1819 Letter from Henry Drinker

This month’s featured Artifact of the Month is a letter written by Henry Sandwith Drinker to Jason Torrey, Esq. (1988.394). This letter, dated January 18, 1819, concerns the sale, taxes, and levies on properties in Bethany, Pennsylvania. Drinker was replying to a previous letter from his friend, Torrey, in which he had asked about the properties that had been confiscated by the courts and were to be sold shortly. Drinker was a lawyer and merchant in Philadelphia born into a prominent Quaker family to Henry Drinker and Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker. While this letter has insight into the legal and commercial processes of Pennsylvania after the War of 1812, Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker’s writings are better known 

Drinker’s mother, Elizabeth Sandwith, kept a diary, and its surviving entries have provided a window into life as an upper-class Quaker woman in Philadelphia in the late eighteenth century. She was born in 1734, attended a girls’ school, and began her diary in 1758 prior to her marriage to the merchant, Henry Drinker, in 1761. She wrote about their nine children, daily life, social and medical matters, as well as political and military events. Sandwith’s diary mentions many significant historical events that occurred in Philadelphia between 1758 and 1807. For this reason, Sandwith’s accounts of the American Revolution are fascinating because as members of the Society of Friends the Drinker family was exceedingly committed to neutrality and pacifism. The Continental Army even imprisoned the elder Henry Drinker in Virginia on charges of treason for his refusal to serve in the military and sign an oath of support for the Continental Congress. He was released after eight months with no trial or investigation, and his absence and its effect on the rest of the family are recounted in Sandwith’s diary. Elizabeth Sandwith was an unusually well-educated woman for her time, and her diary entries illustrate how she used that status in the care of her family. As Sandwith’s son, Henry Sandwith Drinker also benefited from being part of a higher social and economic class, characteristics which may have contributed to his ability to impart knowledge on the law and the purchase of properties.