Lyddie, Chapter 2: Would Quaker Neighbors Really Have Been Such Kindly Friends?

In chapter 2 of Katherine Paterson's novel Lyddie, the Quaker family next door is kind to Lyddie and her brother Charlie at the moment they need it most. The chapter is called "Kindly Friends." But historically, Quakers tended to keep to themselves — respectful of non-Quaker neighbors, yet not likely to become their friends.

What happens in the chapter

• Preparing to leave the farm, Lyddie and Charlie decide to sell their young calf. They hope to save enough money eventually to clear the family's debt and come home.
• Lyddie thinks of her father's failures — trying to sell potash, and raising sheep for wool. Like him, she and Charlie must leave their home in order to save it.
• Walking toward the village where they will work, they pass their Quaker neighbors' farm and offer the calf to Quaker Stevens. He agrees to pay twenty-five dollars and invites them in for dinner.
• Quaker Stevens has his son, Luke, drive them the rest of the way. Charlie is dropped at the mill for his new job; Lyddie is taken on to the tavern where she will work. Luke promises to look after the farm and check on Charlie — and pulls away before Lyddie can decide how to answer his kindness, leaving her at her unfamiliar new home.

Were Quakers and their neighbors friends?

Members of the Religious Society of Friends, a Christian group commonly called Quakers, came to North America from England in the 1600s. Their religious and political beliefs differed from their neighbors', and they were not always accepted. Quakers tended to live and work in self-contained communities and were recognizable by their distinctive dress, speech and ways of living. They believed the spirit of God resided in everyone and were respectful of their non-Quaker neighbors — but were not likely to become friends with them.

Historians give three kinds of evidence:

• Plainness and equality set them apart. Writing in Vermont History in 1961, Charles W. Hughes and A. Day Bradley described the "testimony of simplicity" — plain dress and speech, and no display of wealth; meeting houses were plain, and in the early years of the nineteenth century gravestones were not allowed. The "testimony of equality" led Friends to reject all titles and to address everyone as thee or thou. These principles sometimes brought them into conflict with the authorities.
• Marrying out had consequences. J. William Frost wrote in Friends Journal in 1978 that from the 17th century to the beginning of the 20th, Friends disciplined every Quaker who married outside the faith, and a great many were disowned.
• Even on slavery they kept apart. Brycchan Carey and Geoffrey Plank, in Quakers and Abolition (2014), write that most Quakers grew wary of cooperating with religious outsiders. Like nearly every Protestant denomination before the Civil War, Quakers were divided over slavery, though far from evenly: most opposed it. The movement produced antislavery heroes such as Lucretia Mott, but most Quakers who fought slavery did so quietly, sometimes secretly helping people who had escaped slavery in the South. Their account also shows that not all Quakers agreed on every part of their faith.

Did Vermont farmers lose money on sheep?

Many did. Small Vermont farmers who wanted cash income, not just enough to feed their families, turned to raising sheep for wool — especially Merino sheep. Vermont wool was shipped throughout New England and beyond, and farmers hoped for sizable profits. But canals and railroads built in the early 1800s let western farmers, with much larger flocks, ship wool cheaply east to buyers such as the Lowell mills. The market for small Vermont farms crashed, leaving some farmers in debt.

The Vermont Historical Society describes a "merino mania." Because sheep need large grazing areas, small family farms were consolidated into larger ones, and many came to depend on a single product: wool. Changes in tariff laws brought booms and busts.

An 1844 advertisement offering to manufacture wool into cloth. Burlington Free Press, September 20, 1844, via Chronicling America, Library of Congress.

Questions to write about

• Opinion: Many small farming families in Vermont struggled to survive. Why had Lyddie's family farm always had trouble? Use evidence from the story.
• Informative: Describe the different emotions Lyddie feels as she and Charlie travel from the farm to the village to work.
• Narrative: Lyddie leaves everything she has ever known. Describe a time you were new somewhere — a school, a club or a team. What did it feel like, and what helped you feel part of the group?

See it yourself

• An interpreter at Old Sturbridge Village makes a pudding for dinner, the kind of food preparation that filled Lyddie's and Triphena's hours at the inn (a video on YouTube).
• The Vermont History Museum in Montpelier has more on Vermont's past.
• In the series essay "Farm Families," Dr. Megan Birk, Professor of History at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and author of The Fundamental Institution: Poverty, Social Welfare, and Agriculture in American Poor Farms, looks at farm life.

Sources

Based on "Lyddie: Chapter 02 - Kindly Friends," from the National Park Service Books to Parks series (Lowell National Historical Park), a work of the United States government in the public domain. It cites Charles W. Hughes and A. Day Bradley, "The Early Quaker Meetings of Vermont," Vermont History 29, no. 3 (1961); J. William Frost, "Quakerism and the Family: In the Past and Present," Friends Journal 24, no. 1 (1978); Brycchan Carey and Geoffrey Plank, introduction to Quakers and Abolition (University of Illinois Press, 2014); and "William Jarvis & the Merino Sheep Craze," Vermont Historical Society (2017). Lyddie is a novel by Katherine Paterson; this page summarizes it and does not reproduce it.