Search Results for: soderlund

The Quaker Witch Trial

· Martin Kelley

There’s a great sto­ry, almost cer­tain­ly a tall tale, about Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s lone witch tri­al, in which the accused, a Swedish woman who could­n’t speak Eng­lish, con­firmed she flew on brooms. William Penn him­self, pre­sid­ing, replied “Well I know of no law against that!” and dis­missed the case. The Novem­ber issue of Friends Jour­nal has a fic­tion­al­ized account of this writ­ten by Jean Martin.

Broomstick
Broomstick 

A colo­nial Quak­er witch trial.
Friends Journal Friends Journal 

There’s no tran­script of the actu­al tri­al so we don’t know the blow-by-blow. We know that Mar­garet Matt­son was found guilty of hav­ing the rep­u­ta­tion of a witch, a strange find­ing indeed.

The Swedes were the orig­i­nal Euro­pean inhab­i­tants of the Delaware Riv­er basin. Many were eth­nic Finns who had brought folk reme­dies with them. They were close to the Native Lenape peo­ples and inter­mar­ried and allied them­selves with one anoth­er against lat­er Euro­peans rulers, the Dutch then English.

Being first amongst the Euro­peans, the Swedes/Finns had set­tled in some of the choic­est land along the mouths of creeks and there was a lot of polit­i­cal pres­sure to move them out or hem them in. Accu­sa­tions of witch­craft were part of this con­text. The Eng­lish accusers might well have been engag­ing in clas­sic scape­goat­ing behav­ior meant to steal land and resources.

Like the Lenape, many Swedes/Finns even­tu­al­ly moved across the riv­er to West Jer­sey, which had a strong Lenape pres­ence, a much slow­er influx of Eng­lish Quak­ers, and clear­er bound­aries between the two, such as Burling­ton Coun­ty’s so-called “Indi­an Line” at the head of west-flowing creeks flow­ing into the Delaware. Mar­garet Matt­son was part of this exo­dus. She might have won the tri­al but her Penn­syl­va­nia neigh­bors suc­ceed­ed in bul­ly­ing her out of the colony. The folksy sto­ry of Quak­er tol­er­a­tion may be a lot shaki­er than lat­er biog­ra­phers made it out to be.

If you’re inter­est­ing in all this, Jean Soder­lund’s work, esp. 2014’s Lenape Coun­try, is fab­u­lous and decon­structs a lot of myths pro­mul­gat­ed by lat­er Quak­er set­tlers. She recent­ly wrote about some of this for Friends Jour­nal. There’s also a pret­ty good PDF of the tri­al here.

Some of this his­to­ry lives on. I have to dri­ve 1/2 hour to Quak­er meet­ing because most of South Jer­sey’s Quak­er meet­ings are locat­ed west of the long-forgotten “Indi­an Line.” Here’s the SJ Quak­er map with the approx­i­mate line of water­sheds toward the Delaware Riv­er. (The four out­lier South Jer­sey Quak­er meet­ings are all with­in a mile or two of Atlantic Ocean bays. Sea­far­ing Quak­ers, often from Long Island/New Eng­land, set­tled them.)

August Friends Journal

· Martin Kelley

The August issue of Friends Jour­nal is avail­able online. There’s no theme to this issue, which makes it kind of a “Best of” for the arti­cles we’ve received over the late spring. It’s hard to pick favorites but I’m real­ly excit­ed by Michael Lev­i’s “White Suprema­cy Cul­ture in My Clerk­ing.”

Anoth­er favorite is Jean Soder­lund’s look at Lenape Peo­ple, Quak­ers, and peace in the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry. I reached out to Jean after read­ing her 2015 book, Lenape Coun­try: Delaware Val­ley Soci­ety Before William Penn. On of her the­ses was that a lot of the cul­ture of peace that we’ve attrib­uted to Penn­syl­va­nia Quak­ers was already well in place along both shores of the Delaware Riv­er long before Pen­n’s arrival, nego­ti­at­ed by the Lenape who pro­tect­ed it through a suc­ces­sion of Dutch and Swedish set­tle­ments and gov­er­nors. As I wrote in my open­ing col­umn this month:

Friends have often spent a lot of time think­ing about Quak­er cul­ture and jus­ti­fy­ing it to our­selves and oth­ers. Our his­to­ries and the sto­ries we tell about our­selves have often been craft­ed to pro­vide a uni­fied vision for who we should be now. It’s a con­tin­u­al process, and sto­ry­telling con­tin­ues to shape our self-image today.

“Who Do We Think We Are?”

I think a lot of what has become Amer­i­can Quak­er cul­ture was forged in the first fifty years of Philadelphia-area gov­ern­ing and that if we’re to under­stand who we are now, it helps to under­stand how a band of per­se­cut­ed rad­i­cals in Eng­land adapt­ed to becom­ing landown­ers, col­o­niz­ers, and gov­er­nors over a some­times unwill­ing land of Lenape, Swedes, Dutch, Finns and non-Quaker English.

New book on Quaker prophetic faith

· Martin Kelley

Real­ly excit­ed to see my friend Patri­cia Dall­man­n’s new book is avail­able! It’s called The Light That Is Giv­en. I read a pre-publication PDF ver­sion and was asked by the pub­lish­er to give a blurb. Here’s what I wrote: 

Patri­cia Dall­mann brings a mod­ern prophet­ic voice to Scrip­ture and ancient Friends’ texts. She care­ful­ly exam­ines the lan­guage of these sto­ries and brings new life to their teach­ings, but this is no exer­cise in mim­ic­ry. Dall­mann shares her own expe­ri­ences and shows us how tra­di­tion­al Quak­er beliefs have guid­ed her. This is an invalu­able resource for those want­i­ng to explore how tra­di­tion­al Friends’ faith and prac­tice can be lived out by spir­i­tu­al seek­ers today.

I see from Ama­zon that Dou­glas Gwyn and Stu­art Mas­ters gave even bet­ter blurbs so I’m in good company! 

It’s a great sum­mer for tra­di­tion­al Quak­er books, with this and Christo­pher Stern’s new mem­oir. I was­n’t able to make his book talk at the FGC Gath­er­ing last week but hope to catch up on it. I did final­ly pick up a copy of 2015’s Tra­di­tion­al Quak­er Chris­tian­i­ty to add to my list of books I real­ly real­ly want to read. This week I fin­ished Jean Soder­lund’s Lenape Coun­try: Delaware Val­ley Soci­ety Before William Penn, which dis­tills a lot of the myths of Penn and Quak­ers (she’ll have an arti­cle on some of this in the August issue of FJ!).

Early December Links

· Martin Kelley

NPR inter­viewed Pales­tin­ian Amer­i­can Quak­er Sa’ed Atshan. He talks about the three stu­dents recent­ly shot last month in New Hamp­shire, two of whom he men­tored, and also Quak­er wor­ship. Very thought­ful and well done.

Quak­er Stud­ies has a spe­cial issue out on John Wool­man. I’ve writ­ten about this well-known Friend, many times, nat­u­ral­ly, includ­ing a three part series back in 2006, but it’s great to have aca­d­e­mics share the lat­est takes. As guest edi­tor Jon Ker­sh­n­er writes in his intro­duc­tion, “The fresh ground cul­ti­vat­ed by these authors demon­strates that there is much still to say about Wool­man.” Best of all, this is open access! I think it’s real­ly trag­ic that so much good aca­d­e­m­ic writ­ing today is com­plete­ly inac­ces­si­ble and I’m not sure why, as I don’t think the authors are get­ting much of the mon­ey. I hope new aca­d­e­m­ic pub­lish­ing mod­els start to win out, as it’s impor­tant for lay Friends to think about his­to­ry in a more thought­ful way. I’m a big stan, as the kids say, of Jean Soder­lund, and am devour­ing her con­tri­bu­tion to this spe­cial edi­tion.

I looovvee Goldie’s, the Philly Israeli-American veg­an falafel mini-chain, so I’m not just appalled but per­son­al­ly upset that some pro-Palestinian pro­test­ers accused its own­ers of geno­cide. Once again peo­ple: it is pos­si­ble to be against vio­lence on all sides and also to not scape­goat any side. It sounds like own­er Michael Solomonov’s response has been mut­ed and under­stand­ing: good for him. I do hope this dies down. Pro­test­ers on all sides say stu­pid things in the heat of the moment and it sounds like they were there for less than four min­utes. Can we move on?

Also, chef’s kiss to the writer of The Inquir­er head­line, Berks Coun­ty woman named Time’s 2023 Per­son of the Year.

William Penn’s 12 slaves (a citation mystery)

· Martin Kelley

There has been renewed atten­tion in Quak­er cir­cles to William Pen­n’s slave­hold­ing in recent years. Late last year, the board that man­ages the William Penn House in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., decid­ed to embark on a renam­ing process because of the slav­ery, a deci­sion that has spawned a num­ber of seem­ing­ly end­less com­ment threads on Face­book, like this one. One thing that’s fas­ci­nat­ing is that many of the new advo­cates have set­tled on a spe­cif­ic num­ber of slaves. From Friends Com­mit­tee on Nation­al Leg­is­la­tion:

Despite his con­tri­bu­tion to U.S. his­to­ry and his inten­tions of found­ing a colony built on “broth­er­ly love,” William Penn owned 12 slaves in his estate, Pennsbury.

Twelve slaves. As part of my job is fact-checking, I like to double-check num­bers like that. Penns­bury Manor, the muse­um devot­ed to Pen­n’s life in his colony, just refers to a slave com­mu­ni­ty and pro­vides five names (Sam, Sue, Yaff, Jack, and Peter). So how has 12 become a cit­ed num­ber? Let’s go diving.

I don’t know FCN­L’s sources but a recent edi­to­r­i­al sub­mis­sion came to me in recent months cit­ing an August 2020 arti­cle by Michaela Win­berg in the online pub­li­ca­tion Bil­ly Penn, “William Penn kept enslaved peo­ple. These are some of their names”:

The records that exist aren’t total­ly clear, but it seems as if Penn enslaved rough­ly 12 peo­ple at his Penns­bury Manor estate, which was locat­ed in what is now the Philly sub­urbs. These peo­ple were pur­chased off the first slave ship known to have arrived in Philadel­phia, and were of African and Car­ribean [sic] descent.

I’m a fan of Bil­ly Penn but it’s not an aca­d­e­m­ic source. For­tu­nate­ly they gave a link to their asser­tion, a Sep­tem­ber 2012 arti­cle by Jack H. Schick in… oh dear, my own pub­li­ca­tion, Friends Jour­nal!In “Slav­ery in Penn­syl­va­nia” he wrote:

Quak­ers, though con­cerned and in the fore­front of efforts to end the insti­tu­tion of slav­ery, were not inno­cent. While liv­ing on his estate at Penns­bury Manor, before he returned to Eng­land for­ev­er in 1701, William Penn kept 12 slaves.

No cita­tion was giv­en but as Jack­’s edi­tor I can affirm he is fond of Wikipedia. I’m fair­ly con­fi­dent that he got his ref­er­ence from this entry, “His­to­ry of slav­ery in Penn­syl­va­nia”:

William Penn, the pro­pri­etor of the Province of Penn­syl­va­nia, held 12 slaves as work­ers on his estate, Penns­bury. They took part in con­struc­tion of the main house and out­build­ings. Penn left the colony in 1701, and nev­er returned.

If you ask Google “How many slaves did Penn have?” it gives you “12 slaves” as its instant answer and links to this Wikipedia page. Giv­en that the all-knowing search engine thinks this a vet­ted answer wor­thy of a 32-pixel head­line, how much can we trust it?

The imme­di­ate answer is: not much. Wikipedia has no cita­tion (as of this writ­ing; I should prob­a­bly go edit it myself). The trail would go cold there if not for the plat­for­m’s obses­sion with keep­ing its revi­sion his­to­ry. Through that one can find that the claim on Pen­n’s slaves dates to the Octo­ber 2007 cre­ation of the entry.

William Penn, the founder of the Penn­syl­va­nia colony, owned 12 slaves on his estate, Penns­bury; how­ev­er, he grad­u­al­ly became a sup­port­er of the abo­li­tion of the institution.

Thir­teen years of edits has reworked the sen­tence quite a bit but the 12 num­ber remains from the begin­ning and in that first Wikipedia draft there was a cita­tion to a USHis​to​ry​.org page. This is a still-extant web­site pro­duced by the Inde­pen­dence Hall Asso­ci­a­tion, a Penn­syl­va­nia non­prof­it found­ed in 1942. The process of link rot is at work, alas, and Wikipedi­a’s 2007 link gives a “page not found” today. Thank­ful­ly Archive​.org can take us back in the ear­ly aughts and let us read it in all of its early-oughts design glo­ry (it takes me back to see a back­ground image used to cre­ate a col­umn!). The USHis­to­ry post is just a cut-and-paste of a 2003 arti­cle in the Philadel­phia Inquir­er (again, acces­si­ble thanks to Archive​.org). Reporter Melis­sa Dribben’s lede goes right to the point:

William Penn owned at least 12 slaves. Dur­ing his life he grad­u­al­ly came around to advo­cat­ing abo­li­tion, but when he died in 1718, Penn­syl­va­nia was a long way from end­ing the practice.

Fur­ther down she men­tions Gary B. Nash and Jean R. Soder­lund and their 1991 book, Free­dom by Degrees: Eman­ci­pa­tion in Penn­syl­va­nia and Its After­math. For the first time in this train of cita­tions we’ve actu­al­ly come to trained his­to­ri­ans! And I’d be hard pressed to think of any two aca­d­e­mics I would trust more to doc­u­ment this era of colo­nial Penn­syl­va­nia than Nash or Soder­lund. It’s long out of print but Google Book­s’s pre­view gives us the moth­er lode:

Quak­er pro­pri­etor and his asso­ciates made no effort to pro­hib­it black slav­ery in the City of Broth­er­ly Love and its envi­rons. Indeed, Penn owned at least twelve slaves him­self and stat­ed at one point that he pre­ferred them to white inden­tured ser­vants because slaves could be held for life. Though in one ear­ly will the pro­pri­etor pro­vid­ed for man­u­mis­sion, slaves worked on his Penns­bury estate in Bucks Coun­ty through­out his tenure. One of these slaves was Black Alice who died in 1802 at age 116. She recalled often light­ing the pro­pri­etor’s pipe.13

The para­graph has a cita­tion [see update, below] but the lim­it­ed Google Books pre­view does­n’t include the cita­tion index and used copies are a bit too pricey for me (by chance I am cur­rent­ly read­ing Nash’s very fas­ci­nat­ing Forg­ing Free­dom, which is avail­able as a used book for a much more rea­son­able price).

I do wish that this trail of cita­tions did­n’t end at a book that’s cel­e­brat­ing its thir­ty year anniver­sary. I’m sure we’ve had a num­ber of ambi­tious his­to­ri­ans dig­ging through base­ment archives since the ear­ly 90s. Sure­ly they’ve uncov­ered more evi­dence. (For exam­ple, Black Alice, a fas­ci­nat­ing fig­ure, seems not to have been Pen­n’s slave at Penns­bury but instead was enslaved by fellow-Quaker Samuel Car­pen­ter, a friend of Penn, and own­er of an oys­ter house where Alice worked from age five.) But at least this one asser­tion — that Penn owned exact­ly or around or over twelve slaves — has a sol­id aca­d­e­m­ic source at its root.

Update March 18, 2021:

I emailed Jean R. Soder­lund, who gave me the sources for that para­graph in Free­dom by Degrees!

The cita­tions in note 13 are: Dunn et al., eds, Papers of William Penn, 3:66 – 67; 4:113 – 14; Han­nah Penn to James Logan June 6, 1720, and Logan to Han­nah Penn, May 11, 1721, Penn Papers, Offi­cial Cor­re­spon­dence, 1:95, 97, HSP; Samuel P. Jan­ney, The Life of William Penn (reprint 1970), 421; Nash, Forg­ing Free­dom, 12.

She did quite a bit of work dig­ging through the records con­cern­ing Pennbury after pub­lish­ing the book and says “I don’t remem­ber being con­cerned about the ref­er­ence to ‘at least twelve’ in Free­dom by Degrees.”

I’ve also edit­ed Wikipedia. Thirteen-plus years after their stat showed up on the “His­to­ry of slav­ery in Penn­syl­va­nia” page, Nash and Soder­lund final­ly get the citation.

Visiting Petty Island

· Martin Kelley

As a lover of maps, I’ve often be intrigued by the envi­rons  of the Delaware Riv­er. As the tides go up and down, the time­less­ness of the riv­er becomes a kind of gen­tle solace to the indus­tri­al­iza­tion along its banks. Nowhere is this more appar­ent than on the islands which some­how remain in its course. I’ve camped at Pea Patch Island down by Delaware and found a sur­pris­ing fam­i­ly con­nec­tion in its con­vo­lut­ed own­er­ship. But clos­er to my com­mute is Pet­ty Island, sit­ting along­side the New Jer­sey main­land a short dis­tance north of the Ben Franklin Bridge.

Pet­ty Island is owned by the Cit­go oil com­pa­ny and until just a few months ago was still dot­ted with its oil tanks and a large marine car­go facil­i­ty. Satel­lite views still show this twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry indus­try. But in a very long and oftentimes-uncertain process it’s due to become part of New Jer­sey nat­ur­al lands and even­tu­al­ly to become a pre­serve. The pub­lic is gen­er­al­ly still not allowed on the island but there are occa­sion­al trips and on this past Sat­ur­day I got to tour the island.

The fad­ed sign at the guard booth to the bridge onto the island 
The island was full of heavy truck traf­fic until quite recently. 
The north end has a lot of wind-swept fields 
Chris­tine Whor­ton of NJ Audobon and his­to­ri­an Bob Shinn led the tour. 
The island has had a num­ber of names over the last three-plus cen­turies. Even now there does­n’t seem to be a con­sis­ten­cy around use of apostrophe-s’s after the name. The guard shack and wel­come sign call it “Pet­ty’s Island” but Bob assured us it should be “Pet­ty Island.” 

We were very lucky to have Bob Shinn as our tour guide. He’s a walk­ing ency­clo­pe­dia of the island and the state geopol­i­tics and waves of names and com­mer­cial uses it’s been through. He lit­er­al­ly wrote the entry on Pet­ty Island in the Philadel­phia Ency­clo­pe­dia. Not sur­pris­ing­ly there’s a lot of Quak­ers in the ear­ly record­ed his­to­ry and the deed between the first Quak­er own­er and three Lenape rep­re­sen­ta­tives is intact in the Haver­ford Col­lege col­lec­tions (this deed was also a major part of a talk by Lenape – set­tler his­to­ry giv­en by Jean Soder­lund a few months ago at Ran­co­cas Meet­ing (see also her book Lenape Coun­try)).

The ever-changing, never-settled his­to­ry of the island con­tin­ues with its name. Wikipedia, Google Maps, and — most impor­tant­ly — Bob Shinn call it “Pet­ty Island,” while the guard shack, wel­come sign, NJ Audubon Soci­ety, and New Jer­sey Nat­ur­al Lands Trust adds the pos­ses­sive to make it “Pet­ty’s Island.” The lat­ter is espe­cial­ly awkward-sounding to my ears, as South Jer­sey place names char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly drop the apos­tro­phes over time (for exam­ple, the riv­er land­ing named after Cap­tain George May is now the town of “Mays Landing.”)

Pret­ty, tidal wet­lands along the back chan­nel of the Delaware. 
You can see why devel­op­ers want­ed to get their hands on this island and its views. 
A tidal riv­er mak­ing waves. 
My son Fran­cis was on the tour too and seemed to like it. 
Bob Shinn at the bot­tom of one of the old dredg­ing berms. Behind these the Army Corps of Engi­neers poured slur­ry tak­en from the main chan­nel of the river. 
Pret­ty mas­sive drain pipes from the slur­ry pools. 

Rem­nants of the indus­tri­al­iza­tion remain: the mas­sive three-story load­ing facil­i­ty has been kept to become the bones of a future vis­i­tors cen­ter; the adja­cent asphalt park­ing area has just been replant­ed as a mead­ow and is most­ly a lot of rocks and short blades of grass (with some Fowler’s toads!). We were lucky enough to be the first pub­lic group to be there since this had all been cleared away.

Walk­ing across the for­mer marine terminal. 
Barges were loaded three sto­ries high with car­go con­tain­ers via this structure. 
This struc­ture is solid. 
Even­tu­al­ly this will be part of a vis­i­tors center. 
A friend­ly Fowler’s toad inhab­its the new meadow. 
This was a park­ing lot at the begin­ning of the year. 
Google Maps still shows this as an indus­tri­al zone. 

Bonus: I did­n’t real­ize till we were about to get in our cars that South Jer­sey Trails was also on the tour. He wrote it up too! If you look care­ful­ly, I’m in the back­ground of one of the shots, and now that I’m look­ing I think that’s him in some of mine.