I have to wonder whether my book Quaking Dover is my way of saying farewell to my Friends and congregation in Dover – or of staying in touch, now that I’ve moved further east.
Only time, of course, will tell.
Tag: Quaker
In all of the holiday festivities
In the colonial era, neither the Congregationalists/Puritans at First Parish nor the Quakers/Friends observed Christmas.
So much for singing festive carols or decorating a tree.
The Friends didn’t sing at all, actually, unless it was somehow spontaneous.
At First Parish, meanwhile, a bass viol was introduced in the 1700s to accompany the hymns.
That gave way in 1829 to an organ built by Bostonian William M. Goodrich. In 1878, the instrument was rebuilt and repositioned by Hutchings-Plaisted of Boston, with alterations in subsequent years.
In 1995, a thoroughly revised instrument was unveiled, the work of Biddeford, Maine, Faucher Organ company. A hybrid of the original pipes and of newer electronic and computer elements, it’s a monster machine capable of rattling the house and shaking the bottoms of your feet.
I am glad we simple Quakers don’t have to pay for its routine maintenance, though I am grateful for those who do.
Not bad for holiday festivities, including accompanying a community-wide Messiah sing.
It’s not the only option in town, either. For some, those carols have to wait till the end of Advent, when the Twelve Days begin.
And, for the record, the Greek Orthodox start celebrating Christmas 12 days later.
As for some of Dover’s conventional histories
I’ve previously mentioned newspaper editor George Wadleigh as a fascinating source of Dover historical narrative.
The Rev. Jeremiah Belknap, a renowned historian, proved far less helpful when it came to the Quakers. They seemed largely invisible to him.
I largely ignored the Rev. Alonzo Hall Quint, another Congregational minister, whose historical notes had been read by Wadleigh, probably when they were originally serialized in the Dover Enquirer from 1850 on. One of my reasons was practical: the scanned ebook edition of the book is nearly unreadable. Besides, even in retirement, I have only so much time. One point worthy of revisiting in the original would be the use of “inner light” in 1855 – if accurate, that would be the first reference to the Quaker doctrine anywhere. Previously, it was Inward Light, with a much different focus. I’m assuming this was a “correction” by John Scales in editing the full book edition published in 1900. Scales himself authored an independent colonial history published in 1923.
One source for later research would be the journals of the Rev. Enoch Place, a pioneer of the Free Will Baptist movement. He visited Friends Meetings in his travels from Strafford, which would offer a fresh perspective, as well as presiding at thousands of burials, baptisms, and weddings from 1810 to 1865. His might balance the histories of the period that revolve around Dover’s downtown mills.
For the history student, I see some doctoral dissertation possibilities
There’s so much more I’d like to know about details related to my Quaking Dover story, but I’m not a professional historian.
Some of these could be fodder for a Ph.D. dissertation.
- An examination of Dover Friends book of minutes dealing with young men who enlisted in the Revolutionary War would be one.
- Or of where individuals went in their religious affiliations after leaving Friends.
- Even Richard Waldron’s full biography.
- A list of the clerks of the Meeting and another of the recorded ministers and elders would be helpful.
- Or an examination of the actual functioning of the provincial charters, especially the so-called “proprietary colonies.”
- And, oh yes, a genealogical index of New England Quakers like William Wade Hinshaw’s encyclopedic indexes of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Ohio.
- I would even like to see an understandable examination of English settlement in Maine in its colonial years. Where, for instance, did the settlers go after watching from sea as smoke and flames rose from what had been their homes and villages in a fateful five-week period of 1676, eradicating all English from east of Casco Bay?
Sometimes a little curiosity falls into place
You know, you drive past a thousand times and finally decide to explore a side street.
That’s what happened in Dover when I had a half-hour to spare before my presentation at the public library.
Upper Factory Road off Tollend was the excursion in question, and I was curious to see if I could actually get a glimpse of Kimball Falls in the Cochecho River through somebody’s back yard.
Yeah, suburban-style sprawl.
What first appeared was this falls, or rapids, at the foot of the trail. It’s the fourth of six falls as the river runs through Dover, though some of them are more accurately rapids. (I’m guessing there’s a nuance of meaning I hadn’t gotten previously – a waterfall seems to be a more clearly defined kind of “falls,” in contrast to fast-running streams like Jones Falls and Gunpowder Falls in Maryland as well as the Salmon Falls River abutting Dover.)
This one would have been the site of the Dover Cotton Factory, which bought the land before 1820, erected a dam, mills, and housing, and sold it in 1830, when the operation moved downstream to the first falls, now the heart of downtown.
Whittier Falls, which are discussed in my book Quaking Dover, were the second set going upstream.
To my surprise, Upper Factory Road actually leads to a small trail down to the water, along with a twist along the riverbank to a definite waterfall. Alas, that part was too wet to use at the time, but it is on my list for a future trip.
Checking the aerial map when I got home, I realized I had frequently passed the falls on the community trail on the other side of the river, but the path had veered too far inland for a direct view. But you can definitely hear them, as I recall.
It’s rather surprising how much you can find in what’s essentially your own back yard when you look. Or, perhaps more accurately, know what you’re looking for. I lived in Dover 21 years and found this 2½ years after I left.
By the way, there’s no Lower Factory Road.
What is it that makes a waterfall so appealing?
Lest we Friends be too proud
From Bowen Alpern’s book, Godless for God’s Sake:
“Much of what we tend to regard as the achievement of Friends as a whole was, in fact, the work of individual Friends, or small groups of Friends, often in the face of opposition or neglect of their monthly meetings. (One of the most positive – if often tedious – aspects of Quaker culture may be its capacity to produce or attract individuals who are willing to stand up to it).”
No index and no footnotes
November is the month many amateur writers set out to draft a full novel within 30 days.
My book Quaking Dover is nonfiction, but with eight published novels, I can still sympathize.
I should have been suspicious when this book seemed to write itself, producing what one beta reader then sensed as not just stream-of-consciousness but a mind-dump.
Ouch!
Revising it, aiming at a more consistent, creative non-fiction tone, was much more torturous and required much more time and attention than I can calculate. Still, I have to admit the result feels satisfying. Just don’t make me do it again.
As a history book, it wound up with no index and no footnotes but instead focused on a community of people over time.
Well, the ebook edition can be easily searched for items. Not so with the paperback.
As for footnotes? Much of my research in the Covid outbreak was conducted online, not exactly a permanent source of information.
The effort did push me far beyond my journalism discipline, pushing me into the story as an active observer, not that I was comfortable with that.
But it seems to work, all the same.
Looking for God in the details
The architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is often credited as the origin of the quip, “God is in the details,” but the phrase actually goes back much earlier.
Still, however tedious but essential, details do extend to the minutia of building and sustaining a marriage, a family, and a wider community. You can also apply it to any number of other things, including business, sports, the fine arts, politics.
In researching Quaking Dover, I am left with many gaps in the records of Friends’ godly endeavors. When, for example, did Dover Friends cease to run their own schools?
In addition, in writing a history, the details can drive one mad.
May I suggest the devil’s at work there, too?
My genealogical research experience was a plus
In my mid-30s, a decade after I started worshiping in the Society of Friends, I heard that my great-grandfather had been a Quaker who moved from North Carolina to Ohio after the Civil War.
I’d no clue and was shell-shocked, in a good way.
That soon got me into genealogical research with another, older, cousin, which in turn led me to others through correspondence. Many of the results can be found on my Orphan George blog.
Central to that research were Quaker Meeting minutes and learning to interpret those records. For family data, they can provide some of the best information before the census of 1850, the first to name everyone in a family, along with ages and some other facts.
Serving as clerk of Meeting and in other roles also deepened my understanding of the faith and practice.
While I gained some skill navigating this field, other researchers specialized in public records, such as wills, tax filings, and property maps.
Admittedly, working as a census taker in 2020, I did develop a sympathy for lapses and errors in the federal population documents.
When it came to researching Quaking Dover, I found myself returning to others’ genealogical summaries, where one version differed from another, as well as other records. I knew to treat what I saw there as tenuous but still helpful.
Somehow, though, it felt familiar.
Looking for witches among the Quakers
One of the first things the Puritan authorities examined for after arresting women preaching the Quaker message in America was physical proof of their being witches.
I have no idea about the specifics – and am not sure I want to know. Still, their obsession with the naked bodies strikes me as creepy, even pornographic.
After publishing my book Quaking Dover, the thought struck me that the Puritans must have seen Quaker worship as some kind of séance. Not that we were trying to communicate with the dead, but rather be open to the presence of the Holy Spirit, or Christ.
Of course, that Holy Spirit was translated at the time as Holy Ghost. Yipes! Sounds like Halloween, no?
From my perspective, Ghost is way too limiting for that Spirit, especially when Christ is seen along the lines of Logos in Greek philosophy.
It’s far more revolutionary and liberating than you’d think. One way builds religion as a kind of legal system with punishments and rewards. The other builds it as a set of relationships.
Now, to stock up for those little trick-or-treaters who will be knocking on our door. I promise not to put religious tracts in their bags, tempting as the opportunity might be.
Jnana's Red Barn 