Halliday Jackson papers

Halliday Jackson (1771-1835) was a Quaker minister from New Garden and Darby, Pennsylvania. From 1798 to 1800, he was part of the Quaker mission to the Seneca Nation organized by the Indian Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Shortly after his return from the mission, Halliday Jackson married Jane Hough and moved to Darby, Pennsylvania. Following Jane's death in 1830, Halliday Jackson remarried in 1833, to Ann P. Paschall (1792-1874), also a Quaker minister.

The Indian Committee of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting began in 1795 and continues at the present time. Previous to this, Philadelphia area Friends formed the Friendly Association for Regaining and Preserving Peace with the Indians by Pacific Measures. The "Friendly Association" grew out of the violence of the French-Indian War of the mid-1700s and was active as a formal organization ca. 1755-1764 (Parrish "Friendly Association History").

Work of the Indian Committee included teaching Native Americans and their children, monitoring legislation affecting Native Americans, and helping NAtive Americans combat frauds and abuses. The Committee worked primarily with the Seneca on the Allegany and Cattaraugus Reservations in New York. In 1798, five Quaker missionaries traveled to the Seneca Nation to instruct the members in husbandry and to establish a school. These men were three young men: Henry Simmons, Halliday Jackson, and Joel Swayne, as well as two Quaker elders, John Pierce and Joshua Sharpless. At the mission established by the Quakers, the men built a model farm, and a school was established and run by Henry Simmons beginning in the fall of 1798.

Source: Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Indian Committee finding aid