Series 1a: Henry and Thyra Jane Foster Papers, 1904-1988

Thyra Jane, or Jane Foster (1898-1984) was born in West Branch, Iowa, to Joseph E. and Mary Warner Meyers. She attended Stillwater Primary School in West Branch, Friends Boarding School of Barnesville, Ohio, and Westtown School in Westtown, Pa. In 1921, Jane graduated from Mt. Holyoke College and in 1924 married Henry Cope Foster (1895-1987). The Foster's son, John H. Foster, was born in 1926, and twins Harold M. and Thera were born in 1929. The children were educated at Westtown School before college. Jane taught chemistry, physics, Latin, and German in the Coventry school system from 1944 until her retirement in 1959, and after her retirement she was the founding archivist of the Archives of New England Yearly meeting. Thyra Jane and Henry Foster were active members of the Providence Monthly Meeting of Friends.

Henry Cope Foster was born in 1895 on the Foster family farm in Warwick, Rhode Island, to Horace Bragg and Mary Cope Foster. Henry graduated from the Massachusetts Agricultural College (now the University of Massachusetts) in 1923 and returned to Warwick to work on the family farm. He married Thyra Jane Meyers in 1924. In his early years he worked with his brother, William, and his father, and his two sisters, Anna and Elizabeth, lived on the farm for their entire lives. In 1951, dairy farming ended on the Foster farm, and Henry Foster began to work with the Rhode Island Soil Conservation Program . He died on September 13, 1987.

Their eldest child, John Henry Foster (b. 1926) graduated from Cornell University, with graduate degrees from Purdue and Cornell Universities. He spent several years in the early 1950s in India, and in 1954, married Georgana Falb. In 1957, he joined the faculty of University of Massachusetts at Amherst. John H. Foster transcribed many of the writings and added interpretation and commentary to the papers.