[QUAKERS] Rules of Discipline and Christian Advices, of the Yearly Meeting of Friends for the State of New-York and Parts Adjacent. Agreed on by said Meeting, held in New-York, in the Fifth Month, 1800

New York: Printed by Isaac Collins, 1800. Hardcover. Very good. First edition. (viii), 141 pages. Evans 37474. Printed on heavy paper, with one or two leaves bound between each of the chapters. According to a note following the introduction, "The book is printed with blank pages for the purpose of making future additions, which are to be inserted in the manner and in the page in which they will be directed to be placed by the yearly meeting. No other additions are to be made.". The present copy is annotated, and corrected in various ways, presumably by someone who attended this annual meeting. On the first free endpaper there is a contemporary annotation: "Abraham Barker Lives in Ohio Huron Co., Town of Brunson." On the blank leaf following p. 50, there is the note: " To the monthly Meeting of . . . Dear friend, We the subscriber, A B son of . . . . do propose taking each other in marriage between us which we submit to your approbation, then dated, AB / CJ"; the inscription is somewhat illegible owing to some soiling; however it follows the chapter on "Marriages" and reproduces in part the "Form of Marriage Certificate" that appears on p. 49. In the next chapter, "Removals and Certificates", at the top of the page the following annotation is added: "it shall be the duty of such monthly Meeting to accept the same unless there be some manifest objections." On p. 123, in the chapter "Queries", the following annotation appears at the bottom of the page: "B. Are the answers to the Queries introduced to the Quarterly and Yearly Meetings the substance of, and founded on the answers from, the prepositive Meetings." On the preceding page, three lines of text have been x'ed out, and an "a" has been inserted before the word "priest" in the second line from the bottom, and the words "or magistrate" have been crossed through. And on p. 124, the last page of this chapter, the entire ten lines of text have been crossed out. Similar crossings have been made to the chapter "Meetings of Ministers and Elders".

It would appear that these annotations and corrections were made by one of those attending the Meeting in New York, presumably (perhaps) Abraham Barker. The chapters in the book cover the following topics, which, however, do not appear in the order given in the Table of Contents: Appeals, Apprentices, Books, Burials, Certificates, Civil government, Children, Dealing with offenders, Differences and Arbitrations, Diversions, Defamation and detraction, Days and times, Distilled spirits, &c., Donations, Elders, Gaming, Meetings for worship, for discipline, of ministers and elders, for sufferings; Ministry, Meeting-houses and ground, Marriages, Memorials, Overseers, Oaths, Poor, Plainness, Priests wages or hireling ministry, Queries, Requests to be received into membership, Removals, Scandal (publick), Slavery, Schools, Sufferings, Subscriptions, Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, Taverns, Trade and commerce, Women's meetings, War, Wills. In the short chapter on "Slavery", it is stated: "No friend is to import, buy, or sell negroes or other slaves; or hire any that are held in bondage; or wake any that are young, or others, by indenture or otherwise, unless they are first set free. Any friend, disregarding the advice above expressed, after deliberate dealing with, except satisfaction be given, is to be disowned. . . ." The Meeting House on Pearl Street was established in 1795-96, but demolished in 1828.

Light foxing, but a very good copy of a rare publication, very few locations known, including AAS and Haverford College.