ABSTRACT
The work that established the author's reputation as an historian of Quakerism was his dissertation at Indiana University, ‘The Transformation of American Quakerism, 1800–1910’, which was published in 1988 as The Transformation of American Quakerism: Orthodox Friends, 1800–1907. It was the fruit of solitude of a different kind – boredom, combined with an interest in family history. In particular, the author became interested in tracing any descendant he could identify from a few Quaker immigrants to the Delaware Valley from the British Isles in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Professor Emma Lou Thornbrough had a formidable list of publications in women’s and African–American history, particularly the history of black people in Indiana. She encouraged the author's interest in research on Quakers and on Indiana history, but also pushed him to be able to place it in context.
