Quaker Oaks

By Jack H. Schick on December 1, 2014

We’ve got a big white oak tree (Quercus alba) on our meetinghouse grounds. It’s out beyond the carriage shed on the edge of the old, African American section of our cemetery. Some people think it’s the original Great Oak, the one that was here when William Penn’s Manor of Richland was established in 1703, the one under which the surveyors met with the local Lenni Lenape Indians to🔒

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Jack H. Schick serves as co-clerk of Richland Meeting in Quakertown, Pa. He is a representative to Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s Interim Meeting and Friends General Conference’s Central Committee. He is a columnist for the Upper Bucks Free Press and publishes essays on Soulofwit.com and Searchwarp.com.

Posted in: December 2014, Features

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2 Responses to Quaker Oaks

Gethin Evans December 29, 2014 at 6:56 am #

City & State
Llanbadarn Fawr, Ceredigion
Read your article with considerable interest, thank you for it. Might I make a few comments — the Morgan Floyd, to which you refer, and I am sure you rely on Levick, was actually called Morgan Llwyd, and was a priest at Wrexham and a keen supporter of the Parliamentarian cause. He wrote in both Welsh and English and his Welsh contributions are considered an important elemnt in the development of Welsh literature — his classic wascalled Llyfr y Tri Aderyn [Book of thr Three Birds]. He admired the Quakers and wrote as such to his mother, and indeed some of his phrasing reflects Quaker inclinations. I very much doubt the contention that Wales was ever alive with Quakers but they did establish themslves in certain localities. They were I am sure, as in England in the main from the yeoman class, such that the body of people living in Wales were never touched by the Quaker message and they adhered to the old mother church as Anglicans. The Second CivilWar was by some called the Welsh revolt and showed allegiance by the majority in Wales to the monarchial cause, whilst most Quakers would have had Parliamentarian leanings — as you say more accepting of freedom of thought. Levick, being of his time, over-romanticises — I doubt whether we have ‘congenially disposed to piety’ if so, no more than anyone else!

Reply
- Jack Schick January 11, 2015 at 6:19 pm #
  
  City & State
  Quakertown, PA
  Thank you for reading my article. My knowledge of those places and times is obviously not as extensive as yours. I hope it did not ruin the reading experience for you.
  
  Reply