The collection contains primarily Mekeel's notes and abstracts concerning Quaker meetings in the Scipio and Farmington Quarterly Meetings and some correspondence with Percy Clapp, Keeper of the New York Yearly Meeting records and fellow Cornell graduate.
The collectionn contains Mekeel's notes and abstracts concerning Quaker meetings in the Scipio and Farmington Quarterly Meetings of New York Yearly Meeting, particularly concerning the various nineteenth century Orthodox separations. There is also a small group of correspondence focused on Quaker meeting records.
Amy Grace Mekeel was a birthright member of Hector Monthly Meeting (Conservative), great-granddaughter of Jesse and Amy (Quimby) Mekeel and daughter of Jesse and Rebecca Owen Mekeel. She received her BA in 1910 from Cornell University and taught at Friends Boarding School, Barnesville, Ohio, after graduation. She subsequently earned Masters and PhD degrees from Cornell and taught zoology at Cornell from 1917-1947. She was one of the founders of the Ithaca worship group and became its first treasurer when the meeting was formally organized as the Ithaca Association of Friends in 1926. It became Ithaca Monthly Meeting in 1938, a united meeting.
After her retirement from teaching, Mekeel became interested in the history of Quakers in the Scipio Quarter of New York Yearly Meeting and their divisions. Hector Monthly Meeting was established in 1822 by Farmington Quarter. After the Separation of 1828 there was another Separation in the Orthodox faction, resulting in an Orthodox (Gurneyite) and Conservative (Wilburite) branches. In 1859, the Conservative branch split again, yielding Kingite and Otisite meetings. These meetings reunited as Conservative in 1881 and ceased to meet after 1955. Amy Grace Mekeel's parents were members of the Kingite faction of Hector Monthly Meeting.
She was distantly related to Arthur J. Mekeel (1909-2005), Quaker activist and historian.
When the deposit of New York Yearly Meeting records was initially proceesed, Mekeel's correspondence with Percy Clapp, Keeper of the NYYM Records, was filed in Biographical reference, PG 7. With the processing of her abstracts and notes in 2017, her related corrrespondence was reunited into a small collection.
[Indicate the cited item or series here], Amy Grace Mekeel papers concerning Conservative Friends, New York Yearly Meeting, SC/284, Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College. http://archives.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/repositories/7/resources/8828 Accessed April 26, 2019.