Quaker Collections

• Monographs/Jenks Collection
• Family Papers
• Organizational Records
• Quaker Fiction
• Journals and Diaries
• Meeting Records
• Rufus Jones
• Quaker Serials

Related Links

• Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Records Services Group

Portrait of Lucretia Mott (1793-1880), Quaker abolitionist and suffragist, engraved by G.E. Perine & Co., NY.

Document of manumission of his slave, Mary, by Thomas Walmsley of Philadelphia Co., April 1776, a member of Abington Monthly Meeting, with a statement of the conditions of manumission.

Photograph of Yearly Meeting at Arch Street Meeting House, Philadelphia, ca. 1900. From a large collection of Meeting House depictions.

Haverford’s Quaker Collection is one of the three finest such repositories in the world. Our holdings span the time since the beginnings of Quakerism in 17th century Britain to the present day in many parts of the world. Information by and about the Society of Friends can be accessed here in many formats and categories.

Quaker Monographs/Jenks Collection

Friends have published a great deal in the past three centuries, and Haverford has attempted to collect as much of this material as possible. There are more than 32,000 printed titles on the shelves, not including thousands of serials, pamphlets, clippings and other ephemeral material. The majority of our holdings are on open shelves where researchers can browse and select works of interest.

The Jenks Collection is the finest collection of early Quaker writings in the United States and supports the most current scholarship in the field.

The collection is comprised of 1,600 volumes of 17th century Quaker tracts, broadsides and pamphlets that illustrate, in print, the formation of the Society of Friends. The reactions of the contemporary society in Great Britain are reflected in the anti-Quakeriana written by those opposed to Friends and their principles. Included in the Jenks Collection are writings of the founder, George Fox, William Penn, Isaac Penington, George Whitehead and James Nayler. There are also writings of over 50 Quaker women, reflecting the equal authority women have always held within the Society of Friends.

The Jenks Collection was a gift to Haverford College from Hannah M. Jenks in memory of her husband, William H. Jenks, who was a member of the Board of Managers of the College from 1895 until 1907. Each tract is beautifully bound in calf or morocco with gold tooling.

Recent scholarship using this collection includes women’s history, book and publishing history and 17th century British culture. Many of the unique titles in this collection are becoming available in reprints and other formats such as microfilm and digital products.

Quaker Family Papers

Family papers containing over 250,000 items make up some of the largest groups of Quaker documents at Haverford. These Quaker families primarily from Pennsylvania and New Jersey include Allinson (1698-1939), Bacon (ca. 1897-1987), Baily (1826-1916), Bowles (1900-1971), Brinton (1897-1973), Cadbury, Cope (1795-1896), Evans (1707-1958), Hartshorne (1797-1908), Howland (ca. 1700-1867), Addison Hutton, Rufus M. Jones ()Morris-Sansom (ca. 1715-1925), Scattergood (1694-1903), Sharpless (1748-1920), Smith (1660- ), Tallcot (1768-1883), Taylor (1809-1953), and many more.

Scholars have found the Family Papers invaluable sources of information, ranging from antislavery to zoology, women’s rights and Native American rights to documentation of the religious and social fabric of the lives of prominent and ordinary Quakers.

Quaker Organizational Records

Alongside the Quaker Family records are Quaker Organizational records. Among others, these include the records of: Associated Executive Committee of Friends on Indian Affairs, Bethany Mission for Colored People, Emlen Institution, Female Association for the Relief of Women and Children in Reduced Circumstances, Friends Asylum, Friends Charity Fuel Association, Germantown Employment Society for Women, New York Colored Mission and the Welsh Society of Philadelphia. The variety of services indicated by some of these names indicate the breadth of interests of Friends across three centuries.

Quaker Fiction

A unique group of our holdings is our collection of Quaker Fiction. Some 800 books of fiction, drama and poetry by and about Friends are included in this collection.. Popular culture and the placement of the Society of Friends within it are demonstrated by a number of 18th century anti-Quakeriana plays and "Dime Novels." Issues of war and peace are popular themes for the novels in different places and times. The Quaker Fiction Collection contains the writings of current Quaker authors, however the majority of the historical novels were gathered by Francis R. Taylor, Haverford Class of 1906, and given to Haverford by Anne Taylor Bronner.

Several publications, dissertations and articles have been published on the subject but there is potential for much more research using this unique and unusual resource.

Quaker Journals and Diaries

There are more than 700 manuscript journals in the collection. Some of these have been printed, such as those of William Hunt (1733-1772), the Revolutionary War journal of Margaret Hill Morris (1737-1816) and the four-volume journal of William Savery (1750-1804). Others are much too large to be published: Joshua L. Baily (1826-1916), 45 volumes; or the journals of the two Jacob Elfreths (1814-1924), 113 volumes.

Additional names in this collection include: George Churchman (1730-1814), Thomas Pim Cope (1768-1854), Elizabeth S. Drinker (ca. 1734-1807), Jane Maule (1847-1939), Joseph Scattergood (ca. 1770-1824), Joshua Sharpless (1746-1825), Sarah F. Smiley (1830-1917), Anna Spencer (ca. 1832-1905), Joseph Walton (1817-1898), Elizabeth Webb (1663-1726) and Julia A. Wilbur (1815-1895).

To use the diary of Thomas Pim Cope as an example, entries include such information as on the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Quaker schisms, national and international politics, the development of 19th-century Philadelphia, the founding of Haverford College as well as on Cope's personal life.

Quaker Meeting Records

In the 1970s, with the close of the vault at Arch Street Meeting in Philadelphia, the records of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, including over 220 constituent Monthly Meetings were deposited at Haverford’s Quaker Collection and Swarthmore College’s Friends Historical Library. Records dating from the original settlement in Burlington, N.J. in 1678 and to the present number over 100,000 items. These unpublished documents include: vital records, such as births, deaths and marriages, and minutes of men’s, women’s, joint, ministers and elders (later worship and ministry) meetings, as well as school and property records, committee minutes and other records.

Today, Swarthmore and Haverford are jointly building an online guide indicating locations of these records and their microfilm surrogates.

Researchers from family historians to academic historians comb these materials for insight into such varied issues as Quaker missionary activities in Japan, Quaker work among Native Americans and Meetinghouse architecture.

In addition, Haverford is the repository for the records of Baltimore Yearly Meeting and its constituent Meetings.

Haverford has gathered together the printed "Minutes" or proceedings of a great many of the yearly meetings of Friends, both from the Americas and overseas. Back runs of the printed proceedings, including those for eleven bodies which have either ceased to exist or have been merged into other groups, are invaluable for researchers. We seek to collect reports from the many new yearly meetings which have been created in recent decades, but there are some gaps at present.

Quaker Rufus Jones

Haverford College was at the center of the life of Rufus M. Jones (1863-1948), for he did his undergraduate work, taught for 41 years and lived here until his death in 1948. During his lifetime, he gave the college his personal collection of books on mysticism, nearly 1,000 volumes which he accumulated in connection with his voluminous writing on the subject. He left a fund to care for and enlarge this collection, which now includes 1,400 books from the Renaissance period to the present.

A collection of the writings of Rufus Jones given by Clarence Tobias, '30, is practically complete. It consists of 168 volumes and 8 boxes of pamphlets and extracts and continues to grow as the writings of Rufus Jones are reprinted or as additional manuscripts are published.

In 1950 the papers of Rufus Jones were deposited in the Quaker Collection by Elizabeth B. Jones and her daughter, Mary Hoxie Jones; these were donated to the college in the years from 1980-1998. These consist of some 75 linear feet of correspondence, lecture notes, speeches, manuscripts of books, diaries and photographs.

The Rufus M. Jones study, a replica of his own study at 2 College Circle, with his own books and furniture, is part of the Library.

Today, a multitude of researchers explore this wealth of materials for information on such topics as: the reunification of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, mysticism, American Friends Service Committee, religion in America, the histories of Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges, and, of course, the life of the mind of one of the most important American Quaker thinkers of the 20th century.

Quaker Serials

In addition to compiling complete runs of well-known periodicals and serials produced by members of the Society, the Quaker Collection has made an effort to collect journals in other languages, periodicals from evangelical Friends and from other groups within the Society. Complete files of The Friend (Philadelphia), the first regular periodical; The Friend (London), now the oldest in length of publication; The British Friend, Friends' Intelligencer, Friends Review, The Friends Quarterly (before 1947, Friends Quarterly Examiner), Quaker Life (before 1950, The American Friend) and Evangelical Friend form the core of the collection.

Foreign language publications include Der Quaker (German), the oldest, Kvekoren (Norwegian), Vie Quaker (French), The Friend (Japanese) and De Vriendenkring (Dutch). The Australian Friend (1888- ), The Canadian Friend (1905- ), The Friendly Way (India) and other overseas publications in English are also in the collection. The Christian Worker, the earlier Evangelical Friend, and The Gospel Minister are examples of other evangelical titles. Reynard (the arts), Inward Light (religion and psychology), Kvakera Esperantisto and the Quaker Universalist Fellowship Newsletter are examples of other specialized publications