Manuscript copy written by the Pennsylvania Quaker writer Susan Lukens of the 1719 Book of Discipline ‘From our yearly meeting at Philadelphia, for Pennsylvania and the Jerseys...’
Small notebook, green cloth spine over marbled boards, rubbed to edges, slight loss to cloth at tail of spine. A dedication in the hand of the manuscript’s author appears on the verso of the 3rd blank, opposite the beginning of the text: ‘To Daniel Koll from his friend Susan Lukens’. The manuscript has the preliminary unpaginated leaf bearing the dedication followed by 43 leaves (86 pages) and 8 more unfoliated leaves: [f]1; ff43 [f] 8. Unusually Lukens’ manuscript is written across both verso and recto simultaneously, using the full width of the open notebook and concludes on the unfoliated leaf 44 recto. It is followed by 16 pages in a different hand, probably Koll’s, presenting further Quaker notes, set out below. Lukens’ manuscript probably dates from the 1850s or 1860s; Koll’s contribution must date from after 1860 since he includes extracts from Ezra Michener’s Retrospect of early Quakerism. Both write in easily legible hands.
Born in 1798 Susan Lukens was a writer, poet and abolitionist based in Ercildoun, Pennsylvania who published a collection of her writings in 1873; her friend Daniel Koll, 1812-1892 was a Quaker minister of the Primitive Friends, Fallsington General Meeting. The manuscript contains no further clue as to how Lukens gained access to the manuscript from which she copied the Book of Discipline nor the circumstances surrounding her gift, though interestingly Lukens acknowledges in marginalia errors in her copy text. Lukens’ manuscript is itself a copy of an unpublished manuscript of the Book of Discipline from 1719, which begins: ‘From our yearly meeting at Philadelphia, for Pennsylvania and the Jerseys; by Adjournments from the 21st to the 26th of the 7th mo. 1719’, a text which is itself ‘a revisal’ as the Discipline puts it of the 1704 version which is regarded as the first major collection of the rules of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. The Discipline deals with the establishment and order of meetings; rules for children and trade and against ‘Tattling, Talebearing, Reproaching, Backbiting or speaking Evil of their brethren... smoking tobacco indecently and too publicly, as in the streets’ and bearing a prohibition to ‘sell, barter, or exchange directly or indirectly to the Indians, Rum, Brandy, and any other strong Liquors.’ The Discipline also forbids involvement in the slave trade: ‘that none among us be concerned in the fetching or importing Negroe Slaves from their own country, or elsewhere.’ (f17v). Lukens notes an error in her copy text with a marginal note: ‘*Correctly copied, but evidently a mistake’ re confessed offenders accepting culpability24v. The text ends at 44r. In a different hand are passages from ‘”The Book of Extracts of Londons Yearly Meeting” Published prior to 1836 and relating the early establishment of meetings and worship and discipine...’ which deals with William Penn and concludes with ‘Extracts from minutes of Meetings held in Pennsylvania’ from 1676 and 1778 and minor commentary from the manuscript writer, presumably Koll. Manuscript copies of the Quaker Book of Discipline are very uncommon in commerce.
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