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Permalink Reply by Peter Miller on 8th mo. 5, 2013 at 12:50pm

Bill,

Friends Review, A Literary and Miscellaneous Journal, Vol 2

A brief postscript regarding relations between the Wolfeboro Preparative Meeting and the Sandwich Meeting:  It is my recollection - and I will need to confirm this as I re-read the minutes - that the Wolfeboro group petitioned to have their own monthly meeting,  and the Sandwich group denied their request.  Men's and Women's Monthly Meetings consisted of 2 reps from North Sandwich, two reps from South Sandwich, and two reps from Wolfeboro.  Thus the Wolfeboro contingent was always in the minority.  There is quite a distance between Wolfeboro and Sandwich.  Monthly meetings seem always to have been held in Sandwich.  Thus, the Wolfeboro reps had to travel long distances through snow, mud, and everything else New England weather tossed at them to get to meetings.  Assuming my memory about this is correct, Wolfeboro Quakers may have been angry to be denied their own monthly meeting.   I do believe their numbers grew significantly after Lindley Hoag began preaching in Wolfeboro.

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Permalink Reply by William F Rushby on 8th mo. 5, 2013 at 3:46pm

William F Rushby said:

Peter Miller wrote: " Lindley's 'Memoir' of Huldah, written in the 1840's, was published in one of the mainstream Quaker journals."

Which "mainstream Quaker journal"?

Friends Review, A Literary and Miscellaneous Journal, Vol 2

 

Friends Review was the Gurneyite periodical.  So this suggests that Lindley and Huldah identified with the Gurneyite Friends, rather than the Wilburites.

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Permalink Reply by Peter Miller on 8th mo. 5, 2013 at 5:06pm

Bill,

Now that is fascinating, and seemingly definitive.   I am most impressed with your fund of knowledge, and grateful for it.

We make a good team, you and I.  Holmes and Watson.  I'll leave you guessing who is whom (smile).

The more I ponder it, the more certain I become that the subject of my biography, Jane Durgin, must have been Gurneyite, too.   She seems too worldly to have been Wilburite.   As I have mentioned, she and Huldah B. Varney Hoag were first cousins, they and their siblings grew up together in Wolfeboro's small Quaker community, they probably were educated together during the elementary years,  their fathers were successful entrepreneurs, many members of both families represented Wolfeboro at the Sandwich Monthly Meetings for decades, etc.   The Wilburites, if my understanding is correct, would not have had the enormous amount of interaction with non-Quakers that Jane Durgin did, nor would they have founded literary societies.

Which takes me back to the original question I have been pondering - why did Jane Durgin name her last born son Robert Barclay Durgin (1852)?  The year is significant in some way.  Had it been vital to her to name a son after Barclay, she would have named her first born son accordingly rather than risk having no more sons and losing the opportunity altogether.    Hmmm...   Need to reflect on this some more.

An interesting aside:  Huldah B. Varney Hoag's youngest sister, Mary Varney Breed, had a complaint brought against her for marrying her deceased sister's husband.  Her sister Almira died (age 22) in 1826 soon after marrying David Breed.  Mary (age 22)  married David Breed in 1839, a full thirteen years later.  Evidently, such a marriage violated the good order of Quaker Society as practiced by New England (or Sandwich) Friends of that era.  But the story has a happy ending.  Mary asked that her transgression be passed by, which it promptly was.   Soon thereafter, Mary began representing Wolfeboro at Sandwich Friends Women's Monthly Meetings. 

Thus far in my research, all the Sandwich/Wolfeboro women who had complaints brought against them and who wished to be retained as Friends were in fact granted their requests.  The only women who were disowned were those who had left Quaker Society, as evidenced by non-attendance at worship and departure from plainness of dress and address.

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Permalink Reply by William F Rushby on 8th mo. 6, 2013 at 7:14am

Hello, Peter!

Thanks for your kind words.  Actually, I have enjoyed our discussion, and have learned much from it.  Jim Wilson opened a whole new line of thought for me on Robert Barclay.  Also, Joseph and Huldah Hoag and their descendants fascinate me, partly because my Gregory ancestors originated in the Ferrisburgh area, partly because my family and friends have made many visits to the little cemetery where the Hoags are buried, and partly because of the vigorous Quaker culture that once existed in the area.

The spiritual vitality of Friends in the Champlain Valley of NY/VT during the 19th Century deserves closer scrutiny than it has ever received.  In many ways the Hoags were a focal point of this 19th Century Quaker settlement.

I am still looking for the horse training book.  My beloved wife died in March, and friends and relatives moved many of my books around that time.  The already pathetic level of organization of my library took a nose dive.

Have you made contact with Marian Baker of the Weare NH Friends Meeting?  She probably knows more about the history of Friends in that area than anyone else I can think of.  See http://www.neym.org/wearemeeting.html

Until later,

Bill Rushby

 

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Permalink Reply by Peter Miller on 8th mo. 6, 2013 at 7:56am

Bill,

I am enjoying this on line conversation with you (and Karen and the others), too.  There is more to follow in coming days, weeks, months as I attempt to bring 19th century Quaker life in rural New Hampshire into proper perspective.  Challenging but fascinating!

Ferrisburgh native Lindley Hoag seems to have been an exceptionally talented person.  I need to research whether letters written by or to him have survived, and where they might be found.  They might include some from Jane Durgin.  Thus far, I have found nothing written by her except cursory minutes in the Sandwich Quaker archives.  The rapidity with which the essential details of a person's life can be lost is frightening.

Your mention of Marion Baker of Weare Friends Meeting is an interesting coincidence.  Contacting the Weare Meeting is on my list of things to do because Jane Durgin's older sister Hannah E. Varney Chase resided in Weare during the last three decades of her life, 1870 - 1898.   I need to research the Weare Women's Minutes for those years for reference to both sisters.

I am so sorry to hear that your spouse passed away recently.  I know that this void cannot be filled, but I do hope you have the support of many loving and caring family members and friends.  Life can still be meaningful.  Stay involved!

Peter Miller

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Permalink Reply by Lee Nichols on 8th mo. 6, 2013 at 8:20pm

Bill and Peter, 

Have you read the book Quaker Nantucket by Leach and Gow?  Bill, if you have read it, what sort of review would you give it.   The authors have a lot of details about Quaker life because they have limited it to one island and it continental contacts.   The book Indiana Quakers Confront the Civil War by Nelson shows the effect of Civil War on meeting membership in Indiana.   I have enjoyed your discussion.

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Permalink Reply by William F Rushby on 8th mo. 6, 2013 at 8:33pm

Hello, Lee Nichols!

I have read the book Quaker Nantucket, the principal reason being that my wife was a descendant of Mary Starbuck!  By the way, Mary's conversion is narrated in John Richardson's journal.  Her conversion took place under his ministry.

I had a terrible time getting the book.  Sellers kept sending me another book by Gow on whaling, or something like that.  Using the ISBN to identify the book one wants would help to eliminate this problem.

Having said all this, I don't remember very many details about what I read.  One important one is that one of the authors discovered minutes of a? or the? meeting which had been missing for a very long time.  Of course, the Nantucket Friends fragmented after a time, and there were subsequently several kinds of Friends on the island.

I think that Quaker Nantucket would be a good book for Peter to read, but I believe it was a very different reality from Wolfeboro Quakerism.

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Permalink Reply by Peter Miller on 8th mo. 7, 2013 at 8:57am

My thanks to Bill, Karen, and all the other Friends who have contributed to or read this thread.

I will be posting more threads on QuakerQuaker as I read the references you have recommended, contact the people you have identified, and progress in my attempt to reconstruct the life of Jane Varney Durgin and the 19th century Sandwich and Wolfeboro NH Quaker communities in which she lived.  Watch for them.

Fortunately, I have access to the minutes of the Sandwich Friends Meetings of that era, a very rich vein of information.  I will endeavor to access other pertinent meeting minutes, particularly those of the Parsonsfield Maine, Weare NH, and Uxbridge Massachusetts Monthly Meetings, and also the Dover NH Quarterly Meeting.   The Rhode Island Historical Society can identify where all these are likely to be found.

There is a lot of fascinating subtext in these old Quaker minutes.  Here is one example that is highly pertinent to the book I'm writing.   In 1844, Jane Durgin married a non-Quaker.  The marriage was performed by the minister of the local Freewill Baptist Church.  Six months later, this came to the attention of the Sandwich Meeting, and the inevitable complaint was lodged.  This is the most flagrant violation of the good order of Quaker Society I have found thus far in the Sandwich Women's Minutes.  A committee met with Jane to discuss this matter, at which time she requested that her transgression be "passed by" and that she be retained as a member of Friends Society.  The committee then reported to the Women's Meeting that they had had a "tolerably good" discussion with Jane.  "Tolerably good" is highly unusual language for these minutes.  I interpret this to mean it was not entirely satisfactory.  So they did not grant her request right away.  They made her sweat it out another month.  But the story has a happy ending, for the most part.  Jane's husband James converted to the Quaker faith several years later.  Jane remained a lifelong Friend and staunch advocate of Quaker beliefs.   Toward the end of her life, when the once thriving Sandwich Quaker community had fewer than 70 members, she was still there, actively contributing in various leadership roles.  She hadn't abandoned the faith.  She hadn't moved to the Plains States, as so many of her Quaker brethren had.  In 1886, at age 66, she was one of the New Hampshire representatives to the New England Yearly Meeting in Providence, RI.

These facts bring up many, many questions, some of which I hope to answer.  What happened during the 6 month interval between her marriage and the initiation of the complaint?  Who knew about this marriage, and when?  Did she contemplate leaving Quaker Society at the time?  If she and James Durgin had been in love for years, why didn't he convert before marriage?  What occurred behind the scenes to smooth the way for her transgression to be passed by?

This, to me, is a fascinating bit of American history.  Jane was a 7th generation American Quaker.  Her Quaker roots went way back.  She is descended on both her mother's and father's sides from William Varney, who settled in Ipswich Massachusetts by way of Barbados in 1649.  He appears to have been one of the very first Quakers to settle in North America.  The Varney Family was one of the most distinguished Quaker families in 17th and 18th century North America.  Jane's Varney ancestors were related to the Starbucks, the Coffins, the Gaskills, and the Southwicks.

It appears that all of Jane's Varney ancestors married Quakers.  What did her mother, her father, her siblings, her uncles and aunts, and her cousins think of her marital choice?  She may have had an ally in her older sister Hannah, who married a non-Quaker in 1856, twelve years later, and who went through the same complaint process with the same outcome as Jane.

I welcome your thoughts and reflections regarding this.

I am still searching for a concise summary, on line, of Quaker beliefs and practices.  I want to identify for my non-Quaker readers what was distinctive about Quaker faith and lifestyle in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.  I will be initiating a new thread pertaining to this on QuakerQuaker fairly soon.  I welcome your thoughts, as always.

I sincerely appreciate the kind assistance so many Friends have provided. 

 

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Permalink Reply by Peter Miller on 8th mo. 25, 2013 at 12:03pm

David and all,

 

I have assumed that the Gurneyite/Wilburite division was related to the Second Great Awakening, for the same reasons you present.

 

I have been away from these message boards for a few days, for I have begun writing this book on 19th century Sandwich, New Hampshire Friend Jane Varney Durgin.  My research, of course, continues to be very active and ongoing, which will continue for many months.

 

On Friday, I perused the contents of some boxes of old Quaker materials at the Sandwich Historical Society.  I learned that the first Quaker residents of Sandwich requested permission to hold meetings there in 1783, that permission for weekly worship was granted in 1785, and that the Sandwich Monthly Meeting commenced in 1802, under the supervision of the Dover NH Quarterly Meeting.  From the outset, they were called the Sandwich Orthodox Meeting of Friends.

 

I also learned that Joseph John Gurney passed through Sandwich some time in the 19th century.  Several pages of the account of his travels had been copied and stuck in this box.  I quote:

 

"...we enjoyed a long drive by the side of the lake to Sandwich, where we spent a day or two among a community of Friends, composing two meetings, who enjoy but little of the riches of this world, but live in peace and simplicity on the fruit of their own labour.  This romantic village is situated within an amphitheater of mountains, near the head of the lake.  They are from 12 to 1500 feet high, composed of igneous rock, and presenting a remarkably picturesque outline."

 

Gurney then described his hike to the summit of Red Hill near Sandwich.  The lake he referred to is Squam Lake (where the movie "On Golden Pond" was filmed).  He underestimated the height of the mountains - they actually rise more than 3000 feet above the valley floor.

 

The copied pages do not give a book title or date of publication.  I would like to know both.

 

We have been speculating that the Sandwich Monthly Meeting was Gurneyite.  His visit seems to confirm that.

 

This box of Quaker materials also had periodicals from the 19th century.  Most of them were editions of "Friends' Review."  There were a few called "American Friends."

 

While continuing my reading of the Sandwich Monthly Meeting Women's and Men's minutes, I discovered that the Wolfeboro Preparative Meeting was instituted in 1814 and discontinued in September, 1851.  Attendance of Wolfeboro representatives at the Monthly Meeting had become spotty to nonexistent.  Also, many of the complaints lodged in the 1840's pertained to Wolfeboro Quakers. 

 

In 1850 when a committee was formed to decide the future of the Wolfeboro Preparative Meeting, the subject of my book Jane Varney Durgin, who  had been born and raised in Wolfeboro and then lived in Sandwich from 1837 on, moved back to Wolfeboro and began representing Wolfeboro at the Monthly Meeting.  It does make me wonder if she returned there to try to salvage Wolfeboro's small Quaker community.  If so, her ploy did not succeed.  Quakers continued to live in Wolfeboro after their Preparative Meeting was scrapped.  I imagine they continued to worship there.  They no longer had a voice in the governance of the Sandwich Monthly Meeting, of course.

 

It was five months after the Wolfeboro Preparative Meeting was terminated that Jane Durgin's last son, Robert Barclay Durgin was born.  My common sense tells me that this choice of name was triggered by her feelings about what happened to Wolfeboro - a defiant statement of a sort.  I'm speculating.

 

The more I learn about Wolfeboro's very small Quaker community, the more fascinated I become.  The families' last names were Bassett, Nowell, Wiggin, and of course Varney.  Unlike the much more numerous Sandwich Quakers, the Wolfeboro group does not seem to have built a hedge around themselves, probably because they were so few.  They were very involved with the civic life of Wolfeboro, schools and the library in particular.  Some held public office, which most likely required taking an oath.  It appears they did not adhere slavishly to the Rules of Discipline of the New England Yearly Meeting.   Politically, they were Whigs and then Republicans, very vocal in their opposition to slavery.  Quite a few of the Bassetts, many of whom emigrated to Minnesota and points further west, lived very accomplished lives.  So, I am attempting to reconstruct the Wolfeboro Quaker community to better understand the milieu Jane Varney Durgin grew up in.

 

I have immense admiration for Jane Durgin's Quaker heritage - a long line of remarkable individuals.  The source material I am finding is much more extraordinary than I had anticipated.  Their courage, faith, Christian benevolence, and accomplishments move me deeply.  These were not ordinary people.  My book will attempt to capture their specialness.  What began as a book about an individual is evolving into a book about the Quaker milieu that formed her.  

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Permalink Reply by William F Rushby on 8th mo. 25, 2013 at 6:16pm

Peter Miller wrote: "This box of Quaker materials also had periodicals from the 19th century.  Most of them were editions of 'Friends' Review.'  There were a few called 'American Friends.' 

From the Friends United Meeting website: "The Ministry of Quaker Publications" by Emma Condori-Mamani

"The American Friend was also the creation of a merger between The Friends Review and The Christian Worker."

The American Friend resulted from a merger of The Friends Review and The Christian Worker.  I think that Rufus Jones was the first editor.

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Permalink Reply by William F Rushby on 8th mo. 26, 2013 at 9:05pm

Hello, David!

In Martha Grundy's introduction to Resistance and Obedience to God: Memoirs of David Ferris (1707-1779) : (Friends General Conference, 2001),  she comments extensively on the reaction of Friends to the Great Awakening.  Her essay and the book as a whole make very good reading.

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Permalink Reply by Peter Miller on 8th mo. 28, 2013 at 12:09pm

David and all,

 

Thank you for your lucid statements about the Hicksite separation.

 

Would I be correct in perceiving that Wilbur, like Hicks, sought to return Quakerism to its "original" principles and practices?

 

You wrote:  "The split was not entirely doctrinal; it was also based on socioecomnic factors, with Hicksite Friends being mostly poor and rural, with Orthodox Friends being mostly urban and middle class.   Many of the rural country Friends kept to Quaker traditions of plain speech and plain dress, both long abandoned by Quakers in the towns and cities. "

 

That being the case, why did Hicks not gain more adherents in New England?  As you know, there were many rural, agrarian Monthly Meetings in northern New England in the 19th century.

 

The 19th century Sandwich NH Monthly Meeting I have been researching was rural, agrarian and adhered to traditions of plain speech and dress, yet it was Orthodox and Gurneyite. 

 

I assume the same was true for its affiliate, the Wolfeboro Preparative Meeting, but I can't be positive.  As I have mentioned, the Sandwich Quakers (most likely with the support of the Dover Quarterly Meeting) terminated the Wolfeboro Preparative Meeting in 1851.  The true reasons for that are not likely to have been recorded in any of the minutes.  I have noted that many of the complaints for deviation from Quaker Society recorded in the Sandwich minutes were directed at Wolfeboro Quakers.  The Wolfeboro group may have evolved its own unique Quaker lifestyle due to being isolated and small.  Perhaps I will learn more as I research the particulars pertaining to each of  its members.

 

For a preparative meeting to be terminated - what significance did that hold, what were the consequences for the members of that meeting, other than no longer having a voice in the governance of the larger body they were once affiliated with.  Could they go on worshipping in their local meeting house?  Under whose care did they function?  Were they still considered Quakers, or was this the equivalent of a whole community being disowned?  Please help me with this if you can.

 

I mentioned that Joseph John Gurney passed through Sandwich during his North American travels.  This, apparently, was circa 1839, and the letters he sent back to England during his journey were published in a book in 1841.  Gurney wrote a sweet little poem about Lake Winnipesaukee, which was published in this book.  I'll quote it sometime soon.  It interests me because the town I live in (Meredith) is located on Winnipesaukee.

 

The subject of my biography, Jane Varney Durgin, moved to Sandwich from Wolfeboro in 1837.  I wonder if she met Gurney, and if so what she thought of him.  As I have stated, she felt spiritual kinship with Robert Barclay.

 

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