Research Guides: Queer history materials in Swarthmore Special Collections: Society of Friends (Quakers)

LGBTQ Committees within Yearly Meetings

Other Quaker-affiliated LGBTQ organizations

LGBTQ Quaker family and personal papers

Bruce Grimes and Geoffrey Kaiser Journal Collection
Bruce Grimes and Geoffrey Kaiser are Quakers and were involved in Friends for Lesbian and Gay Concerns from its beginning in the early 1970s. The collection contains their manuscript and typescript journals entitled Gay Quakers in the Late Twentieth Century; it also includes personal correspondence and addenda.
Bonnie Tinker Papers
Bonnie Tinker (1948-2009) was a Quaker social activist who campaigned for peace and gay and lesbian right. This collection contains drafts and correspondences concerning the movie "Love Makes a Family" (1992) produced by Bonnie Tinker. The collection also contains personal papers, fundraising for the project, and reference material on non-traditional forms of family.

LGBTQ Quaker books

Towards a Quaker view of sex by Friends Home Service Committee
Call Number: Friends HIstorical Library BX7613 .T68
Publication Date: 1963
Quaker approaches to queer : gay and lesbian inclusion in the liberal tradition of the religious tradition of the Religious Society of Friends (Ph by Blackmore, Brian T.
Call Number: FHL ; BX7748.S47 B35 2023
Publication Date: 2023

Romantic friendships

Friends Historical Library has the papers of several women from the 19th and 20th century who engaged in close relationships with other women, exhibiting displays of intense affection for each other, or evidencing long-term co-habitations. It is impossible to classify these relationships with 21st century terminology, but they may be of interest to researchers studying queer history.

Martha Schofield Papers
Martha Schofield met Sadie Brouwer Bartram in 1859. For a time, the two were very close, with Bartram referring to Schofield as her "husband" and calls herself Schofield's "wife."
Anna Gillingham Papers
Anna Gillingham (1878-1964) and Bessie Stillman lived together for decades, traveled extensively, and worked together.
Mary Ellicott Arnold Papers
Mary Ellicott Arnold (1876-1968) and her lifelong companion, Mabel Reed, were buried together in Media, PA.