Collecting area: Quakers

A founder of the Western Massachusetts branch of the American Friends Service Committee and the Traprock Peace Center, Frances Crowe was a legendary peace activist. Born in Missouri in March 1919, Crowe became a committed pacifist in 1945 after learning of the devastation of the bombings in Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. Moving to Northampton in 1951 with her husband Thomas, a physician, she began organizing for peace and against nuclear weapons, increasing her peacework during the Vietnam War, she she worked as a draft counselor in Northampton. A member of the Society of Friends, she joined the War Resisters League, SANE, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, among many other organizations, and was arrested dozens of times for civil disobedience during protests opposing war and militarism, nuclear energy, American imperialism in Central America, and apartheid, and she became a war tax resister after the first Iraq War. An activist to the very end, she died on Aug. 27, 2019, at the age of 100.

This small collection of photographs was kept by Frances Crowe in her role as contributor to Peace Work, the newsletter of the American Friends Service Committee, or for inclusion in the AFSC files. Concentrated in the early 1980s, they depict a range of peace and antinuclear protests in western Massachusetts. The majority of the images were taken by Crowe’s associate, Miriam Leader.

Located in South Dartmouth, Mass., the Dartmouth Monthly Meeting is one of the oldest Friends meetings in the United States, having been founded by Quakers seeking a haven from religious persecution in nearby Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colonies. Private worship may have begun in area homes as early as the 1660s, with the Dartmouth Monthly Meeting formally established in 1699. Today, the Meeting has two distinct meetings: the pastoral Smith Neck Meetinghouse and the Apponegansett Meetinghouse.

The records of Dartmouth Monthly Meeting are divided into two centers of gravity. First, the collection contains nineteenth century copies of the meeting’s early minutes (1698-1792) and vital records covering most of that period. Secondly, the collection contains to the meeting since the late 1960s, including minutes (1968-1989) and newsletter (1999-2005). The remaining records of the meeting — the bulk of them — are maintained by the Old Dartmouth Historical Society and available online.

Separating from the main body of the Dartmouth Monthly Meeting in 1845, the Dartmouth Monthly Meeting became one the more successful Wilburite meetings, strengthened by the absorption of smaller peers including Westport (1850), New Bedford (1865), and Berwick (1881). In 1944, just prior to the New England Friends’ reunification, Dartmouth Monthly changed its name to North Dartmouth Monthly to distinguish itself from the Dartmouth Monthly Meeting situated in South Dartmouth.

The relatively rich documentation for Dartmouth Monthly Meeting (Wilburite) begins with the meeting’s establishment in the separation of 1845 and continues through reunification as the North Dartmouth Monthly Meeting. This collection includes continuous minutes from 1845 through 1989 (including the men’s and women’s minutes), with less thorough records from the Treasurer and, for a brief period only, for the Ministers and Elders. The vital records are restricted to a single volume of certificates of removal.

The Friends Meeting at Dover, New Hampshire, is one of the oldest in British North America, with worship held there as early as 1662 when three Quaker women missionaries arrived on Dover Neck. Originally called Piscataqua, the meeting emerged as Dover Monthly Meeting by the latter decades of the seventeenth century and became the hub of a thriving Quaker community and the font from which several other New Hampshire meetings derived. In addition to overseeing a number of worship groups and preparatory meetings, Dover became the mother of monthlies and Berwick and Sandwich, which were set off in 1802, and Gonic in 1981.

The records of Dover Monthly Meeting offer extensive documentation of one of the oldest Quaker meetings in northern New England. Although most of the earliest records have not survived, the collection includes a nearly unbroken set of minutes from the turn of the eighteen century to 1981; extensive records of births, deaths, and marriages; spotty records for Ministry and Oversight and finance, and an array of recent newsletters. Minutes for the Women’s Meeting for the years 1783-1814 are not present and presumed lost.

The Society of Friends’ Quarterly Meeting in Dover, N.H., was formed from Salem Quarterly Meeting in 1815. It has coordinaed four active monthly meetings: Concord (since 1967), Dover (1815), Gonic (1891), and Weare (1958), plus two that have been laid down: Sandwich (1815-1888) and Berwick (1815-1952).

In addition to a comprehensive set of minutes for Dover Quarterly since its establishment in 1815, the collection includes extensive records for Ministers and Elders and a small quantity of material on meeting history.

Durham Friends Meeting was set off as a monthly meeting under Salem Quarter in 1790, and was transferred to Falmouth Quarter in 1794. Leeds Monthly was set off from Durham in 1813, and Durham over saw a preparative meeting in the adjoining town of Lewiston until it, too, was set off in 1980.

The records of Durham Monthly Meeting consist of minutes of the meeting for business since 1987 and newsletters from 1967 to the present. Older records for the meeting are held at the Maine Historical Society

Part of the Society of Friends’ New England Yearly Meeting, Falmouth Quarterly Meeting was set off from Salem Quarter in 1794 and has subsequently given rise to quarterlies in Vassalboro (1813) and Parsonsfield (1888-1938).

With the majority of records for Falmouth Quarterly Meeting housed at the Maine Historical Society, SCUA maintains records that include only the minutes from 1988 to 1996, and records of Ministry and Counsel, 1965-1988, with a small gap near that end.

After eight years as a Quaker worship group, Farmington Monthly Meeting was set off from Pondtown in 1991, becoming one of the newest members of Vassalboro Quarterly Meeting. Worship at Farmington is unprogammed.

Particularly for the early years, minutes for the Farmington Monthly Meeting were recorded (or preserved) somewhat irregularly, though continuously from 1984 to 2012. The collection also contains a set of state of the society reports. information on membership, and memorials.

Beginning as an informal gathering in the home of Margaret Welch in 1959, Framingham Friends Meeting of the Society of Friends evolved organizationally into a formal worship group under the care of Cambridge Monthly Meeting in 1961 and then a preparatory meeting (1964). It was set off as an independent monthly meeting in 1979.

A newer monthly meeting, Framingham is well documented through a continuous set of meeting minutes from 1983-2022 (with some extending back to 1963) and a long run of newsletters and directories of members. The minutes often include official reports and other documents.

Since the merger of the Boston Monthly Meeting with the Independent Cambridge Monthly during the second quarter of the twentieth century, the Society of Friends has expanded in the Boston area. Fresh Pond began as an allowed meeting under Cambridge Monthly in 1989 and was set off as a monthly meeting of its own in 1991. It has been under care of Salem Quarterly Meeting since its inception.

The records from Fresh Pond include a nearly complete set of minutes for the meeting’s first five years and a nearly comprehensive set of newsletters.