Collecting area: Quakers

Born in 1930 in Delaware, Ohio, Margaret Theodora “Teddy” Milne, graduated from Boston University in 1952 before attending the University of Paris in 1953-1954 for post-graduate studies. Milne moved to Northampton, Mass. in 1959 to teach at the Northampton School for Girls. She married Alexander W. Milne, general manager of radio station WHMP, in 1965 and together the couple had three sons: Timmon, Peter, and James. Milne worked as a writer, serving as a reporter and copy editor at the Daily Hampshire Gazette, before establishing and editing two journals focused on peace: Laser, a children’s newsletter, and Compassion Magazine. She owned and operated the Pittenbruach Press, which published her journals as well as several book she authored, including Peace Porridge (v. 1-3, 1987-1995), War is a Dinosaur (1987), Solo Publishing (1990), Mooncakes and Flower Beans (1994), and Calvin Coolidge Doesn’t Live Here Any More (1994), and contributed articles, stories, and crossword puzzles to magazines and newspapers.

As an active author and peace activist, the Teddy Milne Papers cover all of her primary passions from parenting and teaching to publishing and anti-nuclear activism. The collection contains photographs and newsletters from her days as a teacher at the Northampton School for Girls as well as articles and columns she prepared for the Daily Hampshire Gazette. There are extensive records documenting the Pittenbruach Press, which Milne operated, including materials related to the journals and books she published. A series of letters along with files related to committee work and Milne’s membership in Quakers United in Publishing (QUIP), reveal the important role her Quaker faith played in her life.

In 1957, a group of Quakers in Rindge, New Hampshire, established an independent worship group affiliated with the Connecticut Valley Quarter which became the Monadnock Quaker Meeting in the following year. From 1957 to 2011, members of the meeting supported the Meeting School in Rindge, a co-educational boarding school run on Quaker principles.

The records of Monadnock Quaker meeting offer a perspective on the growth of the Society of Friends in southern New Hampshire over more than half a century. As kept by the meeting clerks, the records for the early 1980s include a jumble of newsletters, notes, drafts, and minutes of meetings which appear to be nearly complete.

The Northampton Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends (later the Middle Connecticut Valley Monthly Meeting) was formally established in 1939, bringing together the small community of Friends in Western Massachusetts. In 1959, the small preparative meetings in Amherst, Greenfield, Northampton, and South Hadley agreed to consolidate to create a more vital gathering. After five years without a fixed location, a Friend was moved to donate three acres of land on Long Plain Road in Leverett on which to build a proper meetinghouse. When that building opened in 1964, the meeting was renamed the Mt Toby Meeting.

Reflecting a strong history of promoting peace social justice, the Mt. Toby collection documents Friends’ involvement in a wide variety of issues ranging from war tax resistance (Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner), the “Colrain action” when the Kehler/Corner house was seized by the IRS), peace education and civil disobedience, refugee resettlement, the Sanctuary movement, and support for LGBT issues and racial equality. The collection consists largely of fliers and newsletters, ephemera, and newspaper clippings.

Mount Toby Monthly Meeting of Friends (formerly Middle Connecticut Valley Monthly) was formed in the 1930s in Northampton, Mass., during a time of growth for Quakers in western New England. Now located in Leverett, Mass., the meeting has had two monthly meetings set off and has supported a number of small worship groups and preparative meetings in the region.

The records of Mount Toby Monthly Meetings include nearly complete minutes from its founding as an independent Monthly Meeting in 1939 to the present, with an extensive, but not complete set of newsletters. Covering nearly eighty years of Friends centered in the academic communities of the central Connecticut River Valley, the collection also includes some documentation of the Greenfield Preparative Meeting and a guest book from the Springfield Worship Group.

Established in 1708, the Nantucket Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends has had a distinctive history marked by the separations that troubled Quakerism in the nineteenth century. In 1830, Nantucket became one of the few monthly meetings in New England to divide along Hicksite and Orthodox lines, and as that separation was healing in 1845, the Wilburite and Gurneyite factions separated. Uniquely, the Wilburites split further in 1863, when the “Primitive” or “Otisite” Friends departed. Quaker worship was effectively absent on Nantucket from 1894 to about 1939.

This fraction of the records of the Nantucket Monthly Meeting of Friends documents the history of the meeting up to and through the Wilburite-Gurneyite schism. With the exception of some loose materials from the Women’s Meeting from 1776-1781, the collection contains little from the first several decades of the meeting (these are housed at the Nantucket Historical Association), but there is rich content on the state of the meeting and the conflict that followed the separation of 1845, along with minutes from the decade leading up the Wilburite-Gurneyite reunion in 1944.

Having already separated between Hicksite and Orthodox factions in 1830, Friends on Nantucket separated again in 1845 between Gurneyites and Wilburites. While Gurneyites were the “larger body” in nearly every other meeting in the region, on Nantucket they were the minority. Drawing some of their members from the Hicksites, who were disbanding at the time, the Gurneyite monthly was under the care of Sandwich Quarterly Meeting. Never great number, the meeting was laid down in 1867, although a worship group under care of New Bedford Monthly Meeting continued to 1897.

This relatively small collection offers relatively complete documentation for a short-lived Gurneyite Friends meeting, including nearly complete runs of minutes (including rough minutes) for both the men’s and women’s meetings and records of meeting finances.

In the complex history of Quakerism on Nantucket, the Wilburite Nantucket Monthly Meeting of Friends stands out. Separating from the numerically smaller Gurneyites in 1845, the “Otisite” monthly on Nantucket separated again in 1863, drawing away from the Wilburite Sandwich Quarterly Meeting, drawing with them a number of sympathetic Friends on the mainland, particularly in Warwick, R.I. Although worship on the island effectively ended in 1894, the mainland Otisites maintained their separation until 1911. Quaker worship on Nantucket was revived in 1939 and with the reunion of Wilburites and Gurneyites in 1944, the monthly meeting decided to remain independent, joining New England Yearly Meeting only in 1956.

This small, but important collection is centered on the latter years of the Wilburite meeting on Nantucket, during the period of reunification with Gurneyites. The bulk of records for the Nantucket Monthly Meeting (Wilburite) are housed at the Nantucket Historical Association.

During the reunification of New England Friends in 1945, the Narragansett Quarterly Meeting (Wilburite) was formed as a transitional body. Established as a successor to the Rhode Island and Sandwich Quarterly Meeting (Wilburite) in 1944, it was the sole remaining Wilburite Quarterly, overseeing monthly meetings in North Dartmouth, Providence, and South Kingstown (which became Westerly in 1945). In 1951, Narragansett Quarter merged with the Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting.

The sparse collection for this ephemeral body consist solely of financial records maintained by the treasurer.

Beginning in 1972, worship group meetings met in Orland (Maine) in the care of the Midcoast Monthly Meeting. By 1979, the Orland Worship Group was set off as the Narramissic Valley Monthly Meeting. The meeting has been a member of the Vassalboro (Maine) Quarterly Meeting since 1979.

The single folder of records from the Narramissic meeting contains a partially complete set of minutes of monthly meetings from December 1992 to September 1994, lacking Apr, May, Aug and Oct 1993, and Mar 1994, as well as State-of-the-Society reports for 1992, 1993, and one unidentified year. It also contains a written statement of support for same-sex marriage.

New Bedford began meetings for worship in 1772, and was set off from Dartmouth Monthly Meeting in 1792. This meeting was divided by the split of 1845. Members of the Nantucket Monthly Meeting were received in 1867, and from Pembroke Monthly Meeting in 1876. Mattapoisett Monthly Meeting was set off in 1992.

Records for the New Bedford Monthly Meeting include minutes, correspondence and reports, worship and ministry, vital records, financial and property, New Bedford Preparative, and Long Plain Preparative.