Series 1: Early years, 1918-1939

Janet Speakman was raised in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, where her parents, particularly her mother, Anna Travilla Speakman, were friends and associates of prominent Hicksite Quakers involved in reform activites. The family vacationed in Buck Hill Falls. Janet earned a degree in nursing and volunteered for Friends Relief in France in 1922-1923 and in Russia in 1924. Restless and unhappy after returning to the United States, she spent about a year and half touring Europe 1937-1938. The contents are largely correspondence and her sympathetic letters describing Germany in 1938 are of special interest.