USA > Rhode Island > Providence County > Providence > Two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, held at Moses Brown School, Providence, R.I., sixth month, 24th, 1911 > Part 1
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Go 974.5 F91t 1667519
M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01146 6791
E
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
https://archive.org/details/twohundredfiftie00soci
MOSES BROWN SCHOOL, PROVIDENCE, R. I.
TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH
ANNIVERSARY
OF THE BEGINNING OF
NEW ENGLAND
YEARLY MEETING OF FRIENDS
HELD AT MOSES BROWN SCHOOL PROVIDENCE, R. I.
SIXTH MONTH, 24TH, 1911
1667519
PROGRAM
MORNING SESSION AUGUSTINE JONES, Presiding
9: 30 o'clock, Meeting for Worship
10:00 Opening Remarks
AUGUSTINE JONES
10: 20 "The Early History of New England Yearly Meeting" RUFUS M. JONES
11: 00 "The Mission of a Message" MARY MENDENHALL HOBBS Of North Carolina Yearly Meeting
11:30 Address,
GOVERNOR POTHIER of Rhode Island
12:00 Poem, "Our First Yearly Meeting" WALTER S. MEADER
AFTERNOON SESSION
SETH K. GIFFORD, Presiding
2: 00 o'clock, Remarks
2:15 Address, "The Religious Discoveries of George Fox" PROF. EDWARD C. MOORE of Cambridge, Mass.
3:00 "The Quaker Conquest"
JAMES WOOD of New York Yearly Meeting Address
3:30
ISAAC SHARPLESS of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Responses
4:00
Visiting Delegates from other Yearly Meetings
7:30 Address, "The Young Friend, Then and Now" L. HOLLINGSWORTH WOOD
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OPENING REMARKS
AUGUSTINE JONES
We are gathered to commemorate the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the origin of the Yearly Meeting of Friends for New England, and to mark its historic significance.
It is notable as the only yearly meeting on the continent, with the exception of Baltimore, which George Fox attended, and the oldest in the world .*
George Rofe, an English Friend, with two companions, whose names have not reached us, appointed a General Friends Meeting, at Newport, R. I., on the Sabbath, Sixth Month 9th, 1661, for all New England.
That illustrious planting has, with few if any omissions, been followed annually to this day, by yearly meetings.
This remarkable convocation dissolved, after four days of gospel fervor, and stirring Foxian utterances.
* Since these remarks were made a note from England has been shown to me mentioning a general meeting in London in 1661, the date of our origin, which is meant to suggest I suppose, the beginning of their meeting to be of even date with ours.
The Society of Friends we know had risen long before this period. There had been general meetings in England as early as 1654 and thereafter, at sundry times and in divers places, not always annual, often years apart.
But in 1672, it is noted in the "Minute Book," that there is to be a General Meeting of Friends held in London, once a year, in the week called Whitsun week." Charles Lamb says the custom prevailed in his time. The ancient Discipline remarks, "It is agreed that a general meeting be held in London annually (1672) and declares in its history of London Yearly Meeting this to be the date of its establishment; and in the title page of the volume it asserts, "Their yearly meeting held in London from its first institution." This implies that there was no former institution thereof. Yearly meetings for women, as we once knew them here, we think were not set up there until 1784, with some misgivings. It would seem that finally in 1672, the yearly meeting, by a special resolve or minute, established the annual meetings to be at London, hence is name, constitution and historic existence ever after. There have been recent removals. There is in our minds neither controversy nor rivalry. The matter is now not important, except in the verification of history.
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TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
It was in America, an historic, luminous birthday of a great and righteous energy.
If we except Rhode Island, and Shelter Island in N. Y., there was not one nook, in North America, at that moment, where a Friend could land without exposing himself to bitter suffering, and his shipmaster to severe penalty.
George Bishop says that the numbers who attended the meeting were so considerable that Boston was alarmed, because "the Quakers were gathering together in Newport to kill their people and fire the town."
Boston had then a disquieted conscience.
It had executed two Friends in 1659; Mary Dyer in 1660, breathing the holy words, "Obedient to the will of God I came, and obedient to His will, I remain faithful unto death." While ninety days previous to this assemblage, William Leddra, the fourth martyr, went to the scaffold.
It is a striking coincidence, that jail delivery was granted in Boston to twenty-eight Friends, Fourth Day, Sixth Month 12th, the very day this meeting closed; and one of them, Wenlock Christison, with courage like Luther, with dedication like St. Paul, "ready to be offered," was then under sentence to be hung the next day; while two others were waiting their hours of execution. Do we ourselves need now the trumpets of fiery persecution to summon us to the issues of eternal life?
It was not the "Quaking" at Newport, which severed prison bars in Boston. It was the political fall of the Puritans in England, the restoration of the Stuarts, of Charles II; the rise to power of the English Church, and the consequent peril to Puri- tanism in America, which excited momentary consternation.
Neither was it the King's Missive (though that did sub- sequently liberate prisoners). The Missive did not issue until autumn, and did not arrive in Boston until late in October. The magistrates, dissembled, bowed obedience to the British throne, and went on with different, nevertheless cruel persecu- tion. Like the son in Scripture, who said, "I go, sir; and went not."
Boston is one of the most tolerant and progressive cities in the world, and is not responsible for the conduct of other generations.
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We only seek history and the progress of events! It is, indeed, to us a stupendous concern that this organization began to exist in the midst of malignant persecution; and that possibly its first audience consisted mostly of maimed, marred, non-resistant disciples of George Fox. The suffering was bitter then, like Christian, apostolic struggles of a darker age. English Friends sat between the continuous fires of two persecu- tions, which were devoid of executions.
Both the Puritan and the Friend were destined to immense service in the United States. They started from utterly differ- ent standpoints, and thoughtfully advanced with great mis- givings, each toward the other.
Doctor Mulford says, "They were the historical forces with which no others may be compared in their influence on the American people." This exalted pretension is not our own. "Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth." "Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."
George Rofe, our founder, had an earlier record. He was in the Palatinate of the Rhine, in 1657, engaged with one Wil- liam Ames in welding in the power of the spirit, a village group of Germans to the tenets of the Society of Friends. This colony, subsequently, under the direction of William Penn, planted Germantown, Pa., now a portion of Philadelphia. Pas- torious of this company, to his eternal honor, drew in writing the first protest of a religious body against American slavery. We cherish the memory of George Rofe, a living apostle of Jesus Christ, whose works do follow him in abiding testimony to the grace of God which attended him.
What have the members of this yearly meeting done in the two hundred and fifty growing years, which renders it worth while to study its annals?
. Its unobtrusive energy, and altruistic spirit has wrought constantly among our fellow-creatures with glowing devotion, mostly in the busy haunts of rural life. Its consecrated fellow- ship has sustained houses of worship, not costly, usually of common wood, without adornment, with free sittings for all men and women of every race and previous condition of servi- tude. Simple Christian democracy, it has been devoid of creed, ordinances, rituals, music or compensated ministry until
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TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
recently. If you would study the converting power into holier life, which often abode in these meetings, even when silent, read Charles Lamb's "Essay on a Quaker's Meeting," or note the sterling quality and character of the men and women nurtured in them. Fruitage tests the essential value.
Friends have been concentrated in thought, generally right, if sometimes narrow; a thin blade goes most deeply to the roots of gigantic evil. Churches with exalted conceptions of conduct (which is three fourths of life) are not usually popular. The strait and narrow way is not attractive to certain persons. The dean of a noted theological school said the other day, "Wher- ever the church has held up high ideals, wherever it has held up a high standard of living, it has caused most men to turn away indifferent. It is bound to be so. That church never- theless is making the world better."
Our sensuous, spendthrift, luxurious existence spurns the sub- lime doctrine of living within the bounds of one's circumstances. We need strenuous conversion to the simple life of the Quaker of the olden time, to put the emphasis on righteousness, like our illustrious predecessors. A better age will come, the progress of truth is usually spiral, gyrating, disappearing, and again reappearing with new appeals to other minds with greater light.
Friends have certainly produced honesty, sincerity, and purity of life. Their influence has entered the very veins of the modern world. There are about four thousand of them, men, women and children, abroad in New England. They have shown their apostolic sympathy by the support of brethren not in affluence, by eminent philanthropy in every crisis.
They have fought a good fight and kept the faith against dogmatic theology, all forms of human slavery, war, intemper- ance, uncanny oaths, and all unrighteousness, and have, by grace, won on many fields. Their paramount protests and their marvelous triumphs are inscribed in the ancient constitutions and laws of New England.
Neal Dow, the most notable agitator against the liquor traffic in the last century, was cradled at the fireside of a New England Quaker. The meeting has a giant peacemaker, Dr. Benjamin F. Trueblood, and another illustrious pliilan-
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TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
thropist, Albert K. Smiley, whose potent voice encircles the globe from his mountain heights, with songs echoing far off, "Peace on earth, good will to men"; while he extends brotherly love and the sympathy of Christ to our afflicted wards, the North American Indians.
This yearly meeting is doing excellent work in foreign mis- sions. Its members with others have planted its faith across the continent, even to the Pacific shore, whither gold allures or where rolls the Oregon. Its census would now be much greater but for the absence of long lost heralds of the faith who went Westward Ho to less favored people, on the ever extending line of new settlements.
We have produced brilliant scholars. Pres. Edward Ever- ett of Harvard declared Thomas Chase to be not only first in his class, but first of his period in the University; while Professsor Thayer said of him, "He was the most finished Greek scholar among the American translators of the New Version of Scripture. His brother, Pliny, was his rival in learning. There have been many distinguished professors, teachers, students; some of whom wear no Quaker insignia now, but nevertheless owe to the society most of what they are.
It produced Goold Brown, the most extensive writer on English grammar of the last century. It is to be credited with one eminent artist, William Bradford, whose paintings are cherished everywhere. It has sent forth many teachers of righteousness to foreign lands.
Prominent men have appeared in politics: one signer of the Declaration of Independence, Stephen Hopkins; members of Congress, without fear and without reproach; governors of Commonwealths; mayors of cities; members of legislatures, all with good repute. If you ask for ability which went not in the ways of the fathers, I present to you Gen. Nathaniel Greene, the second general of the Revolution, who in youth, with his Quaker-preaching blacksmith father, at their Rhode Island forge, beat the smithy anvil; and later he beat the British lion, and was disowned.
Our own brilliant Whittier has unveiled the splendor of New England scenery, and the beauty of other lands. He has given utterance to the polity of Friends more potent than any
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TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
other man of our time. He was a strong purifying force in the politics of his Commonwealth. He sang the unrighteous life out of African slavery. Garrison, who was an authority, said at the last meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society in Faneuil Hall, Boston, "To John Greenleaf Whittier, more than to any other man living or dead, the abolition of American slavery is due." George Fox and his divine message are marching through the hymn books of christendom in the inspired songs of Whittier.
There have been princely merchants among these Friends. They once, by the whale fishery, led the world in artificial light, through William Rotch and others from Nantucket, New Bedford and Europe.
Moses, Brown, was a leader in the manufacture of pure cotton fabric by power in America. Consider for one moment its present magnitude in this country.
There have been many other eminent manufacturers, and now are presidents of banks, trustees, business men of excellent quality.
But this school, and another in Maine, have in any event established the utility of this venerable yearly meeting and vindicated its right to exist.
The light of truth has shone from this eminence almost a century, and if we start from the primal origin of the school, its history reaches two years beyond the middle of the 250 years we celebrate; and the prayers and devoted efforts of this meeting have attended it at every step. Its healthful influence has traversed the nation and passed its extreme boundary. Thou- sands have gone hence, with the gifts and graces of learning, luminous with non-clanish Christianity, and exalted moral ideals.
The school grows annually, with new accretions, like the great trees towering on its campus, which have seen all of its history, as our cherishing mother has watched over every child.
The trees are chiefly for adornment, but "the leaves" of the august Tree, itself, which they embellish, "are for the healing of the nations," bearing on every wind of Heaven, the glad tidings of the everlasting gospel of truth!
The yearly meeting had illustrious founders, who stood on
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TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
the very brink of martyrdom, and in prayer and sacrifice reared its superstructure and their successors with the blessing of Heaven, and consistent lives have nobly sustained it.
"Let us praise famous men," saith the wise son of Sirach; "The Lord hath wrought great glory by them, through His great power from the beginning.'
FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE, NEWPORT, R. I.
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THE EARLY HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND YEARLY MEETING
BY RUFUS M. JONES
There is an ancient chronicle which relates how contact with the bones of Israel's great prophet Elisha requickened a body that was lowered down into his quiet resting-place and set the tides of life circulating again. No one ever knows what amaz- ing things may happen by a renewal of contact with prophets, "who through faith have subdued kingdoms, wrought righteous ness, and obtained promises." If we could today not only stir the historic dust of our founders but get once more back into vital relation with their palpitating spirits and for a few minutes see the vision for which they lived and died, this ancient miracle at the prophet's tomb might be repeated even in our busy and commercial age.
The most impressive fact which stands out in the story of "The Quaker Invasion" of New England is the irresistible and conquering power of the faith of the men and women who dedi- cated themselves to the task of planting on these shores what seemed to them to be the truth. They felt themselves pushed forth to their "hardships and hazards" by an unseen hand and "freely they gave up for the seed's sake," as an old epistle puts it, "their friends, their relations, their country and worldly estates, yea, and their own lives also," and, having made their great surrender and dedication, they were henceforth afraid of nothing, but failure to follow their heavenly vision.
The actual pioneers of New England Quakerism, the real founders of this yearly meeting, were eleven persons who in the summer of 1657 came across the ocean in their own little boat, the Woodhouse, which, as they believed, the Lord steered, "like as He did Noah's Ark, wherein He shut up a few righteous persons and landed them safe even at the hill Ararat." "We saw the Lord," they declare, "leading our vessel, even as it were a man leading a horse by the head!" Early in the month now called August, these Argonauts landed at Newport,
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R.I., and disembarked with the word ringing in their ears: "The Seed of God in America shall be as the sand of the sea." and when the word was announced, "it caused tears to break forth with fullness of joy."
This band of eleven became the first publishers of the Quaker message on the island of Rhode Island, in Providence, Martha's Vineyard, Sandwich, Plymouth, Salem, Dover, and other New England centers. As their hard campaign was beginning, one of the company expressed what they all felt: "God's power has led us all along, and I have seen His glory and am overcome with His love. Take no thought for me, for my trust is in the Lord: only be valiant for the truth. The Lord's power hath over- shadowed me, and man I do not fear." That is the spirit of the Quaker apostles who planted the seed in these regions. They were travailing in the power of an experience which made them able to say in all sincerity: "I have seen His glory and am overcome with His love!" In less than four years from the time they landed, the meeting was held in Newport which we celebrate today.
This meeting was called by an English Friend named George Rofe who visited all the centers of Quakerism in the western world in 1661. In a letter written from Barbadoes to Richard Hubberthorne, George Rofe gives the following account of this first general meeting ever held in America: "We came in at Rhode Island and appointed a general meeting for all Friends in those parts (meaning all New England), which was a very great meeting and very precious, and continued four days together and the Lord was with His people and blessed them and all departed in peace. There is a good seed in that people, but the enemy keeps some under, through their cruel persecution, yet their honesty preserves them, and the seed will arise, as way is made for the visitation of the power of God to have free lib- erty amongst them." Unfortunately there are no records in existence of this meeting and no descriptions of its type and character, but we may safely infer that it was in all respects like the general meetings which had already been held in England. They were held for two main purposes: (1) For spiritual comfort and edification, and (2) to consider such things as "concerned the affairs of truth." An epistle from
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the general meeting held at Balby in 1656 shows that "affairs of truth" included the settlement of the times of holding meet- ings; the setting up of new meetings; dealing with such as walked disorderly; giving counsel to ministers who "speak from the mouth of the Lord"; making collections for the poor and the persecuted; making provision for the families of those who are called forth in the ministry; making regulations for marriages and the recording of births and deaths and issuing advices to the members upon their daily walk and conversation among men.
We may assume that this first general meeting in the new world followed the old world model and dealt with such matters as concerned the life and prosperity of the meetings scattered through the colonies of Rhode Island, Plymouth and Massa- chusetts. How the business was transacted, whether there were clerks to take the sense of the meeting, whether any docu- ments were issued, and many other interesting questions, must remain unanswered, for we have no accounts to draw upon. One contemporary report of the meeting has come down to us from an important historian. George Bishop, in his New England Judged, says, under date of 1661, "About this time the general meeting at Rhode Island, about sixty miles from Boston, was set up," and he gives graphic evidence that the meeting was large and attracted much attention. "You" (people of Bos- ton), he says, "made an alarm that the Quakers were gather- ing together to kill the people and to fire the town of Boston!"
Friends were by this date spread in isolated groups all the way from Providence and Newport to the Piscataqua River, and this meeting two hundred and fifty years ago brought the settlers together from these various regions for four days of precious meeting, "waiting upon the Lord," as Bishop says, "and seeing into the faces of one another." It was not in all respects like a present-day yearly meeting, but the essence of the matter was there, and we may well call George Rofe's meeting "for all Friends in these parts," the birth date of our beloved New England Yearly Meeting.
The next important question is whether the "meetings for all Friends in these parts," thus begun in 1661, were continued annually. Our chief witness that they were so held is John
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Burnyeat who was one of the pillar apostles of Quakerism in the new world. He first visited Rhode Island in the early summer of 1666, five years after the first great general meeting and again in 1671. Of his second visit in the early summer of 1671, he writes: "I took shipping for Rhode Island, and was there at their yearly meeting in 1671, which begins the Ninth of the Fourth Month (June of our present calendar) every year, and continues much of a week, and is a general meeting once a year for all Friends in New England."
As he had been here five years before, and now says that the meeting is a "yearly meeting," "begins on the Ninth of Sixth Month," "is held every year" and "is for all Friends in New England," we may, I think, consider it a settled fact that the meeting begun in 1661 was continuous through that first decade. George Fox's testimony is the next available evidence which we have. His account shows clearly what was the type of the meeting established here. He attended it in 1672. He had arrived at Newport the thirtieth day of the Sixth Month (new style) and he says: "The week following the Yearly Meeting for all the Friends of New England and the other colonies adjacent was held on this island. This meeting lasted six days, the first four days being general public meetings for worship, to which abundance of other people (than Friends) came, for they have no priest in the island, and no restriction to any particular way of worship; and both the governor (Nicholas Easton) and the deputy governor (John Cranston, not a Friend), with several justices of the peace daily frequented the meetings; so encouraged the people that they flocked in from all parts of the island. I have rarely observed people hear with more attention, diligence and affection than generally they did during the four days together. After these public meetings were over, the men's meeting began, which was large, precious and weighty; and the day following was the women's meeting, which also was large and very solemn. These two meetings being for ordering the affairs of the church, many weighty things were opened and communicated to them by way of advice, information and instruction. In these two meetings, several men's and women's meetings for other parts (subordinate meetings) were agreed and settled, to take care of the poor, and other affairs of the
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church, and to see that all who profess the truth walk accord- ing to the glorious gospel of God. When this great general meeting in Rhode Island was ended, it was somewhat hard for Friends to part; for the glorious power of the'Lord which was over all and His blessed truth and life flowing amongst them had so knit and united them together, that they spent two days in taking leave one of another, and of the Friends of the island; and then being mightily filled with the presence and power of the Lord, they went away with joyful hearts to their various habita- tions in the several colonies where they lived .*
At this time, and for a hundred years following, the Friends were a very prominent factor in the government of the colony.
William Coddington, who was foremost among the founders of the Rhode Island Colony, Nicholas Easton, who built the first house in Newport, Walter Clarke, who saved the Charter of the colony in the Andros crisis, John Easton who plead with King Philip to try arbitration instead of war, were some of the mem- bers of this yearly meeting who were governors during the early years. Altogether Friends occupied the governor's chair for thirty-five terms and the deputy governorship for many more times-one Friend, Walter Clarke, being deputy gov- ernor continuously for fourteen terms. Governor John Wanton, who was one of the leading Quaker preachers of his period and who sat in the ministers' gallery in a bright scarlet cloak was seven times governor and four times deputy governor. Stephen Hopkins, one of the greatest figures in the colonial period of Rhode Island, who was nine times governor, for many years chief-justice of the colony, one of the greatest exponents of the American doctrine of no taxation without representation, a delegate to all the colonial congresses, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was a Friend until 1774 when he was disowned for possessing a single slave. It will, therefore, be seen that Quakerism in those times was a very live affair and that the members of this yearly meeting were persons of weight and influence in the world of events.
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