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THE MEMORY OF

SARAH ATWATER KELSEY

MY MOTHER

PREFACE

This little volume is presented with the misgivings that always come when one arises from a literary task that has involved merciless condensation. To those who find some parts of the following account too brief for their purposes I may say that in preparing it my surprise at finding the subject so widely ramified in time and space has been equalled only by my difficulty in compressing it into the confines of so small a book.

Some of the subject matter, especially for the earlier period, has been largely and fairly dealt with by other writers. In such cases I have made use of reliable secondary accounts, although I think not in any case. without careful consideration of the chief source materials upon which the account rested. For the period from 1795 to the present time much of the story has not been told before in connected form and I have drawn it almost entirely from the manuscript or printed sources.

The materials used are indicated in footnotes and occasional bibliographical notes. The attention of those interested in religious history is directed especially to the General Note on Bibliography at the close of the volume which may be of some service as a guide to the location of Quaker records.

For advice or active help in this study I wish to thank Edward M. Wistar, Isaac Sharpless, Amelia Mott Gummere, Jonathan M. Steere and Florence Trueblood Steere, Mary S. Kimber, Albert Cook

Myers, my brother W. Irving Kelsey, and my former students George Montgomery and Harrison H. Arnold.

My especial thanks are due to Norman Penney, London, England, for his interest in my labors and his valuable help in supplying notes from materials in the Friends' Library, Devonshire House, London.

As ever, my greatest obligation is to my wife for encouragement and active help at every stage of the work.

HAVERFORD, PENNSYLVANIA,

Rayner W. Kelsey.

September, 1917.

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