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Ozone Club records
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Held at: Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College [Contact Us]500 College Avenue, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania 19081
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
The Club was founded by Walter P. Stokes, Walter Smedley, and James G. Biddle as an afternoon of golf once a month with Quaker friends. The success of the group spawned additional social golfing clubs - the Divotee (1921) whose first president was D. Robert Yarnall, then the Niblick Club, first president Benjamin S. Thorp, and a woman's group, the Hit or Miss Club. The groups mingled Hicksite and Orthodox Friends, but membership was largely Hicksite. In the early years, there was a close relationship with the meeting for worship in Atlantic City and the hotels and golf courses located there. Until the 1970s, a requirement was membership in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, but gradually the requirement was loosened to include persons with "friendly connection."
A popular annual event was the match between the Ozone and Divotees Clubs formally began in 1955.
The Ozone Club records include minute books, correspondence, and miscellaneous papers. A small amount of records from the Niblick Club is also included with the collection, including annual meeting programs and photos.
The collection is divided into six series:
- History of Ozone Club
- Reports
- Secretary's Minute Books
- Miscellaneous
- Correspondence files
- The Niblick Club Records, 1949-1959
Many of the photographs and scores were reproduced in the book Down the Fairways.
Donor: Ozone Club, 1968, 1975.
Donor: Niblick Club material, gift of Anna Pettit Broomell.
Donor: Niblick Annual Meeting brochure, 1925, gift of Charles T. Jenkins, 1925.
Donor: Ozone Club photographs, correspondence and ephemera, gift of Ozone Club. Acc. 2003.003.
Donor: Niblick Club photographs, 1950-1958, gift of Margaret Lippincott, Acc. 2011.034.
Donor: Smedley family, 2018.055
When received from the Ozone Club in 1969, the records were arranged and placed in document boxes in RG/4. Two collection numbers were assigned, Ozone Club Records, RG 4/055, and Niblick Club Records, RG 4/052, but both were included in a one bibliographic description. The finding aids were united into a single collection in 1999 as RG4/055. In 2018, records stored at the Smedley family home were added to the collection. Three generations of Smedley had been active members of the Club.
The photographs, a small number of which were previously stored with the collection, were removed in 2019 to create a picture collection.
People
Organization
Subject
- Publisher
- Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College
- Finding Aid Author
- Susanna Morikawa
- Finding Aid Date
- 1999
- Sponsor
- Encoding made possible by a grant by the Gladys Kriebel Delmas Foundation to the Philadelphia Consortium of Special Collections Libraries
- Access Restrictions
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Collection is open for research.
- Use Restrictions
-
Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce items in this collection beyond the bounds of Fair Use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder or their heirs/assigns. See http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-RUU/1.0/.
Collection Inventory
printed booklet
2 vols.
Club president Carl Berlinger's brief history of the Club, correspondence concerning proposed "memoirs" book, and emails to Golf Journal. The Journal ceased publication in 2003 before it could feature an article on the Club. Also, an issue of Philadelphia Golfer, Oct. 2001, with an article on Quaker golf clubs. Acc. 2003.031
Poems, obituaries, correspondence, memoirs compiled as reference for histories
Members expressed concern that member Walter Buzby gave the Club complimentary accommodations at the Dennis for the annual meeting. Some felt it was an awkward arrangement and preferred to pay.
With comments by Morris Leeds. Correspondence mentions mix of Orthodox and Hicksites, having started with an largely Orthodox membership, the officers by mid-century were Hicksite.
Walter Buzby of Atlantic City Meeting and president of the Dennis Hotel solicited donations from the Club to the Meeting which members attended during the Ozone annual meeting.
Correspondence with Walter Buzby
Includes the duties assigned to the Secretary. Compiled Club statistics, etc.
Treasurer's file, scores, correspondence and donations to Atlantic City Meeting
Includes the duties assigned to the Secretary. Compiled Club statistics, etc.
At the Club meeting of December 1, 1981, it was noted that membership selections had been made by the officers and it was necessary to be a member of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. However, in the past ten years or so, many exceptions had been made for a "friendly connection," rather than only Quakers.