a subject of perennial interest to genealogists and historians, and I welcome this opportunity to broaden its availability. Rogers’s Journal contains a riveting narrative of his spiritual development and (unsuccessful) attempts at the ministry; his travels across the north-eastern states to Maine, Nova Scotia and PEI in service of the ministry; and his role in opening new Quaker settlements in Vermont, Newmarket, and Pickering. It is the most extensive first-person narrative of an early nineteenth century Quaker pioneer outside the manuscripts of David Willson, leader of the Children of Peace. It is thus of interest to Quaker and local historians in both Canada and the US, and to a very large number of descendants (including those who went on to create Rogers Communications).
Timothy Rogers’s Journal was published by CFHA twenty years ago, the product of years of careful preparation. The choice of Rogers’s Journal seemed obvious at the time. As a major source of historical and genealogical information, it was the single largest subject of interest to visitors of the Dorland Room. The journal itself, however, was in a fragile state and could not withstand heavy usage. The Yearly Meeting had decided not to allow the Archives of Ontario to microfilm its collection, but lacked the resources to do so itself. Producing an easily accessible copy was a pressing need.
Producing the journal was a complicated matter. Making a photocopy of the fragile journal from which the transcription could be made without damaging it was only the first step. Decisions also needed to be made as to how the transcription would be made. Rogers had little formal education, used erratic spelling and no punctuation. A copy of a page and its direct transcription were given in the published journal to indicate the actual tenor of his writing. It was decided, however, to make the journal as accessible as possible to a modern audience by following modern orthographic conventions. In doing so, some valuable information was lost. It was clear, for example, that Rogers spelled phonetically, hence the original journal conveyed his pronunciation and speaking style. Given the spiritual journey that Rogers recorded, it was also considered important to highlight to modern (perhaps secular) readers how grounded the journal was in biblical references. This entailed adding quotation marks to biblical passages, and providing footnoted citations. Further extensive footnotes were added drawing on Monthly Meeting minutes and secondary sources that clarified references made by Rogers; two appendices, containing journals by his descendant Wing Rogers, and fellow traveller, Joshua Evans, were included for the same reason. The preparation of the transcription was thus a long, laborious process.
As the copyright for the journal itself (as opposed to the transcription) was retained by the Yearly Meeting, it was decided that CFHA would self-publish the result, giving Friends greater control over it use. Unfortunately, we lacked the means of promoting it as it deserved. Dissemination on the web will at last make the work generally available, and further evidence the impact of early Quakers on Canadian history.
The Canadian Quaker Highlight series features the stories of Friends whose lives are part of the Canadian Quaker experience.
Anna (Engeltie, or ‘Angelica’) Solmes was born in Dutchess County, New York, in 1774.[1] Anna immigrated to Upper Canada in the late 1790s after her marriage to Jacob Cronk. Jacob Cronk, alongside his father Abraham, had already spent a number of years in Upper Canada before his marriage to Anna. Historian Margaret McBurney recalls, “In order to finance a trip to the United States to bring back his bride, young Jacob had to sell part of his land and spend the winter working in Adolphustown cutting cordwood for four dollars a month plus board.”[2]
Anna and Jacob quickly integrated themselves into their nearest Quaker meeting. Jacob was accepted by the Adolphustown Monthly meeting in 1798, and Anna a year later. The couple’s dedication to their faith was strong. Anna became an elder in 1804, and by 1807, Anna and Jacob began hosting an indulged meeting in their Sophiasburgh home. This meeting later became the Green Point Preparative Meeting in 1811. The couple also hosted a number of travelling Quaker ministers, including Rufus Hall in 1798, Elias Hicks in 1803, and Phoebe Roberts in 1821. During her travels, Roberts described the Cronk family as “valuable friends,” noting they were “very wealthy people and appeared to live in much harmony.”[3]
Anna’s active involvement in the Upper Canadian meetings is evident throughout meeting minutes. Anna was a regular attendee of the Canada Half-Yearly Meeting from its inception in 1810 and was often chosen to attend the New York Yearly Meeting as a representative. Her presence is peppered throughout meeting minutes as part of numerous committees formed to look into schools, troubling issues, establishing new meetings, and visiting members.
Like many nineteenth-century women, Anna experienced significant heartbreak in her life. Anna and Jacob were vocal proponents of the Hicksite faction during the 1828 Orthodox-Hicksite schism that affected Quaker meetings across North America. The Orthodox West Lake Monthly Meeting minutes accused Anna of being “instrumental in setting up separate meetings in conformity with Elias Hicks,” and allegedly “pushing the half years meeting clerks, and afterwards denying it in the face of the monthly meeting.”[4] Already in her mid-fifties, Anna suffered through the devastating separation of a community she had been actively involved in for over thirty years. A decade later, Anna’s only son Samuel died in 1841. Samuel left behind his wife Eliza and his own young son.
Anna’s Quaker faith remained a central tenet in her life. In the Hicksite West Lake Monthly Meeting, Anna continued on as an overseer and elder, even travelling on a religious visit with Margaret Brewer in 1836 to Friends in Philadelphia and New York.[5] Anna was active in the West Lake meeting into her old age, and was last recorded as an elder in 1860, just three years before she died at the age of eighty-nine.
A photo of the Cronk home in Sophiasburgh (photo found in Margaret McBurney’s Homesteads, 54).
[1] Information on Anna Solmes and her family can be found in the Herbert Clarence Burleigh Fonds, folder 2324, box 12.2, file 5.
[2] Margaret McBurney, Homesteads: Early Buildings and Families from Kingston to Toronto (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 52.
[3] Leslie R. Gray, ed. “Phoebe Roberts’ Diary of A Quaker Missionary Journey to Upper Canada.” Ontario History 42 (1950): 24.
[4] West Lake Monthly Meeting Women (Orthodox) 1828-1851 (C-4-1), 15 January 1829.
[5] West Lake Monthly Meeting Women (Hicksite) 1825-1851 (H-11-5) 18 May 1836.
Randy Saylor has supported CFHA in many ways. He initiated the CFHA website and served many years as webmaster. He also initiated in Canada collaborative internet transcription of Quaker minute books, a project he continues to administer. A Quaker descendant himself, Randy has spent decades researching and writing about diverse aspects of Quaker experience. To assist other researchers, some years ago Randy compiled a guide to understanding the structure and availability of Quaker records. Who better than to provide a virtual presentation on the subject to the Quinte branch of Ontario Ancestry this past weekend?
Over 80 participants logged in on June 20th to the presentation. Randy first acquainted the viewers with the hierarchal structure of Quaker meetings and the interlocking nature of their records which results. This provides viewers a good sense of how records of activity related to membership, marriage or disownment. For example, records can originate in a smaller local “Preparative” meeting and then advance upward to then also appear in subsequent records of the “Monthly’” meeting and on, in some cases, to the “Quarterly”, “Half-Yearly”, and Yearly meeting sessions respectively. Likewise, the written decisions, financial requirements, epistles, and amendments to the book of Discipline moved the other way through the successive superior meetings back down to the local Preparative meeting, being duly recorded at every stage. These records were supplemented by those of communications such as certificates of removal, that were exchanged directly between meetings. The net effect has been a boon to researchers as some aspects of the historical information may be preserved somewhere in the document chain even if a particular minute book may have been lost or destroyed.
Randy made use of various charts of the historical meetings under the care of New York Yearly Meeting and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to show how extensive the Quaker presence had been in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Arthur Dorland charts of initial to early 20th century meetings in Canada were used to show the numerous meetings which existed in the greater Quinte area. These were in a band extending from Adolphustown in the east through Prince Edward County to Cold Creek meeting (present day Wooler Monthly Meeting), the only surviving meeting, in the west.
Randy was able to draw upon his own family history to illustrate some aspects of Quaker practice and principles. His Quaker ancestor Jemima Hubbs was disowned from her local meeting when she “married out” to captain Charles Saylor. Such “going out of the good order of our Society” could be remedied by providing the meeting with a written acknowledgement of error. Like many other Quaker women in like circumstances, Jemima provided the requisite letter and was restored into membership.
Randy provided a tour of the CFHA website, including the many searchable transcriptions of local Quaker minute books available on the site. Participants were also provided access to Randy’s recently updated Quaker research guide. This useful aid to researchers is available on the CFHA website.
The presentation was illustrated with some 20 slides in a PowerPoint format. The PowerPoint and text of the presentation has been posted on the Quinte branch website and can be accessed here: https://vimeo.com/431945751/f2828d0745
In its almost fifty-year history, CFHA has come a long way! From the association’s publication of its first newsletters in the year it was established to our very recent entree into the digital world of blogging, the goal has remained the same: preserving and communicating the on-going history and faith of Friends in Canada and their contribution to the Canadian experience. This month we are beginning a series on CFHA’s founders and builders. Each month we will introduce you to one of the individuals who played an important role in creating or maintaining CFHA over the years. We hope that you will enjoy meeting these dedicated people. We look forward to your comments and memories on these posts. Our first essay is about one of CFHA’s co-founders, Kathleen Hertzberg, written by her daughter, Eve Schmitz-Hertzberg.
Kathleen (Schmitz-) Hertzberg nee Brookhouse
by Eve Schmitz-Hertzberg
Kathleen Brookhouse was born in 1916 near Preston, Lancashire, England. She became a member of Stafford Meeting in 1935 and attended Woodbrooke College for one academic year through 1937-1938. She experienced a leading as a young person to give service in the Society of Friends, which led her to travel to Germany in 1938/39 under the auspices of the Friends.[1] It was there she met her future husband Fritz Schmitz-Hertzberg. However, they were separated for ten years by the events of the war and his time in Russia as a prisoner of war.[2] She worked under the Germany Emergency Committee as a case worker helping refugees from Germany. She also served in the Friends Ambulance Unit in London during the war and with the Friends War Victims Relief Committee. After the war, Kathleen travelled with Fred Tritton to visit Friends in Germany and then did relief work in Berlin. Fritz and Kathleen were married in the Stafford Meeting in 1949 before immigrating to Canada in 1951.
Toronto Friends were very helpful, and Kathleen worked in Friends House Toronto until she and Fritz moved to Pickering where Fritz started his medical practice. They became members of Toronto Monthly Meeting. Kathleen was active in the Society of Friends and in the local community with the Red Cross and Community Care. She was chairman of Canadian Friends Service Committee from 1965 until 1972. She represented Canadian Yearly Meeting (CYM) at FWCC and was involved in ecumenical work. She gave the Samuel P. Gardiner (SPG) lecture at CYM in 2002: Doing the Work: Finding the Meaning. She lived in Pickering in the house that she and Fritz built together in 1963. In 2012 she self-published her memoirs: From My Demi-Paradise.
Kathleen Hertzberg, left, stands beside her mother, Edith Brookhouse. In her arms is her son Andy, and her daughter Eve is at their feet. This photo is believed to be taken on the porch of the Yonge Street Meeting House, c. 1954.
Living in Pickering, Kathleen discovered that in the 1800s the earliest settlers of the area were Quakers. In 1969 she learned that the Quaker meeting house in Uxbridge (1820) was about to be moved to the USA to be used as a child’s playhouse. Through Toronto Meeting, Kathleen had been in contact with Arthur Dorland, professor of history at University of Western Ontario. Through this connection, she became aware that much of the Quaker heritage in Canada was gradually disappearing. In 1970 Grace Pincoe and Kathleen declared that what was needed was a Canadian Friends Historical Association (CFHA) to work to collect, research, and preserve Quaker heritage in Canada. From the beginning CFHA was separate from Canadian Yearly Meeting. This allowed those outside of Friends to belong to CFHA.
In the fall of 1972 CFHA sent out an invitation outlining its objectives and encouraging interested individuals to join. The inaugural meeting of CFHA was held on 19 August 1972. Kathleen became the first clerk with Walter Balderstone as chairperson and Grace Pincoe as secretary. Arthur Dorland gave his blessing and was made honorary chairman. Walter died in 1978 and Kathleen became chairperson until 1995. Kathleen wrote A Short History of the Canadian Friends Historical Association 1972 – 1992 (CQHJ summer 1992) to celebrate the association’s first twenty years. She remained a life member of CFHA until her death in 2019.
In the excitement of CFHA’s first year, five executive meetings were held in 1973. A newsletter, Canadian Quaker History Newsletter, was established. Three or even four issues were published annually. Kathleen often wrote an editorial introduction to the issue. In 1989 a bound edition of historical articles called Canadian Quaker History Journal was started.
During Kathleen’s tenure as chairperson many tasks were undertaken. Historical Quaker materials from the University of Western Ontario were indexed and microfilmed. A grant was obtained to do this work. The materials were moved to Pickering College in Newmarket and The Quaker Archives and Dorland Room were established. Materials of historic interest, especially journals by individual Quakers, now had a potential home and were donated to the archives. The Newsletter and Journal encouraged people to write Quaker history for publication. Meetings were encouraged to collect historical documents such as minute books and to write their meeting histories.
CFHA has been an active voice and advocate for Quaker history. It has been involved in the placing of several historical plaques in Canada at Quaker historical sites. Connections to other historical organizations, nationally in Canada and internationally as well, were established. CFHA met annually and, as part of each AGM, a pilgrimage or tour of Quaker historical sites was organized. These bur tours have been inspirational as guides related stories of Quaker history at the sites where they occurred.
CFHA honoured Arthur Dorland in 1979. He had planned to give a talk at the AGM but died before it could take place. A brochure was printed to promote CFHA. A Guide to Quaker Sites in Canada was planned in 1982. Kyle Jollife received a grant to do oral histories. Yonge Street Meeting house was restored in 1975. The Journal of Timothy Rogers was donated in 1974 to the archives and was later transcribed and published (2000). Many of the dreams of the founders like Kathleen have been realized.
Kathleen was an enthusiastic and dedicated contributor to the Canadian Friends Historical Association since its inception. She quotes from T.S. Elliot: “A people without history/ Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern/ Of timeless moments” (Four Quartets, “Little Gidding”).
[1] See report in the Canadian Quaker History Journal 74 (2009).
[2] Fritz’ account of his time as a POW in the Soviet Union translated from the German by Kathleen is published as The Night is Full of Stars (Sessions of York, 2009).
As set out in the Canadian Friends Historical Association governance, the Annual General Meeting of the Association will be held on a weekend towards the end of September. This year’s AGM will take place on September 26th, 2020. Please save this date!
We can expect some changes thanks to Covid-19. The main meeting room at Friends House in Toronto has been booked, but it is too early to know whether an in-person AGM will be possible. Look for updates in the coming weeks.
It is very likely that even if an in-person meeting is possible a virtual component will also be included. This will allow members from the Maritimes to the Pacific to take part in the proceedings.
We are striving to prepare year-end reports, minutes of last year, etc., into a ‘documents in advance’ package. This will be distributed far enough ahead of the meeting to facilitate efficient conduct of business and our typical friendly convivial gathering. We look forward to welcoming everyone in September.
The Toronto Quaker Meeting continues to be an active meeting to this day. More about the history of the meeting can be found on the first page of the transcription.
The minutes themselves provide a wealth of information for researchers and genealogists alike. Visitors were welcomed and certificates of membership accepted from meetings in England (Newcastle, London, and Norwich), Ireland (Lisburn and Dublin), and across the United States (Kansas, New York, Iowa, and Indiana).
The following insight into the minutes has been provided by CFHA co-chair, Gordon Thompson:
The latest minute book to be transcribed is that of the Toronto Monthly Meeting (orthodox) 1893-1902. To readers familiar with transcriptions of the 1860s or earlier, the tone and shift in principles away from the primacy of the personal ‘inner light’ to one based on salvation and acknowledgement of sin will be jarring. This minute book commences a little more than ten years after the Orthodox/Conservative split, and it appears the Orthodox meeting continues to reverberate and rebound away from the traditional founding Quaker precepts. Researchers will find an abundance of family names and like references. Please note that this is the earliest minute book of any of the early Toronto meetings that is known to have been preserved and available for microfilming and transcription.
Our thanks and appreciation go out to Carman Foster once again for his transcription from images of the original text, and to Randy Saylor for researching and writing the detailed introductory notes. Thanks are also due to Jane Sweet, a member of the Toronto Monthly Meeting Library Committee, for tracking down Toronto Monthly Meeting library sources.
Friends’ Meeting House at 28 Pembroke St., Toronto. The Toronto Preparative Meeting purchased this meeting house in 1881 and it was in use until 1902. Photo is courtesy of the Toronto Public Library.
It is with great pleasure that we welcome Robynne Rogers Healey and Sydney Harker as the new CFHA Blog Editorial Team. Together they will build and expand on the work that has been accomplished by Allana Mayer since the blog was launched four months ago.
Many of our members will remember both Robynne and Sydney. Robynne is currently Professor of History, and Co-director of the Gender Studies Institute at Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia. She is the author of From Quaker to Upper Canadian: Faith and Community among Yonge Street Friends, 1801-1850 (McGill-Queens University Press, 2006) and multiple articles and chapters on Quaker history. Her book, Quakerism in the Atlantic World, 1690-1830 (in which she and Sydney have a co-authored chapter) is forthcoming from Penn State University Press this year.
We are delighted to have the assistance and support of Robynne and Sydney and encourage members and viewers to submit contributions of posts and feature articles to them. For more information contact [email protected]
Plaque of the Dunkerron Quaker cemetery. Image from LostCemeteries.blogpost.com.
Friends gather to worship in their Meeting Houses. They do Meeting business there and obviously socialize. Although members may live some distance away, they are said to come from their Meeting, in this case from Tecumseth Preparative Meeting.
Researchers might prefer the Lot and Concession of a family, where births and deaths occur. What we learn from this document is that Friends set their sights on the Meeting House. Weddings happen here, and social life revolves around the pulse of Quaker worship as much as of the seasons. Indeed, Joseph John Kiteley is appointed “to dig graves,” a measure of permanence.
Preparative Meetings are devolved from Monthly Meetings. As the minutes show, the MM has considerable authority and is equally devolved from the Yearly Meeting and so on, even to the Philadelphia YM or the London YM. These levels of organization produce Minutes, Directives, Devotional Tracts, Assessments and a set of querulous Queries, which are a study in themselves. All of these elements are seen and revealed in the Minutes.
Much else can be deduced (and, with caution, inferred).
In the Tecumseth Minutes [TPM] evidence is available to link with the larger history of the area, add specifics to government documents and confirm family connections and history. Equally the minutes are a stark, often awkwardly formal documentation, too sparse to be a genealogical goldmine.
Here is a sample of what can be gleaned both personal and general from these pages.
TPM is a spin off from Yonge Street Monthly Meeting. Two members are appointed to attend the MM “and to report.” TPM would meet on Wednesdays, the time apparently designated by MM as 10:00AM. This schedule is not held rigidly, as the reading will show.
Here is the geographic difficulty Tecumseth representatives faced. Three possible routes to Meeting can be seen. The shortest route is to take highway 9 south of Dunkerron east to Yonge Street and south a piece to the Meeting House. That counts as some 18 kilometres, which takes 22 minutes as the car drives. Horse and buggy are another matter, as is the realization that Friends were living in 19th century conditions. If you have Googled the map, the presence of the Pottageville Swamp looms. It bestrides the easy route to Meeting. A more southerly passage on the Lloydtown line to Kettleby is no more promising. In winter, the route would be possible, but several instances in the minutes show that “impassible roads” and Simcoe County’s well-documented spring blizzards and floods make the shortest route adrift or a quagmire. That most roads throughout Ontario were a quagmire is well understood.
The north route makes sense when conditions required, but it is 22 kilometres at least. North on 27 is Bondhead, the Post Office, where a traveler would go east on 88 and find the bridge at Bradford over the Holland River down to Holland Landing, where Yonge Street begins, and thence to Newmarket and the Meeting House. Sunday is a good time to travel and evenings paced by a prime horse or team would be pleasant.
The isolation is real for this small community of Friends. The minutes show them under long-term leadership but an ever-diminishing membership. The self census of 1871 and 1875, the only detailed reports recorded, show a heavy drop in members. From 106 the complement falls to 44. One wonders to where and why 62 Friends left the fold. Yet their urge to carry on is poignant.
Assessment reports show a dedication to local needs and to principles of a global calling. Cash amounts are collected on a progressive basis, it appears, and suggest a frugal but growing economy.
By the 1890s the minutes become spotty, meetings are not held, representatives more often do not make it to MM. The Men’s and Women’s meetings combine and switch to Sunday meetings.
And then the Minutes stop.
More directly and personally, figures show up. Peter Doyle stands out almost until his death in 1888. His land is used for the cemetery and the Meeting House. His firstborn is buried there as is his first wife, Phoebe Minn, before the House is built. Peter is “in care of the House” institutionally. He seems to hold out for his $12 fee for service, with the Committee charged with “finding a Friend to care for the House” taking as long as three months to reappoint Peter. The fourteenth time Peter is faced with the care of the house, the decision is deferred eight times until Peter is removed and Jacob Doyle is appointed. Peter is 82 years old.
As his name fades away, another long-time caretaker is found. Jacob Doyle, already established as Clerk, takes on the role at $6 per annum, or “50 cents per month” as he must have preferred.
Jacob is the only lived child of Peter and Phoebe. His story goes beyond the Minutes and is recorded as a bachelor of dedication, wealth and generosity.
There are a number of Hughes men who contribute to the community. Amos Hughes teams with Peter Doyle regularly as representatives of TPM to MM. His name disappears suddenly, as does his presence on the census. Has he returned to Pelham or even New York? Then, Samuel Hughes appears on the record.
In addition, new members are installed as their requests are recorded.
Here a simple wisdom is shown. Rookies are welcomed and in a moment are teamed with veterans to represent TPM at MM. Commitment is strengthened and a new member is introduced to the larger parent Meeting. The six new members recorded between 1873 to 1888 is sparse growth indeed. They, of course, represent families, but the dwindling character of the experiment is felt.
As a last reflection, the case of Henry Doyle is curious. Henry is the 6th of Peter’s five boys and two girls. Rachel Haight, of American stock from the Haights of Pickering Township by Duffin’s Creek, marries Peter at MM in 1836 and carries on the frontier tradition with energy and success.
Their first born, John Haight Doyle moves to Pilkington Township near Elora, and breaks the bush there. Margaret [Doyle] Wilson researched her great-grandfather and notes that he became Methodist. Elora was well away from his co-religionists. The need for a religious community placed them in the hands of the burgeoning, evangelical Methodists, where John is active. His first born, John Alan, becomes a Minister in the Great North West, covering the Prairie region.
Henry stays in Tecumseth Township to take over the homestead and the adjacent farm. He shows in the minutes as a mature adult, active as Clerk, on committees, representative to MM, organizing various assessments, even caring for the House and a repair project. The Homestead is parts of Lots 24 and 23, Concession 3 Tecumseth. Immediately south on Lot 23 Concession 2 another Irish family is settled.
James Manning is the son of Joseph, an Anglo-Irishman who was “a pay master of the forces in Ireland” and a Methodist. Now there’s an incentive to emigrate, as the Pale becomes unsafe after the Great Rebellion of 1798. James is an Evangelical Wesleyan Methodist preacher with energy. He builds the Dunkerron Methodist community, represents the church in General Conference and sends three sons into the ministry.
James has a daughter, Ann Jane, or “Annie”, who lives, as the farmers say, “within buggy distance.” Henry and Annie are married in 1875. Peter Doyle resisted the Hicksites. John has gone Methodist and Henry has married one. But Henry is not disowned. He carries on, showing frequently in the Minutes as active and an office holder. There is the curiosity. Certainly, Annie does not convert. She dies at 35 and is buried in the Dunkerron Methodist Cemetery beside the new red brick Methodist Church.
Henry marries again, ten years later, returning to an Orthodox Quaker family, with Jennie Lynd. Henry’s eldest, Manson Doyle, only ten when his mother is taken, is said by his daughter “to have broken his father’s heart” and became a Methodist Minister, although he married a West Lake MM Quaker, Augusta Belle Saylor. Manson journeyed west, as well, and became an energetic builder of Union, after which he became Youth Secretary of the United Church until age 75.
But Henry was never “disowned,” as so many Quakers were for “marrying out.” He is buried in the Tecumseth PM burial ground with Jennie Lynd. Nearby are Joseph and Peter and Rachel, representatives of the faithful Orthodoxy.
“Tecumseth Prep meet of Friends Held 7 mo 4th 1888: It was proposed & united with that this meeting be held in joint scession after this month.”
Simply, without flourish or regrets, the Meeting begins its final years, exactly 5 months after Peter’s death.
The Joint meetings carry on until 1898. Names such as Susannah, Delia, and Martha Ella Hughes appear as William Chantler and Margaret, the newer Friends, take on responsibility. By 1895 Annie Molison is in “care of the House” for $6 per annum. Henry’s last reference is 11-4-1885, although he is an energetic 37. Jacob Doyle remains active to the end.
A comparison to the Yonge Street MM minutes will build on these insights. Good stories never end.
Every blog post we publish here will automatically appear there.
A special thanks to Sydney Harker for volunteering her time and helping us set this up.
The page will not be monitored by the CFHA executive, so if you’d like our attention, please come to the blog to post comments, or send us emails from our contact page.
