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"One of the most incredible resources for Quaker history with one of the kindest, most knowledgeable, rockstar Special Collections staff in the dang world. My intellectual journey would have been completely different without resources like the Friends Historical Library, let alone my dissertation work.

My senior year at UT, I was able to visit the FHL on a research scholarship to access archives for my undergrad honors thesis. It was the first time I had ever really conducted archival research on my own, and I was so nervous beforehand. But my experience there basically became a core memory & helped nurture a fledgling research question into a deep love & appreciation for early American Quaker history also. the digital resources? phenomenal.

- Katy Telling, Ph.D. Candidate/Teaching Fellow, Harrison Ruffin Tyler Dept. of History, William & Mary

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Abigail Mott’s 'Biographical Sketches and Interesting Anecdotes of Persons of Color' (1826)

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Abigail Mott’s 'Biographical Sketches and Interesting Anecdotes of Persons of Color' (1826)

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I have been pursuing research at Friends Historical Library on and off for nearly 15 years. FHL has been invaluable to me for work on Abigail Mott’s pioneering Biographical Sketches and Interesting Anecdotes of Persons of Color, first published by Quaker children’s book publisher Mahlon Day in New York City in 1826. Mott compiled her work – as the title suggests, a compendium of the lives of both renowned and everyday African Americans – for the students at the African Free School in New York City, many of whom went on to become the city’s Black leaders in the decades before the Civil War. FHL’s collection features super examples of Day’s children’s books, along with those of the two other major Quaker children’s book publishers of the time: Darnton & Harvey in London, and Samuel Wood in New York. Wood’s daughter Mary would revive Mott’s Sketches after the Civil War as an inspirational book for Black Americans, children and adults, as they faced the challenges of Reconstruction in the 1870s. Mary Wood’s papers are also part of the FHL collection. So is a recently purchased 1837 letter by Richard Mott, Abigail’s husband, to another New York publisher, who was preparing a Quaker children’s catechism. Mott’s letter includes Abigail’s brief summary of the role of the Friends in abolition of slavery. Here she notes that Quakers “afforded [old and infirm former enslaved people] that assistance they conceived to be due to them as a compensation for the labour of their youth,” or what we today would call a form of reparations.

Also this month, I was delighted to explore a little further some of my own Quaker family’s papers at FHL, which formed part of a Covid-19 year project that my niece Celeste Andrews and I -- stuck at home on opposite sides of the continent -- composed based on a travel journal kept by one of our ancestors. Our article about Andrews’s Summer of 1821 journey up the Hudson River to Niagara Falls and back, “James Andrews’s Fashionable Tour,” appears in the current issue of Quaker History: thanks not least of all to Jordan Landes’s brilliant locating and scanning of key documents. James Andrews would later to become leader in the Darby (Hicksite) Friends Meeting, an elected Delaware County Judge, and owner of an estate in Darby Township. It turns out, his journaling years were not over in 1821. Between 1849-1865, Andrews kept a detailed record of his daily transactions and personal comings and goings at his farm in Darby. The journal was for a long time held at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and is now also part of FHL’s extraordinary collection. I’m in touch with a botanical history specialist friend of mine to see what we can make of this. For now, all I can ask is: how many more ways can FHL fulfill my intellectual aspirations, both professional and personal? I can’t begin to guess.

- Dee E. Andrews, Professor Emerita of History, California State University, East Bay

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I've worked with so many amazing items and collections in Friends Library that it's impossible for me to pick a single favorite -- but Family Papers are my favorite type.  I especially enjoy teasing out details of women's lives through letters and diaries.  Ferris, Smedley, Darlington, Stabler, Fisher-Brinton, and Elkinton are among the treasures.  But to pick one:  Richardson-Yarnall Family Papers, 1722-1962.  The papers begin with Yarnall emigrants and 18th century physician and minister Peter Yarnall.  The collection takes us into the lives of succeeding generations,  particularly Richardson family members in the 19th and 20th century, a family of prominent silversmiths, physicians, ministers, and Swarthmore College graduates.  What a treat!

- Susanna Morikawa, FHL Archivist

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My favorite FHL collection is the correspondence of Katharine "Kit" Elkinton, who was a relief worker in France during World War I. During that time she wrote many letters to her husband Howard West Elkinton, whom she gave many, many nicknames. While working with the collection I assembled a list, which I present below, with the understanding that it can never be entirely complete.

- Howard
- Howe
- Howard West
- Bud
- Buddy
- dear
- deary
- dearest
- sweetheart
- darling
- Squeesies
- Squeesies Elkinton
- chum
- laddy
- belovéd
- my love
- my true love
- my dearest boy
- Antonio
- lieber
- mein lieber
- mein Herr
- my perspicacious Bud
- Agamemnon
- Prince of rubber-necks
- King-of-Greensward-on-Musgrave
- Book-case-builder-of-Olympus
- Monsieur-of-the-every-other-minute-new-silk-sox
- Snippenfrizzle

- Zivia Lichtenberg, FHL student assistant

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My favorite FHL item is found in RG5/030, the Comly-White Family Papers. It's the Journal of Isaac Comly for 1797-1819. Isaac isn't as well known as his brother John Comly. Isaac, however, was an extraordinarily candid observer and recorder of Quaker life in Byberry and nearby Quaker communities in this period. I don't know anyone who was so regular in noting who said what in meeting, who was feuding with whom, and how the quirks and eccentricities of individuals shaped community life. It's a treasure.

Thomas Hamm
Professor of History
Clerk of the Faculty
Earlham College

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My favourite materials at the FHL are as follows: the Record Group[RG] 5. 239. REES African Papers. Series Correspondence. Correspondence to Family, 1912, 1923 folders including, 100s of manuscripts/letters of Quakers in Africa beginning from 1912,  Lagos/Nigerian Friends Newsletter, 1990-2001; American Friends Service Committee News Releases, 1960-2000; 100s of Partnership for Productivity documents involving Quakers’ development interventions in different African countries (Botswana, South Africa, Malawi, Liberia, Seychelles, Ethiopia, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Mali, Ghana, Upper Volta, Togo, and Nigeria)  between, 1971-1989 ; RG 4/102 Partnership for Productivity Records

-Olatunde Taiwo
Junior Faculty: Department of History and Diplomatic Studies, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria
&
Lisa Maskel PhD Fellow,
Department of History,
University of Ghana Legon

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John Woolman, ‘Considerations on the True Harmony of Mankind; and How It Is to Be Maintained’, MSS/068, John Woolman Manuscripts Collection, pp. 43-4.

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1. John Woolman's manuscript journal

2. Abraham Lincoln to Eliza Paul Gurney, 1864 9mo 4: This letter refers to conscientious objectors in the Civil War.

3. The first issue of The Liberator, 1 January 1831, edited by William Lloyd Garrison.

4. The 1690 broadside, By the King and Queen, a proclamation for discovering and apprehending the late Bishop of Ely, William Penn, and James Grahme

A highlight: The students taking my Quaker class (and that one they will remember): when each student held, read, and discussed an original pre-1660 tract.

A lowlight: Discovering that that our Patrick Henry - Robert Pleasants letter on slavery in the Gilpin book was a forgery!

- Jerry Frost, Professor and Director Emeritus

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My favorite material at FHL is probably Graceanna Lewis's papers in the Lewis-Fussell collection. Lewis is best known as a trailblazing woman scientist who was recognized for her achievements in ornithology and botany. However, she was also a dedicated underground railroad conductor and zealous activist against slavery. Her early correspondence is a window onto fascinating communities of reformers where the ideas of abolitionists, prohibitionists, phrenologists, and utopian idealists intermingled effervescently.

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The collection I've used most is probably the Frederick Funk cartoons from the Anna Wharton Morris papers. The visual appeal is striking, and the symbolism is dense and incisive, as with sophisticated political cartoons. Having that kind of insider perspective from a person incarcerated in Eastern State Penitentiary is rare. The cartoons have prompted many wonderful conversations with different Swarthmore classes; Eastern State Penitentiary has also used them in their exhibits and programming; and they've even appeared in the "PMHB" journal. And there's still more to unpack, understand, and uncover in them!

- Celia Caust-Ellenbogen, FHL student worker 2007-2010; FHL archivist, 2015-?

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The amazing staff from FHL shared unique and impactful documents with Advanced Placement U.S. History students throughout the Covid crisis, making the historical events and people under study more memorable as well as enhancing skills practice. The documents that were most impactful included images and letters from Abby Hopper Gibbons since she played the role of a Civil War nurse near the school where we teach. Students found her admirable for her abolition and other reform efforts. My personal favorites included evidence related to colonial smuggling from James Claypoole's and James Logan's Letter Books! Additional documents that engaged students included letters of Sarah Mapps Douglass and Emily Howland. Students used these letters to create interactive digital timelines for sharing. FHL staff expertise brought instruction to a whole new level with these sources!                   -From a grateful teacher in Virginia

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The amazing staff from FHL shared unique and impactful documents with Advanced Placement U.S. History students throughout the Covid crisis, making the historical events and people under study more memorable as well as enhancing skills practice. The documents that were most impactful included images and letters from Abby Hopper Gibbons since she played the role of a Civil War nurse near the school where we teach. Students found her admirable for her abolition and other reform efforts. My personal favorites included evidence related to colonial smuggling from James Claypoole's and James Logan's Letter Books! Additional documents that engaged students included letters of Sarah Mapps Douglass and Emily Howland. Students used these letters to create interactive digital timelines for sharing. FHL staff expertise brought instruction to a whole new level with these sources!                   -From a grateful teacher in Virginia

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1693 London Yearly Meeting epistle (first page)

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Epistles are amazing documents for learning what has been on the minds of individual Friends and meetings since the seventeenth century. I especially like reading epistles exchanged in that first century of the Society of Friends not only because they were tools used to bridge large (transatlantic) distances but also because they reflect the development of the faith. This printed 1693 epistle from the London Yearly Meeting was sent all over the Atlantic world and its advice to 'ship-masters' not to arm or carry guns demonstrates that some testimonies that we associate with Friends now took time to develop.

- Jordan Landes, Curator, Friends Historical Library

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Advertisement, United States Gazette, 1818

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I was in the Library earlier this week to look at manuscripts connected to my research on Jesse Sharpless, Philadelphia entrepreneur and proprietor of the Washington Museum. I was particularly excited about what I discovered in the early journal of his daughter, Mira Townsend. Mira’s writings were a distraction in and of themselves, but this manuscript answered some questions that I had about about the sale of his business. As an added bonus, the staff were incredibly welcoming and knowledgeable. 

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I was in the Library earlier this week to look at manuscripts connected to my research on Jesse Sharpless, Philadelphia entrepreneur and proprietor of the Washington Museum. I was particularly excited about what I discovered in the early journal of his daughter, Mira Townsend. Mira’s writings were a distraction in and of themselves, but this manuscript answered some questions that I had about about the sale of his business. As an added bonus, the staff were incredibly welcoming and knowledgeable. 