Mount Toby Monthly Meeting (Society of Friends) Records
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.
Background on Mount Toby Friends Meeting
Several attempts were made to establish a Quaker meeting in the Connecticut River Valley prior to the union of New England Friends in 1944, including formation of worship groups in Amherst (1924-1925), Greenfield (1937), and Northfield (1930s). The first to prosper, however, were the independent Connecticut Valley Association of Friends founded in Springfield in 1929, and the Middle Connecticut Valley Monthly Meeting, originally based in Northampton.
In the fall of 1936, an Austrian Quaker, Walter Kotschnig, and his Welsh wife Elined Prys Kotschnig, joined the faculty at Smith College and helped gather the handful of Quakers in Northampton and Easthampton with the aim of establishing a regular meeting. Unwilling to choose between membership in either the Gurneyite or Wilburite New England Yearly Meetings, Northampton Friends affiliated with the Fellowship Council in Feb. 1939, becoming the Middle Connecticut Valley Monthly Meeting. In the general reunion of New England Friends five years later, the Connecticut Valley Association united with the New England Yearly Meeting to become the new Connecticut Valley Quarter, connecting monthlies from New Haven, Connecticut, northward into Vermont.
Although the initial gravity of the meeting was in Northampton, in 1954, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Francis Holmes, and his wife Becky revived meetings in Amherst. Their efforts soon bore fruit. By 1959, Middle Connecticut Valley Monthly attempted an “experimental consolidation” in which they rented the Grange Hall in Amherst for First Day worship and for a First Day School. In the face of the success of this experiment, members of the meeting agreed to build a new meetinghouse, selecting a site on Long Plain Road in Leverett, just north of Amherst. When construction on the meetinghouse was completed in 1964, Middle Connecticut Valley Monthly Meeting changed name to Mount Toby Friends Meeting, after a mountain that loomed nearby. Two monthly meetings have subsequently been set off from Mount Toby: South Berkshire in 1984 and Northampton in 1994.
Mount Toby has cared for a number of small worship groups and preparative meetings, including:
| Worship groups | Preparative meetings |
|---|---|
| Amherst (1944-1958, 1968-1969) | Amherst (1958-1962, 1970-1976) |
| Ashfield (1987-1988) | |
| Berkshire (1971-1983) | |
| Gould Farm (1962-1967, continued as Great Barrington Worship Group) | |
| Great Barrington (1955-1961: continued as Gould Farm Preparatory) | |
| Greenfield (1944-1963, 1983-1984): also Sherwood Worship Group | Greenfield (1968-1982, 1991-1993 |
| Northampton (1945-1958, 1972, 1977-1983 | Northampton (1958-1961, 1991-1994) |
| South Amherst/Hampshire (1971) | |
| South Hadley (1944-1945, 1962-1965, 1983-1986 | South Hadley (1955-1961, 1966-1976) |
| Springfield (1944-1971) met sporadically | |
| Woolman Hill (1975, 1986-present) |
Scope of collection
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.
Inventory
The first meeting for Quaker worship in Greenfield took place in 1934 at a time when small meetings were springing up across the Connecticut River Valley. Greenfield gained momentum in 1939, when Mary Robbins Champney offered her studio at Sherwood of the west side of Greenfield for their use, later bequeathing the property to them. The Sherwood Friends Center became a regular meeting place for the fledgling Middle Connecticut Valley Monthly Meeting, but was taken by the state and demolished in the late 1950s when I-91 was built.
Contents:
The surviving records of the Greenfield Preparative Meeting have been sorted strictly by date and are highly varied in nature. Among the contents are some reminiscences of the early meeting by an unidentified early member, scattered receipts and bills, some minutes of business meetings, a photograph of benefactor Mary Robbins Champney and two photos of the Sherwood Friends Center.
Includes material on the bequest of Mary Robbins Champney and founding of Sherwood Friends Center.
Administrative information
Access
The collection is open for research.
Provenance
Gift of the New England Yearly Meeting of Friends Records, March 2016.
Related Material
This collection is part of the New England Yearly Meeting Records.
Bibliography
See Hellen Griffith, History of Mount Toby Monthly Meeting up to 1964
Current contact for the meeting
Mount Toby Friends website (accessed Nov. 2018).
Processing Information
Processed by I. Eliot Wentworth, October 2018.
Language:
English
Copyright and Use (More information )
Cite as: Mount Toby Friends Meeting Records (MS 902 M686). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.
Search terms
Subjects
- Greenfield (Mass.)–Religious life and customs
- Leverett (Mass.)–Religious life and customs
- Northampton (Mass.)–Religious life and customs
- Quakers–Massachusetts
- Society of Friends–Massachusetts
- Springfield (Mass.)–Religious life and customs
Names
- Middle Connecticut Valley Meeting of Friends
- New England Yearly Meeting of Friends
Genre terms
- Minutes (Administratie records)
- Newsletters
- Photographs