not so much inclined towards the cultivation of the earth

My friend Mitch prepared a well-researched and -written article for a blog called "Unique at penn" (the classy lower case p is theirs, not my typing error). In it he gives a careful description of a manuscript map of 1793 showing the route from Philadelphia to the site of a treaty negotiation with leaders of the Miami Indians near Sandusky, Ohio.

His nice analysis called to mind another document related to the dealings of the new U.S. Government with the Miami's chiefs. A decade after the year the map was made two chiefs wrote the following letter to members of the Baltimore Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends. From a time just after the making of the map the Meeting had been trying, with little success, to help the Miami survive. After U.S. forces had defeated the Indians and taken most of their hunting lands the Miami chiefs came to believe that survival depended on a cultural transformation: learning to farm and becoming a settled agricultural community. They saw the plight of the young men, defeated in battle and no long able to spend their days hunting, becoming dispirited and succumbing to alcoholism, and they saw the tribes weakened and suceptible to disease. When the Baltimore Yearly Meeting offered help, they readily accepted. The Quakers sent farming tools, put pressure on the government to outlaw sale of liquor to the Indians, and went out to Ohio to teach and advise. The letter tells how little this effort succeeded:

The Little Turtle's Town, Sept. 18th, 1803. - From the Little Turtle, The Five Medals, and others, to Evan Thomas, George Ellicott, and others.

Brother's and Friends of our hearts, — We have received your speech from the hand of our friend, Wm. Wells, with the implements of husbandry, that you were so kind to send to his care, — all in good order.

Brothers, it is our wish that the Great Spirit will enable you to render to your Red Brethren that service which you appear to be so desirous of doing them, and which their women and children are so much in need of.

Brothers, we will try to use the articles you have sent us, and if we should want more, we will let you know it.

Brothers, we are sorry to say that the minds of our people are not so much inclined towards the cultivation of the earth as we could wish them.

Brothers, our Father, the President of the United States, has prevented our traders from selling liquor to our people, which is the best thing he could do for his Red Children.

Brothers, our people appear dissatisfied, because our traders do not, as usual, bring them liquor, and, we believe, will request our Father to let the traders bring them liquor, and if he does, your Red Brethren are all lost forever.

Brothers, you will see, from what we have said, that our prospects are bad at present, though we hope the Great Spirit will change the minds of our people, and tell them it will be better for them to cultivate the earth than to drink whiskey.

Brothers, we hope the Great Spirit will permit some of you to come and see us, — when you will be able to know whether you can do anything for us or not.

Brothers, we delivered you the sentiments of our hearts, when we spoke to you at Baltimore, and shall say nothing more to you at present. We now take you by the hand, and thank you for the articles you were so kind to send us.

Signed,

The Little Turtle, Miami Chief,
The Five Medals, Potowatamy Chief

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Little Turtle, Gerard T. Hopkins, and the Baltimore Yearly Meeting

In 1795 the Baltimore Yearly Meeting had appointed Indian Committees to consider how best to help the Miami. When in 1797 Chief Little Turtle came to Philadelphia to meet President Washington the Friends invited him to come address the Yearly Meeting. The Quakers then sent tools and instructors to the tribes and used their influence to have the sale of liquor banned.

In 1804 a merchant named Gerard T. Hopkins, uncle and benefactor of the famous Johns Hopkins) documented the Quakers efforts to help the Miami tribes. His diary and letters were latter collected into a book published in a book called A mission to the Indians, from the Indian committee of Baltimore Yearly Meeting, to Fort Wayne (cited below).

Little Turtle, with miniature of George Washington on neck band.

{Source: Chicago Historical Society}

Little Turtle's name and mark (one up from the bottom) on the
Treaty of Fort Greenville, August 1795, signed by chiefs of the Ohio tribes after defeat by General Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers.

{National Archives and Records Administration (U.S.)}

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Some sources:

Preparing for a Treaty at the Early War Department by Mitch Fraas, Wednesday, September 5, 2012

A mission to the Indians, from the Indian committee of Baltimore Yearly Meeting, to Fort Wayne, in 18O4
by Gerard T. Hopkins, Baltimore Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, edited by Martha Ellicott Tyson (Philadelphia, T. Ellwood Zell, 1862)

A Quaker pilgrimage: being a mission to the Indians from the Indian Committee of the Baltimore Yearly Meeting to Fort Wayne, 1804, edited by Alene Godfrey, prepared by the staff of the Public Library of Fort Wayne and Allen County, 1959

Historical Narratives of Early Canada
Extract:

When an important peace parley failed American commissioners sent the following coded message to a waiting general."We did not effect peace." The general translated this into "Begin vigorous offensive action." The offensive action occurred at a place called Fallen Timbers on August 20th 1794. The army of Brigadier General Anthony Wayne, the Natives' nemesis, met and defeated a large force of western Natives. The Miami chief, Little Turtle, was a fierce opponent of the Americans but by the time of this battle he advocated peace.

Subsequent to this defeat some 110 chiefs and warriors signed the Treaty of Fort Greenville in August 1795. By this treaty, the most important in the history of the United States, the sachems and War Chiefs gave away 25,000 square miles which today includes most of present-day Ohio, part of Indiana and the sites of Detroit, Chicago and a number of other mid-western cities for a measely 25,000 dollars in trade goods - calico shirts, farm tools, trade hatchets, ribbons, combs, mirrors and blankets and an annuity of $9500 to be divided among the tribes. It was a humiliating settlement for the payments represented a mere pittance with some tribes receiving as little as $500 a year. Few could challenge its terms, however, for when Wayne destroyed their fields, most of the destitute Natives became dependent on the United States for food. The situation and the ceremony were mocked. When a calumet or peace pipe was smoked by the parties to finalize the terms of the treaty, the ceremony was ridiculed by one American negotiator as "a tedious routine."

Battle of Fallen Timbers on Ohio History Central

Little Turtle, Chief of the Miami, prepared by the staff of the Public Library of Fort Wayne and Allen County, published 1954 by The Library in [Fort Wayne, Ind.]

Quaker Agriculture missions to the Miami in wikipedia

Johns Hopkins in wikipedia

Battle of Fallen Timbers in wikipedia

a quiet man

Most families include ancestors, maybe only a few, who achieved distinction — those whose actions made them famous or, it might be just as likely, notorious in their time. The majority lead lives which leave little trace. These men and women are obscure, not in any pejorative sense, but rather, in the shadows of the distant past, they are hard to make out.

I've written before about an ancestor of mine who opposed totalitarianism with simple human dignity, another who stood up for the rights of others in peril of his own. I've also written about nineteenth-century ancestors who achieved wealth and position but who were nonetheless liberal advocates of those who were poor and powerless.

Quite a few near and distant relatives served in military campaigns. Some of them fought for and others against British colonial rule in the American Revolutionary War. Similarly, some wore the Federal uniform and some that of the Confederacy during the Civil War. One served in the Navy from the Civil War through the end of the Spanish-American War, ending with rank of Rear-Admiral. Another took on great risks as a frogman in the South Pacific Theater of World War II.

Less heroically by far, I have one relative who was banished from his home town for having solicited sexual favors from a young woman he knew, man of contrary personality who was frequently at odds with his neighbors and fellow townsmen. There's another, silversmith, who was imprisoned for stealing from his landlord and who devised a small sculpture commemorating the event.

Still, most of the ancestry lacks such prominence. Their lives were less memorable and, not surprisingly, they are less remembered.

This circumstance was put somewhat elegantly by a man, Jeremy Pine, who had this to say about a distant relative:

Samuel Thorn, oldest son of Thomas and Abigail (Borough) Thorn, was born 4/11/1762, in the Thorndale farmhouse where it is likely that all his boyhood days and years of his youth were passed. So long a period has passed by since his decease that almost all recollections of him as a man have also vanished, there being no one now living in 1902 who ever saw him. We who are living in the early part of the twentieth century may never know his personal characteristics, whether he was a social person, a popular individual or otherwise, for memory dies, and beyond simply the dates recorded in his family bible and in the books of the monthly meeting of Friends of which he was a member there is little to write about him.

Success without advancement has been the general condition of the branch, and social and unassuming manners are attached to its members in general, although in a few instances a touch of haughtiness has, in a measure, separated some of the cousins from many of the family.

It may be fitting that I can learn nothing about Jeremy Pine or the writing from which this is excerpted. I found it on John Coutant Thorn's set of web pages: Descendants of William Thorne

{This is the Haddonfield Meeting where Samuel Thorne and his family worshiped; source: History of the Society of Friends in America, by James Bowden's, vol. II, 1854.}

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Here are some of my previous blog posts on family history:

• Iwo Jima, 65 years ago
• a courageous act of defiance
• evil practices unto the disturbance of Christian order and peace
• Whigs & Tories, associators & refusers, patriots & loyalists
• Kissams
• William, Cornelius, John, and Benny
• love, peace and liberty condemn hatred, war and bondage
• genealogy
• Louis Windmüller
• living high
• Woodside, Queens, New York
• Windmuller, Heine, and Lorelei
• Miss Sarah Thorne, Her Book
• Sarah Thorn and the cult of domesticity
• Beauties of the mind
• 'My Heart and Lute,' Sarah Thorn

of love and irritation

A couple of weeks ago I attended a funeral Mass for Tina, a woman who had been afflicted with Down's Syndrome. She defied what I had thought to be conventional wisdom about that impairment by attaining a long and largely independent existence. With support from care-givers and a community of similarly-disabled people she lived on her own and earned her own livelihood. Her self-knowledge was substantial. She wished she could have been tall and slender; recognized that she must carry art supplies with her so, as she said, she could keep her hands busy; and explained her stubborn streak as an inherited Irish mulishness.

She was well and deeply loved by family, friends, and those professionally responsible for helping her. She also could irritate others, so much so that her care-givers would fairly quickly burn out. One of the eulogists who spoke at the Mass gave some insight into both the love she attracted and the — not really incompatible — prickliness of her personality, prickliness that made her somewhat difficult. She, the eulogist, said a care-taker asked to move on but relented on hearing how much she herself, her presence and care, meant to Tina. She saw how much affection Tina had for her and I think she also realized that she reciprocated this affection.

One of Tina's sometimes-irritating traits was her outspokenness. She had little fear of speaking her mind regardless of social inhibitions and the likelihood that embarrassment and hurt feelings might result.

The conjoining of mutual expression of affection along with unwelcome public outbursts reminds me of events in the life of George Fox. He thrived during the middle of the 17th century England when religious controversy had stirred up large numbers of noisy and intrusive eccentrics. And although almost all of them disappeared from sight, he was founder of an enduring sect, the Society of Friends, called Quakers. His was a message of love, but, as with Tina, he had little fear of irritating others.

There are many traits which make this plain. Like other Quaker men, he refused to defer to his social betters by doffing his hat or using the formal "you" in place of the informal "thee." He also, like Tina, would speak his mind plainly in public places, whether outdoors in the marketplace or inside churches ("steeple-houses" as he called them).

The following extracts from his Journals are among his best descriptions of his freedom from reserve. The account follows his release from prison (one of many arduous imprisonments that he and co-believers suffered). He is afoot, as usual, and, wandering northward from London, finds himself outside Lichfied. He says:

Then was I commanded by the Lord to pull off my shoes. I stood still, for it was winter; and the Word of the Lord was like a fire in me. So I put off my shoes, and left them with the shepherds; and the poor shepherds trembled, and were astonished. Then I walked on about a mile, and as soon as I was got within the city, the Word of the Lord came to me again, saying, "Cry, 'Woe to the bloody city of Lichfield!'" So I went up and down the streets, crying with a loud voice, "Woe to the bloody city of Lichfield!" It being market-day, I went into the market-place, and to and fro in the several parts of it, and made stands, crying as before, "Woe to the bloody city of Lichfield!" And no one laid hands on me.

As I went thus crying through the streets, there seemed to me to be a channel of blood running down the streets, and the market-place appeared like a pool of blood.

When I had declared what was upon me, and felt myself clear, I went out of the town in peace, and, returning to the shepherds, I gave them some money, and took my shoes of them again. But the fire of the Lord was so in my feet, and all over me, that I did not matter to put on my shoes again, and was at a stand whether I should or no, till I felt freedom from the Lord so to do; then, after I had washed my feet, I put on my shoes again.

The next day I went to Cranswick, While I was here, there came a great woman of Beverley to speak to Justice Hotham about some business; and in discourse she told him that the last Sabbath-day (as she called it) there came an angel or spirit into the church at Beverley, and spoke the wonderful things of God, to the astonishment of all that were there; and when it had done, it passed away, and they did not know whence it came, nor whither it went; but it astonished all, -- priest, professors, and magistrates of the town. This relation Justice Hotham gave me afterwards, and then I gave him an account of how I had been that day at Beverley steeple-house, and had declared truth to the priest and people there.

I went to another steeple-house about three miles off, where preached a great high-priest, called a doctor, one of them whom Justice Hotham would have sent for to speak with me. I went into the steeple-house, and stayed till the priest had done. The words which he took for his text were these, "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; and he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat, yea come, buy wine and milk without money and without price."

Then was I moved of the Lord God to say unto him, "Come down, thou deceiver; dost thou bid people come freely, and take of the water of life freely, and yet thou takest three hundred pounds a year of them for preaching the Scriptures to them. Mayest thou not blush for shame? Did the prophet Isaiah, and Christ do so, who spoke the words, and gave them forth freely? Did not Christ say to His ministers, whom He sent to preach, 'Freely ye have received, freely give'?"

The priest, like a man amazed, hastened away. After he had left his flock, I had as much time as I could desire to speak to the people; and I directed them from the darkness to the Light, and to the grace of God, that would teach them, and bring them salvation; to the Spirit of God in their inward parts, which would be a free teacher unto them.

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{George Fox, shod; source: stokenewingtonquakers.org}

{Market Square in Lichfiled with church in background; nearly a century after Fox's visit, Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfield, and the statue is of his biographer James Boswell; source: Herbaltablet's photostream on flickr}

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My source for the journal entry: GEORGE FOX - An Autobiography CHAPTER V. One Man May Shake the Country for Ten Miles 1651-1652.

those who meddle in the making of marriages

Lately I've been reading -- or at least skimming -- lots of math texts from the 17th-century and occasionally something interesting catches my eye. The books and the culture of technical education in which they nest were both monotonously masculine. There were advocates for teaching math to women but the objective of authors and students alike was mostly the preparation of young men for jobs in merchants' offices and trademen's shops.

This morning I was looking at one of the most popular of all these books, William Mather's Young Man's Companion, a comprehensive work of instruction and reference that went through 24 editions between 1681 and 1775. What caught my eye was a reference to a pamphlet he wrote about the invidious meddling of women in the affairs of men. It's called A Novelty: Or, A Government Of Women Distinct From Men, Erected Amoungst Some Of The People, Call'd Quakers. Published in 1694, it complains about the power held by Quaker women in Bedfordshire at the time.

{The image shows a Quaker woman preaching ca. 1675.}

The worst offense, in Mather's view, was that these women would interview young couples who wished to marry. In the words of one who defended the practice, the women would "enquire and see that things be clear on all parts on so weighty a concern as marriage." Susan Dinan explains the purpose of these interviews in a recent monograph.

Mather devotes a couple dozen pages to his reasons why it was improper for a woman to "meddle in the making of marriages unless of her own children and servants." Likening the meeting to an official court of inquiry, he says "the greatest wonder of all is, that such a government should be practised amonst a people that profess that every individual man and woman should have no other guide besides Christ's inward and spiritual grace," and he says he is proud to have earned the rebuke of George Fox himself: "But if you now say to me, as G.F. [i.e., George Fox] said to me ... in a discourse with him, till near mid-night, about the said arbitrary government, 'you do not deserve to have wives,' (saith he) 'you speak too much against women.' to say the truth, this was the best argument he could give us, for his unscriptual female government."

Mather had become a Quaker nearly 35 years before writing this and was to return to the Church of England the next year. George Fox was of course the founder of the Religious Society of Friends. As bold as he was peaceful, his writings make for very interesting reading. Answering Mather and other critics, he strongly defended the right of women to participate in decision-making via Monthly and Quarterly Meetings and to interview couples who wished to marry.

{The image shows Fox in an engraving taken from a contemporary painting.}

Here is the text of a letter -- which Mather quotes -- which summarizes the immediate object of his displeasure:

Friends in Bedford-shire,

Here came Stephen Scarborrow, to acquaint Friends of his Intention of Marriage with Marry Samm, Daughter of Nathaniel Stamm of Litlington, in Bedford-shire; as also he did to our Quarterly Meeting about a Month ago, and Friends did tenderly advise him to acquaint our Women Friends therewith, who attend Meetings to serve Truth in their Day Age, and Generation, and to enquire and see that things be clear on all parts on so weighty a Concern as Marriage; but he refusing to follow Friend's Advice herein, I know not what the Women-Friends may have to say in this Matter: Now I being one that have had some Exercise and Concern in these our Meetings, I do testifie, That that Spirit that doth oppose the good Order in publishing Marriage in Men and Women's Meetings, is not of God, and am sorry for the Young Man, and desire he may live to see his Weakness, and amend; so with Love to all Friends of Truth, rest a Friend to the same Truth. -- Tobias Hardmeat.

Here is the title page of the pamphlet:


Here is the catalog entry for it:

Mather, W., fl. 1695.

A novelty: or, a government of vvomen distinct from men, erected amoungst some of the people, call'd Quakers. Detected in an epistle, occasionally written to a man-judge, upon a young man's refusing (for good conscience sake) to submit to their authority in marriage, seeing that relations and friends were already satisfied. To which is added, a lamentation for the fall of so many of that people. Published for no other end, but to deter all honest hearts of the said people, from erecting the like unscriptural government. Tho' this may not so far prevail with such women as has a secret command of their husbands purses; together with those preachers that reap profit by such a female government, as to consent to the disanulling the same. Written by William Mather, a dear lover of the said people, who has for several years been much troubled, that some of them should fall from there primitive institution, as to set up women's and men's meetings, as guides in government, ... . , London : printed for Sarah Howkins, in George-yard, Lumbard-street, [1694?]
Date: 1694
Bib name / number: Wing (2nd ed.) / M1284C
Bib name / number: Smith, J. Catalogue of Friends' Books / II, p. 162
No. pages: 23, [1] p.
Copy from: Friends' Library, London, England