Canadian Friends Historical Association

Category: Resources

  • “Spiritual Life” by Charles Zavitz

    “Spiritual Life” by Charles Zavitz

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

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

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

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

    …

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

    …

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

     

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

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

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

     

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

  • The Canadian Friend & Archives Corner

    Have you checked out the Canadian Yearly Meeting’s latest Canadian Friend magazine for 2023? It includes a few historical articles that might be of interest to members, including one by Daniel Nelson on Harry Orchard and the Wooler Monthly Meeting in Ontario. Wooler MM was first established in 1815 as the Cold Creek Indulged Meeting under the care of Adolphustown.

    The Canadian Quaker Library and Archives (CQLA) has also been contributing to the Archives Corner, with tips and information for meetings and researchers. You can find the full online version of the Canadian Friend here.

     

  • Uxbridge Quaker Meeting House 214th Anniversary Service

    Uxbridge Quaker Meeting House 214th Anniversary Service

    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 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.

     

     

  • New Transcription: Nine Partners Monthly Meeting (Men), 1820–1851

    We have updated our transcriptions page with a new upload: Nine Partners Monthly Meeting (Men), 1820–1851.

    Thank you to Sheila Havard for transcribing the minutes and to Randy Saylor for overseeing the transcription process. CFHA is grateful for their generous donation and time.

    According to the Swarthmore Archives, “Nine Partners Monthly Meeting was set off from Oblong Monthly Meeting by Purchase Quarterly Meeting in 1769. It then became part of Nine Partners Quarterly Meeting upon its establishment in 1783. The meeting separated in 1828 into Orthodox and Hicksite branches. The Hicksite branch became an Executive Meeting in about 1928 under Nine Partners Half Yearly Meeting; in 1951, membership had dwindled and it merged with Oswego Monthly Meeting. The Orthodox branch moved to a new meeting house in 1882; in 1926 Friends in Millbrook joined with two other denominations to build a new church building in a union known as Lyall Memorial Federated Church.”

    Many families who settled in Adolphustown and West Lake came from Nine Partners, and the family names included in the transcription will be familiar to those who have looked into Upper Canadian Quaker families.

    Exterior of Nine Partners Meetinghouse in 1936, courtesy of the Historic American Buildings Survey. The meeting house was built in 1780.

     

  • New Transcription: Pickering Monthly Meeting, 1845 – 1867

    We have updated our transcriptions page with a new upload: Pickering Monthly Meeting Minutes, 1845–1867.

    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.

    [1] Arthur G. Dorland, The Quakers in Canada: A History, 2nd ed. (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1968), 174.

  • New Transcription: Oswego Monthly Meeting (Women), 1799 – 1817

    We’ve updated our transcriptions page with a new upload: Oswego Monthly Meeting (Women) 1799 – 1817.

    Thank you to Swarthmore College Archives for providing images of the minute book, first scanned in 1950, and to Carman Foster, who transcribed the minutes.

    Established in 1799, Oswego Monthly Meeting was originally set off from Nine Partners MM. The meeting separated during the Hicksite-Orthodox schism of 1827-28, and both factions are the predecessors of active meetings: Bulls Head-Oswego (Hicksite, name changed in 1980) and Poughkeepsie Monthly Meeting (Orthodox, name changed in 1870).

    Many names in this transcription will be familiar to those who have read the Upper Canadian meeting minutes, including Dorland, Bull, Haight, Hoag, White, Moore, Palmer, and Clapp. Mentions of the Upper Canadian meetings are found in Deborah Clapp’s 1800 certificate of removal to Canada, Mahitable Bull’s removal to Adolphustown in 1803, Ruth Christy’s removal to Adolphustown in 1803, and Phoebe (nee Barker) Blount’s removal to Adolphustown in 1814 after her marriage to Cornelius Blount. Further removals to Upper Canada include Huldah Wilcox to Pelham Monthly Meeting in 1815.

    Photo of Oswego Monthly Meeting House, built 1790. Photo from Alson D. Van Wagner’s “A Short History of Oswego Monthly Meeting,” Bulls Head-Oswego Monthly Meeting, Clinton Corners, NY, 1986.

  • New Transcription: Nine Partners Monthly Meeting, 1769 – 1779

    We’ve updated our transcriptions page with a new upload: Nine Partners Monthly Meeting (Men), 1769 – 1779.

    Thank you to Swarthmore College Archives for providing images of the minute book, first scanned in 1950, and to Carman Foster and Randy Saylor, who transcribed the minutes.

    This minute book details the beginning of Nine Partners MM, first set off from Oblong MM by Purchase Quarterly in 1769. With this new inclusion, CFHA’s online transcriptions of Nine Partners MM now stretch from 1769 to 1811, with records of testimonies, marriages, and removals from 1769 to 1897.

  • Preserving History: FHL Provides CFHA with Digital Images of the Earliest Nine Partners Monthly Meeting Books (1769 – 1851).

    Preserving History: FHL Provides CFHA with Digital Images of the Earliest Nine Partners Monthly Meeting Books (1769 – 1851).

    Friends Historical Library (FHL) at Swarthmore College, PA, hosts one of the most extensive archives of early American Quaker meeting minute books and other documents to be found anywhere in North America.

    All books were photographed in 1950 by Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City and are of a very high quality.

    FHL and CFHA have worked collaboratively for many years to provide improved access to the content of certain minute books. Of particular interest to Canadian Friends and researchers are the minute books which relate to the Nine Partners Monthly Meeting and those of its affiliated Preparative meetings located in New York state and adjacent area of Vermont, the Hudson River Valley and watershed. 

    These meetings were the source meetings for many of the earliest Quaker families to migrate to Upper Canada and establish new meetings in Adolphustown (1798), throughout Prince Edward County (West Lake Meetings) and later meetings found by Timothy Rogers at Pickering and Newmarket.

    As a result of the collaboration, members of the CFHA transcription group have been able to complete and post on the CFHA website complete and searchable transcriptions of the major Nine Partners and affiliated Meetings. Minutes of Ferrisburg, PA are of particular interest as they include many references to Timothy Rogers.

    More recently FHL has been able to provide digital images of three minute books of Muncy Monthly Meeting in Pennsylvania. These minute books provide many details of the removals to Upper Canada from the meeting located at Catawissa, PA. The Catawissa Meeting largely relocated to Uxbridge, Ontario and established the Uxbridge preparative meeting under Yonge Street Monthly Meeting in Newmarket, Ontario. Two of the Muncy / Catawissa books have been completely transcribed and posted on the CFHA website. Transcription of the third and longest minute book is ongoing and it is expected to be posted sometime next year.

    Although the FHL holdings of Nine Partners Monthly Meeting have included additional minute books and documents, CFHA has not been able to provide transcriptions because neither the microfilm images nor the original documents had been digitized.  We are pleased to announce that FHL has recently digitized additional material, including the earliest initial Nine Partners minutes and has provided images to CFHA.

    Transcription Coordinator Randy Saylor has received these latest images and reports the following:

    • Images 0001 – 0024 are of a births and deaths register 1810 – 1893
    • Images 1025 – 1798 – 1898 are a marriage register 1798 – 1898 with a 6 page typed index at the end.
    • Images 008 – 0234 are the Nine Partners Men’s Minutes 1769 to 1779 that we have been waiting for!! This will give us a great insight into the war years.
    • Images 0235 – 546 are a minute book for the years 1820 – 1851

    These new minute book images will allow us to learn more about how this meeting dealt with the onset of and duration of the American Revolution up to our existing transcriptions dating from 1779. We also expect to learn additional details of the complaint brought against Philip Dorland. 

    Please watch this space for further updates. Also please note that our new set of images provides us an opportunity to invite additional volunteer transcribers.

    Transcribing can be a very rewarding experience and an excellent indoor activity as we approach the winter months.

    We are seeking additional volunteer transcribers. If you are interested in joining the CFHA volunteer transcription team, please contact [email protected].

    All of our current transcriptions can be viewed on our transcriptions page.

  • New Resource: Maps and Charts of Quaker Meetings in Upper Canada, NY, and PA

    We’ve updated our Digital Archive with a new upload: Maps and Charts of Quaker Meetings in Canada, New York, and Pennsylvania.

    This resource includes a map and two charts from Arthur G. Dorland’s 1927 book, A History of the Society of Friends (Quakers) in Canada. The map shows townships in Upper Canada where Friends settled, the first chart shows meetings established by the Society of Friends in Canada prior to the 1828 Hicksite-Orthodox schism, and the second chart lists meetings after the schism.

    This is a great resource and visual aid for better understanding the establishment of communities and some of the smaller meetings in Upper Canada.

    Map showing townships in Upper Canada where Friends settled. Arthur G. Dorland, 1927.

  • Norwich Series: A Pamphlet on Doctrine

    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.”

    The pamphlet itself has been passed down through generations matrilineally; Kyle Jolliffe holds the original copy. Kyle’s article on family memories of Norwich Quakers can be found in The Meetinghouse 2010-2, his story ‘Treasure from the Archives’ about the sudden death of Paulina Southwick’s husband can be read in The Canadian Friend 107 (2011): 5, and his study of the 1881 Canada Yearly Meeting separation can be found in the Canadian Quaker History Journal 52 (1992): 12-22 and in CFHA’s monograph, Faith, Friends and Fragmentation: Essays on Nineteenth Century Quakerism in Canada, edited by Albert Schrauwers. 

    The entirety of the pamphlet is below.

     

    [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.