Letter from Catherine Clancy to J.H. Haines

Joseph Howell Haines (1878-1957) was the son of William Henry Haines and Mary [Howell] Haines, and a member of Germantown Monthly Meeting. He graduated from Haverford College in 1898. With the establishment of the American Friends Service Committee, Joseph Haines served in France with its [WWI] Reconstruction Unit at Gruny (Somme) and in the Paris Office. In 1920, he was in England, later in the Paris Office and attending the Executive Committee meetings of the Friends War Victims Relief Committee. He returned home briefly in 1920, then traveled back to England. In 1921, he traveled in France with Ben Hoffman and George Lippincott, and then in England. Joseph Haines married 1. Helen Whitall and 2. Margaret Mary Clark. On April 30, 1917, representatives of Five Years' Meeting, Friends General Conference and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Orthodox) (all Quaker bodies) met and created the Friends National Service Committee, soon renamed the American Friends Service Committee. The original vision was to provide conscientious objectors with opportunities to do relief work in France during World War I, which consisted of building, repairing, agriculture, horticulture, sanitation, medical aid, social work and feeding.