JAMES L. BURKE
DONALD E. BENSCH
Mount Pleasant and
The Early Quakers of Ohio
In the charming old village of Mount
Pleasant, Jefferson County, Ohio, stands a
monument to one of America's small but
influential denominations, the Society of
Friends, or Quakers. People of other
religious affiliations settled in Mount Pleasant
too, but the early history of the Mount
Pleasant area was strongly influenced by
those Friends who were among its first
settlers. Their monument is the large brick
meeting house, erected in 1814 for the
Ohio Yearly Meeting of Friends, which is
owned today by the state of Ohio and
administered by The Ohio Historical Society.
For a better understanding of the events
leading to the construction of the Mount
Pleasant Meeting House, as well as the
contributions of the Society of Friends to the
development of Ohio, we must begin our
story considerably before 1814.
Quaker Origins
Though there were Quakers in America as
early as the 1650's, the origin of the
Society of Friends was in England where
George Fox (1624-1691), its founder,
chafed under a government and a society
where deviation from accustomed reli-
gious practices brought persecution to
dissenters. As a young man, Fox believed
that he had received a divine call to
witness to the Lord and especially to preach to
men the renunciation of worldly
pleasures so that they might more clearly see God's
way. Fox said:
When I came to eleven years of age, I
knew pureness and righteousness; for while I was a
child I was taught how to walk so as to
be kept pure. The Lord taught me to be faithful in
all things, and . .. that my words
should be few and savory, seasoned with grace; and that I
might not eat and drink to make myself
wanton, but for health, using the creatures in their
service, as servants in their places, to
the glory of him that hath created them....
None of the established religious groups
seemed to give Fox the inner peace
which he was seeking. He talked to
ministers and priests but found none who could
help in his search. Eventually, with
divine guidance, Fox discovered that "being
bred at Oxford or Cambridge was not
enough to fit and 'qualify men to be ministers
of Christ'; and I wondered at it,
because it was the common belief of people." It
was shortly after this realization that
Fox began to preach that "Christ speaks
Dr. Burke is associate professor of
history and former chairman of the department of history at Capital
University, and Mr. Bensch is professor
of history and current chairman of the department of history at
Capital. This article was edited by
Marilyn G. Hood, editor of special publications at The Ohio Histori-
cal Society.
Ohio Quakers 221
directly to each human soul who seeks
Him; spiritual life depends upon direct com-
munion with Him; all men may find
salvation and life in Him," as phrased by
Charles P. Morlan. Thus, Fox arrived at
the conclusion that religion was a matter
of the spirit, not of the intellect.
Fox established the Society of Friends
in 1652. The Friends were popularly
called Quakers because in 1650 Fox
allegedly commanded an English magistrate to
"tremble [quake] at the word of the
Lord." Fox taught his followers about the pres-
ence of the "Inner Light" in
all individuals, which should aid each person's
conscience in guiding his faith and
actions. From the very beginning the Friends
emphasized inward spiritual experiences
rather than specific creeds. They devel-
oped radically unique worship services
and business meetings. Fox taught that
these forms were based on a trust in the
Holy Spirit and a faith that ordinary lay-
men were capable of receiving the Holy
Spirit. Hence, trained ministers to lead a
congregation were unnecessary when in
essence every man could be his own min-
ister.
(Later on, in America and Ohio, Quakers
disagreed on this point and split into two
factions. Elias Hicks insisted in 1827
upon the guiding experience of the "Inner
Light" at a time when others were
coming to support a discipline which would place
"recorded" ministers and
elders in authoritative positions on theology. This con-
troversy and schism reached the Mount
Pleasant Meeting House in 1828, where, at
the Ohio Yearly Meeting, Orthodox
Friends guarded the door to keep the Hicksites
out. However, the Hicksites managed to
get in and created such a disturbance that
bedlam resulted. Thinking that the
building was collapsing, people rushed for doors
and windows and in the melee some
Friends were injured.)
The Quaker form of worship, especially
with its emphasis on silence, was alien to
the accepted religious ceremonies of
seventeenth-century England. The Quakers
did not believe in any special
sacraments since to them all life was sacramental.
Business and worship meetings were often
conducted jointly in monthly, quarterly,
and yearly meetings. Under Fox the
Quakers met wherever and whenever they
could in places which provided for
periods of group silence. Eventually the Friends
constructed meeting houses for their
places of worship and for the conduct of
business.
These beliefs and practices were heresy
to the Church of England. The feeling
among the ruling class of England was
very strong against the Friends for if the
Friends preached that there was no
necessity for trained, appointed leaders in reli-
gion, might not this same principle be
applied to government? The ruling class
soon branded the Quakers as
revolutionaries and disciples of division because of
their beliefs and unusual forms of
worship. For these reasons the Friends, and es-
pecially George Fox, were persecuted,
imprisoned, publicly punished, and "harried
out of the land."
Movement to America
To escape persecution at home, many
Quakers sought refuge in America. In fact,
George Fox conceived the idea of a
separate colony in America. Although that
project did not materialize, there were
Friends among the earliest arrivals of British
colonists who settled Massachusetts,
Maryland, and Virginia. Fox preached to
these scattered groups of Friends when
he traveled throughout the colonies in
1671-1673. While one of the major
motives for settlement in the New World was
to find religious freedom, Quakers
discovered that religious toleration was often no
more available to them in the
established communities of North America than it
Ohio Quakers 223
had been in England.
Due to this unfriendly and often hostile
reception, the Quakers realized that their
only immediate solution to the
harassment was separatism--the establishment of
their own colony or, at the very least,
their own communities. The year 1674 was a
turning point for the Quakers. In that
year Lord Berkeley offered to sell half of
New Jersey, and two Quakers, John
Fenwick and Edward Billings, accepted the of-
fer. Of even greater significance was
the fact that William Penn, who had inherited
a large estate from his father, Admiral
William Penn, together with a claim for
16,000 pounds sterling against the
British Crown, became interested in purchasing
land for the followers of this religion
to which he had been converted.
Consequently, in 1680 Penn asked King
Charles II for a proprietary grant in con-
sideration of "the debts due to him
and his father from the Crown." The grant was
allowed and in 1681 Penn opened the
colony of Pennsylvania to Quakers, who be-
gan to pour in by the hundreds from
Wales, England, Germany, and the
Netherlands. Even though Pennsylvania
was established as a refuge for Quakers,
the form of government which Penn
established was so liberal that before long there
were more non-Quakers than Quakers
living there and, in time, some Quakers be-
gan to think of moving farther west.
The first movement of Friends from the
Atlantic Coast westward naturally
headed toward the western reaches of
Pennsylvania because the colony had such a
favorable relationship with most of the
Indians in the region. Members of the
Society of Friends began to appear in
the regions west of the Alleghenies in the late
1750's, and in 1773 two Quaker
missionaries, Zebulon Heston and John Parrish,
made a successful journey into the
Indian country of the Ohio Valley. Also, a num-
ber of Friends left Virginia and North
Carolina during the Revolutionary War in
order to escape the violence of the war
in those colonies.
As more and more families began to move
from their quarterly meeting districts,
Quaker leaders began to worry that the
migrants would lose contact with the Society
of Friends. The Hopewell, Virginia,
Monthly Meeting sent an investigating com-
mittee into western Pennsylvania in 1780
to discover how many Friends were then
living in the area. When it was revealed
that over 150 Friends had migrated to the
locale near present Centerville (on U.
S. Route 40), the Hopewell Monthly Meeting
in 1782 approved the organization of
Westland Preparative Meeting as the first es-
tablished meeting of Friends west of the
Alleghenies. Three years later, Westland
Monthly Meeting and Redstone Preparative
Meeting (near Brownsville) were estab-
lished, and in 1797 the communities were
authorized to hold Redstone Quarterly
Meetings alternately at the two sites.
Thus, the Quakers had become rather firmly
situated west of the Alleghenies by
1800. Even more rapid settlement in the Ohio
Country was soon to follow, due to the
awakening of the Quaker consciousness con-
cerning slavery in the southern part of
the North American colonies.
Settlement in Ohio
While some Quakers had begun to move
westward during the eighteenth century,
others had emigrated to the South,
primarily because they were farmers and in the
South there was plenty of land which
could be purchased and converted into large
plantations. However, Friends who
migrated south and those who were native to
the South soon found themselves in a
quandary because they could not reconcile
their beliefs with those of many
southerners who refused to acknowledge the human
rights of the Negro slaves. The Friends
were recognized as one of the earliest
groups in America to denounce the evils of the institution of slavery. A majority of southern Quakers fought slavery in a quiet way, freeing their own slaves and en- couraging others to emancipate theirs as well. As southern Friends realized that the South with its growing hostile atmosphere was not the most advantageous place in which to live, they began to look for new lands on which to settle where they would not be persecuted for their beliefs and practices. To the north, beyond the mountains and beyond the Ohio River, was a new territory with an abundance of natural resources and, above all, it was free ter- ritory. The Ohio Country had been organized for survey and sale after Congress enacted the 1785 Land Ordinance. When the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 guar- anteed that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime, was ever to be permitted in any of the territory north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River, the Quakers began to think seriously of making a mass migration northward. After the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 opened the Ohio Country to settlement secure from Indian attacks, Friends in the South began to join the great migration to "the new West" which offered economic opportunity and, of special importance, personal and political freedom. Friends from New Jer- sey, eastern Pennsylvania, and northern Virginia also began to migrate to the Northwest Territory, not necessarily to escape from the evils of a slave society, but rather to seek a change and to start what many thought would be a better life. The first Quakers credited with settlement in the Ohio Country were George Har- lan and his family who came to Deerfield on the Little Miami River, four miles from the present town of Morrow, in 1795. In February 1797, the Jesse Baldwin and Phineas Hunt families, Friends from Westfield, North Carolina, moved from near Point Pleasant on the Virginia side of the Ohio River and settled near each other in present Lawrence County opposite Green Bottom, Virginia. Other families fol- lowed quickly into the Northwest Territory from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. In May 1797, a group of Friends moved from the Westland Monthly Meeting in |
Ohio Quakers 225
western Pennsylvania to settle at High
Bank on the east side of the Scioto River,
four miles below present Chillicothe.
Later that year, Jesse Baldwin moved from
his first location in Lawrence County
some eighteen miles down the Ohio River to
settle at Quaker Bottom. The latter site
in Lawrence County was opposite the
mouth of the Guyandot River in Virginia
(near the present city of Huntington, West
Virginia). So far as is known, this was
the site where Friends in the Northwest Ter-
ritory first sat down to hold a meeting
for divine worship.
John Warner, son of Isaac and Mary
Warner, who was born at High Bank, Ross
County, on July 12, 1798, was, so far as
can be determined, the first Quaker child
born northwest of the Ohio River. In
1798 a group of Friends from Hopewell, Vir-
ginia, settled at High Bank, and in the
same year a group of Quakers, all from North
Carolina, migrated to Salt Creek, near
Richmondale, Ross County. In 1799 Taylor
Webster and family from Redstone,
Pennsylvania, settled at Grassy Prairies, five
miles northeast of Chillicothe (Ross
County). From the eastern seaboard came
many English Quakers, with their
distinctive garb and their reliance upon the "In-
ner Light." Especially in the
eastern "backbone region" and in the southern
portions of Ohio, their meetings were
long an important part of the religious life.
One other group of Friends which settled
in the southern part of the state came to
Lees Creek, near the present town of
Leesburg in Highland County, in the spring of
1802. No white person had ever lived
before in this area. Since other Friends also
soon moved to Fairfield (Leesburg),
there began a Friends meeting at Fairfield,
regularly authorized in May 1804.
A very important Quaker in early Ohio
history was Thomas Beals, who is credited
with being the first Friends minister to
carry the message of Christ into the vast re-
gion north and west of the Ohio. Born in
Pennsylvania in 1719, Beals entered into
the Friends' ministry in 1753 in North
Carolina. In 1775 he and several associates
crossed into what is now the state of
Ohio to visit Indian tribes, who were still very
much in control of the land. After
holding many satisfactory meetings with the In-
dians, the group returned safely to
North Carolina. Discussing the trip later Beals
reported that "he saw with his
spiritual eye the seed of Friends scattered all over
that good land and that one day there
would be a greater gathering of Friends there
than any other place in the world, and
that his faith was strong in the belief that he
would live to see Friends settle north
of the Ohio River."
He himself helped to bring this
prediction true when in 1799 he and his family
moved to Quaker Bottom. Here Beals
conducted regular meetings in Jesse Bald-
win's house, for the nearest meeting to
them was at Westland, Pennsylvania. In
1801 Thomas Beals died and was buried
near Richmondale. A meeting house was
later built on the land and a meeting
was held there for some time. In the planting
of Quakerism in the Old Northwest, the
story of Thomas Beals is but one of the
many that might be cited.
Another area of settlement in the future
state of Ohio was in the southwestern
part where in late 1799 several families
of Friends from Bush River Monthly Meet-
ing, South Carolina, settled near the
present site of Waynesville. Some months
later a group of Friends arrived from
Hopewell Monthly Meeting, Virginia, and,
during the same year, a few came from
North Carolina. In April 1801, twelve fami-
lies met for worship at Waynesville, and
in October 1803, the Miami Monthly
Meeting was recognized. Wilmington, in
Clinton County, became a Quaker center
as early as 1804, but the first regular
meetings were not held there until 1807. The
first Quakers in Wilmington came from
North Carolina where they had resided af-
ter they were expelled from Wilmington,
Massachusetts. (The western part of
Ohio Quakers 227
present-day Wilmington is still known as
Quaker Hill. Today, the Quaker in-
fluence in the city is witnessed
primarily through Wilmington College which was
organized by the Society of Friends in
1871 and constructed in 1875.)
From these nuclei developed the meetings
serving Ohio west of the Hocking
River, including what later became the
West Branch Quarterly Meeting (Miami
County) to the north and Whitewater Quarterly
Meeting in eastern Indiana. Rapid
settlement of Friends in the Miami
valleys is shown by the fact that, in the three
years from the middle of 1804 to the
middle of 1807, the Miami Monthly Meeting
received 367 removal certificates,
bringing to that meeting the memberships of 1,697
persons.
The truly great Quaker migration
westward began in 1800 with the removal of
one entire meeting and part of another
from North Carolina to the Short Creek re-
gion a few miles west of the Ohio River
above Wheeling, Virginia. According to
the minutes of the Westland,
Pennsylvania, Monthly Meeting of 1799, two mem-
bers, Benjamin and Joseph Townsend,
visited meetings in North Carolina just prior
to the mass movement of the southern
Friends to the Ohio Country. Apparently
the Friends from Westland exerted a
great influence on the North Carolina Friends
to move to an area which was more
favorable to their way of life. The Coresound
Monthly Meeting in Carteret County,
North Carolina, instructed two delegates,
Joseph Dew and Horton Howard, to survey
the Ohio Country. Dew and Howard
were joined by Aaron Brown, the delegate
of the Trent Monthly Meeting of Jones
County, North Carolina. These men made
the difficult journey over the mountains
to the Westland Monthly Meeting where,
in June 1799, they sought advice on what
land would be the best to secure. After
the three agents crossed the Ohio River into
the Northwest Territory, they decided
that the Short Creek region in what is now
Jefferson and Belmont counties, Ohio,
would be their new home. The men were so
impressed with the new area that they
inspired the entire Trent Meeting and several
families from the Coresound Meeting to
move north. Certificates of removal, ad-
dressed to Westland, were granted to all
members of Trent, after which there was no
longer a Trent Monthly Meeting.
Although the prospect of moving over the
mountains in winter to the Ohio Coun-
try may have made the Friends somewhat
apprehensive, they quickly made
preparations. In January 1800, they left
their homes in North Carolina and jour-
neyed by wagon and horseback (all
children over twelve walked unless they had a
horse), carrying with them their
household furnishings and driving their livestock
before them.
The party camped at night and lived on
the food which they had brought with them
and on wild game. In spite of an arduous
journey under severe hardships, they al-
ways rested on First-Days, when,
"at the appointed time" of their usual meeting,
they gathered around a campfire for
religious service.
The exact route taken by the group and
the number in the party are not known,
though it appears that between fifty and
one hundred Friends were in the group.
There were several routes by which
Quakers came from the South to the Ohio
Country, the area which in those days
was generally referred to as the West. Ac-
cording to Stephen B. Weeks' 1896 study
of southern Quakers and slavery, North
Carolina Friends probably used one of
four routes. The Kanawha road passed
through mountainous areas of present
Virginia and West Virginia to the falls of the
Kanawha River and down that stream to
the Ohio, crossing at the present site of
Gallipolis. The Kentucky road proceeded
by way of the western tip of Virginia,
through the Cumberland Gap, and up
through Kentucky to Cincinnati. The Ma-
Ohio Quakers 229
gadee route over the Virginia turnpike,
which ran from Richmond to the Ohio River
at the mouth of the Kanawha River, was a
favored way from 1810 until the age of
railroads.
A route more likely taken by the Trent
and Coresound Quakers was that over the
trail of the future Cumberland or
National Road (construction of the road began in
1811). It passed through Redstone (the
modern Brownsville, Pennsylvania), lo-
cated on the Monongahela River south of
Pittsburgh. After five months of extreme
hardship on the road these North
Carolina migrants reached Westland, where their
arrival was recorded in the minutes of
the Westland Monthly Meeting, in sixth
month 1800. The Westland Friends
welcomed the North Carolinians and gave
them the advice and assistance which
were necessary to purchase land in the North-
west Territory. After resting in the
vicinity of Westland and Redstone for several
months, the Trent and Coresound Friends
finally reached the Ohio Country in Sep-
tember 1800.
Near present Colerain, six miles up a
small stream that empties into the Ohio
River (at today's Bridgeport in Belmont
County), they spent their First-Day by
holding a meeting in the open. These
newcomers were not the first in the area,
however. The embryonic community of
Mount Pleasant had had its beginnings in
1796, when, according to tradition, an
advance party of twenty men-none
Quakers-had scouted the area for
settlement. Cutting the first road through the
great deciduous forest covering the
eastern part of Ohio, they camped above Short
Creek. A rivalry developed over who
should have the chance to buy the land from
the United States government and gain
the honor of being the town's founder. The
decision was made by drawing lots and
Robert Carothers was the winner. The
Steubenville Land Office records show
that Carothers purchased land in July 1800.
Later he sold seventy acres for $3.50 an
acre, in what would become the west end
of the town, to Jesse Thomas, a Friend,
who brought his family to Ohio from North
Carolina in 1802. Then, in 1803, just a
few months after Ohio became a state, the
two men laid out the village of Mount
Pleasant, which was known for some time by
its nickname "Jesse-Bob Town."
For several years the village remained rather dor-
mant with only a few log houses
indicating its existence. Some of the early settlers in
the Mount Pleasant area were the
families of Joseph Bishop, Borden Stanton, Abi-
gail Stanton, Benjamin Stanton, William
Patten, William Hogan, Joseph Dew,
Nathan Updegraff, David Graves, Henry
Mills, James Parnell, John Hatton, Jacob
Griffith, Israel James, and James Raley.
This was frontier living in every sense
of the word. ". .. none of us had a house at
our command to meet in to worship the
Almighty Being," Borden Stanton recorded.
"So we met in the woods, until
houses were built, which was but a short time."
Meetings were often held in a tent or in
the newly built cabin of Jonathan Taylor at
Concord. By 1802 log meeting houses were
built at Concord and Short Creek.
At this time the area of the Northwest
Territory was a beautifully primitive, un-
spoiled wonder of nature, and the region
around Mount Pleasant truly deserved
that name. According to a later
observer, the village was located in a picturesque
setting on the summit of a broadly
convex hill. From its elevated position, it was
conspicuous several miles off. There was
no level ground-but rounded hills and
winding, narrow valleys. Clear streams,
foliage of great variety, and outcroppings
of shale and limestone added to the
beauty of the region.
However, to a new resident who had the
task of clearing a section of land from
the dense forest, the beauties of nature
may have appeared less appealing. Regard-
230 OHIO
HISTORY
less of difficulties, in less than one
year so many Friends came to the region that two
preparative meetings were
established-Concord, five miles from the future site of
Mount Pleasant, and Short Creek, a half
mile west of the Mount Pleasant location.
In the last month of 1801 the first
monthly meeting, Concord, was opened, to meet
alternately at Short Creek, and in 1804
it divided into Concord and Short Creek
monthly meetings.
There were several religious
denominations among the people of the Mount
Pleasant area. The Scotch-Irish
Presbyterians from neighboring Pennsylvania were
among the first settlers in Mount
Pleasant Township, as early as 1798. The Rever-
end Joseph Anderson conducted the first
Presbyterian services in a log building on
Little Short Creek; eventually two brick
churches were built. The Methodist Epis-
copal Church was also very active in the
area until 1830, when the majority of mem-
bers joined the Methodist Protestant
Church. After a short time the Methodist
Episcopal group diminished, but the
Methodist Protestant Church continued as a
strong organization in the community.
The Reverend David McMasters was a pio-
neer minister among the Methodists in
Mount Pleasant. Another sizable, promi-
nent group was the Seceders (Associate
Reformed). Other religions in Jefferson
and Belmont counties in early years were
Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal, Dis-
ciples, Lutheran, and Catholic.
One other Quaker community of note in
the eastern part of Ohio was Salem (Co-
lumbiana County) which was settled in
1801-1802. The name for the town came
from the word Jerusalem which was
originally known as Salem. There were
enough Quakers in Salem by 1805 for a
monthly meeting to be organized there.
(Salem later became a leading center of
Quaker influence during the slavery con-
troversy. The Anti-Slavery Bugle was
published there in the 1840's.)
By the close of the year 1800, it is
estimated that there were eight hundred fami-
lies of Friends in the Ohio Country, who
came not as land speculators but as settlers
truly desirous of establishing homes.
"Something like what happened here in Trent
River, Jones County, N. C.," wrote Rufus
M. Jones, the Quaker historian, "hap-
pened up and down the entire Atlantic
coast from Georgia to Long Island, and in a
less degree also in New York and New
England. Whole meetings in many in-
stances moved westward in a body, while
in other meetings many families left their
old homes and associations, and pushed
out to find new homes and a new career in
the wilderness of the north-west."
Settlement by Quakers in the Old
Northwest was a life of toil, privation, struggle,
and suffering; a few of them were
captured by Indians and experienced death. Yet,
Ohio Quakers sent back to their friends
glowing reports about the land and the free-
dom of the Ohio Country. These reports
were responsible for many more families
deciding to move west, and within a
relatively few years Ohio became a great center
of the Society of Friends. By 1826, more
than eight thousand Quakers were peace-
fully living among the limestone hills
of Belmont, Jefferson, Harrison, and Colum-
biana counties in the eastern part of
the state. For nearly seventy-five years, one-
third of the Friends in America lived
within the boundaries of the Old Northwest
Territory.
Another slight wave of migration
occurred about 1835 to 1840 when Quakers
with large families sought to secure
land for their children. When the National
Road was built in eastern Ohio in the
late 1820's, it passed through Quaker country
at St. Clairsville. Farmland increased
in value and the sale of an acre there would
buy ten acres of similar land in
southern Morgan and western Washington counties.
So, many families sold their farms and moved by wagon across the county to new homes. Within twenty years their new settlements--with Pennsville, Chesterhill, and Plymouth as centers--were as prosperous as the hills of Belmont County. Here until after the Civil War their organization, their meetings, and their schools were maintained. At present, only the Chesterhill Meeting remains; but twice a week, on First-Day and Fifth-Day, members come together for business and wor- ship as Quakers have been doing since the time of George Fox. Ohio Quaker Meetings and the Mount Pleasant Meeting House The Ohio Historical Society completed the restoration of the beautiful old Friends Meeting House in Mount Pleasant in 1966 to remind the people of Ohio of one of the state's small, but very important, early groups of settlers. Standing on a hill overlooking a considerable part of Mount Pleasant, the meeting house is not only a fitting memorial to those Quakers who settled at Mount Pleasant, but also is a testimonial to that which was the vital center of their lives. The occasion for the building of the Mount Pleasant Meeting House in 1814-1815 was to accommodate the Ohio Yearly Meeting. The movement for an Ohio Yearly Meeting began in 1806 when Ohio Friends petitioned the Baltimore Yearly Meeting to organize a quarterly meeting in Ohio. As a result, the monthly meetings at Con- cord, Short Creek, and Miami were authorized to form a quarterly meeting which was called the Short Creek Quarterly Meeting. The Friends at Short Creek built a quarterly meeting house in 1806-1807, a crude one-story brick structure, 45 by 70 feet in size-the largest church building in the state. Though the first mention of a request to establish a yearly meeting west of the Al- legheny Mountains appeared in the minutes of the 1810 Baltimore Yearly Meeting, no action was taken on the request. By 1811 there were four quarterly meetings west of the Alleghenies Redstone (Pennsylvania), Short Creek, Miami, and Salem (all in Ohio)--which requested that they be permitted to form a yearly meeting. Apparently the delegates at the Baltimore Yearly Meeting believed that the ques- |
232 OHIO HISTORY
tion of establishing a new yearly
meeting was so important that they delayed mak-
ing a decision and asked for a committee
from Philadelphia and Virginia yearly
meetings to consider the question and
advise them as to an appropriate decision.
Then in 1812, the Baltimore Yearly
Meeting authorized the quarterly meetings west
of the Allegheny Mountains (now also
including West Branch) to convene at Short
Creek as a yearly meeting on the third
First-Day of the eighth month, 1813.
It was estimated by some that there were
over two thousand people in attendance
at this first Ohio Yearly Meeting in
1813; others said that there were closer to three
thousand Quakers present. Whatever the
number, the Friends got down to the
business of organization. Horton Howard
of Short Creek was named clerk, William
Wilson was chosen to assist him, and
Enoch Harris was selected treasurer. It was
decided to adopt the Baltimore Yearly
Meeting's Book of Discipline as the guide for
the Ohio Yearly Meeting until the latter
group could devise a Book of Discipline of
its own (which was published in 1819).
The yearly meeting also established a meet-
ing for sufferings, as well as other
committees; and each quarterly meeting was as-
sessed, according to its population, an
amount sufficient to defray the operating ex-
penses of the yearly meeting.
According to the minutes of that first
yearly meeting, the men held their business
sessions in a shed adjoining the Short
Creek Quarterly Meeting House while the
women gathered in the meeting house. Due
to these primitive conditions one of the
early orders of business was to consider
the building of a permanent yearly meeting
house. Their discussions led to the
appointment of a committee on the meeting
house which later purchased nearly six
acres of land adjoining the village of Mount
Pleasant. In 1814 construction began on
the new building and in 1815 the first
Ohio Yearly Meeting to be held in Mount
Pleasant convened there. Construction
costs--$12,345, excluding donated
labor--were apportioned among the five quar-
terly meetings.
Jacob Ong, a carpenter and cabinetmaker
by trade, was the principal architect
and builder of the Mount Pleasant Yearly
Meeting House. Ong, who had moved to
Ohio about 1802, was both a Quaker by
birth and a veteran of the American Revo-
lutionary War. Even though most Quakers
have abhorred the idea of violence and
war, some have participated in wartime
service. Jacob Ong returned to the Society
of Friends in 1786 after having been
caught up in the patriotic frenzy which accom-
panied America's struggle for
independence.
Ong had little difficulty in designing
the Mount Pleasant Meeting House because
all of the Friends' meeting houses were
fairly similar in style. Well proportioned
and uncluttered in line, the meeting
houses were plain structures which usually in-
cluded a folding partition to separate
women's and men's sides. The Mount Pleas-
ant building is a model of pioneering
construction, revealing early Ohio masonry,
bricklaying, carpentry, joining,
woodworking, and furniture-making at its best. The
meeting house is not particularly
impressive from the outside except for one feature
--its massiveness. A brick structure, it
has walls twenty-four inches thick
(twenty-eight inches at foundation), is
two stories high, and measures 92 feet long
and 60 feet wide. Practically all of the
material to build it came from the surround-
ing countryside, and the local artisans
of Mount Pleasant provided the labor force.
The interior arrangement of the building
reveals some of the ideas of the Quakers
concerning their worship services and
their business meetings. The meeting house
has a seating capacity of two thousand;
but when yearly meeting was being held,
the building nearly burst at its seams.
On the main floor, on the north side of the
building, is a ministers' gallery
comprising three tiers of seats which face the audito-
234 OHIO HISTORY
rium where the members sat on
stiff-backed benches. Benches in the ministers' gal-
lery were reserved for the
"pillars" of the meeting--the ministers, the elders, the
overseers, and some of the older or
concerned Friends. (In 1883, the ministers' gal-
lery was replaced by a single-level
platform separated by an aisle from the main
room. This arrangement, quite out of
character with other early Quaker meeting
houses, was removed in the restoration.)
Located above the main floor, at each end
and along the south side of the
building, are spacious galleries which were occupied
by the young people (usually twelve
years of age or older).
A special feature of the meeting house is
its partition which reaches from the floor
to the ceiling and stretches the full
sixty feet across the building. Made of paneled
poplar arranged in horizontal sections,
it equally divides the space between the
men's side to the east and the women's
side to the west. The partition was uniquely
designed so that a portion of it could
be raised or lowered by an intricate piece of
handmade machinery. The sections in this
portion were hinged so that they would
fold around an axle (in the attic) which
was revolved by a winch that operated an
enormous cogwheel. Four husky men were
required to turn the winch to pull the
huge partition up into the attic.
The Ohio Yearly Meeting grew and
prospered. By 1814 it was reported that
there were 1,693 families within its
limits, and in 1826 the yearly meeting counted
8,873 members organized into fifty-three
local congregations. Each August held a
special significance for the Friends
because that meant it was time for the yearly
meeting at Mount Pleasant and a respite,
at least for a brief moment, from the back-
breaking job of eking out a living in
the virgin Ohio wilderness. Even though the
Quakers have been known for their
calmness of manner, the yearly meeting took on
the appearance of a festival of sorts.
Naturally it afforded Friends the opportunity
to renew acquaintances with those who
had moved to other parts of the state.
Many romances began at yearly meeting
time. Young people were sometimes
chastised for their conduct during
yearly meeting for "the rolling in of the carriages
at midnight, so little becoming the
occasion, or the children of Friends."
With the great influx of Friends the
small village could not accommodate all of
the visitors. Many persons slept five or
six to a room when they were lucky to find a
place in Mount Pleasant. Some were
entertained by Quakers who lived on farms as
far as five or more miles from Mount
Pleasant. Often the children of a family were
moved to haymows to sleep in order to
accommodate more guests in the home. In
later years, after the Mount Pleasant
Boarding School was constructed, Friends at-
tending the yearly meeting were
permitted to sleep and eat at the school, at a charge
which covered only the expenses
incurred.
The festive atmosphere associated with
the yearly meetings apparently continued
through the years. According to an
account by Jesse Spencer written to his sister
from Mount Pleasant in 1846, there were
then two yearly meetings-one for the
Hicksites and one for the Orthodox
Friends, each lasting a week and running con-
secutively. The roads into Mount
Pleasant, he wrote, were jammed with carriages
for as far out as four miles. He went on
to describe:
Last Sunday was a great day in town. The
shops and everything was open and the Street full
of Mellon and Gingerbread Wagons, Beer
Whiskey and everything else. If you know what
a fair is like in Ireland, you know very
near what it was like here last Sunday.... It would be
worth while for you to be here from now
till next Sunday. You would see what you never
seen the like of before. Tell Bill about
it. I wish you was here.
|
By this account, it would seem that this little Jefferson County village hummed with activity at least once or twice a year-from both the influx of Friends and the height- ened community activities. To describe the use of the meeting house in detail would be complicated because of the schisms which split the Society of Friends. As a result of the Separation of 1828 (see section on "Quaker Origins"), the Hicksites used the yearly meeting house and the Orthodox Friends were forced to meet at the quarterly meeting house at Short Creek that year. Since they jointly owned the Mount Pleasant Meeting House, both groups used it for their yearly meetings in subsequent years. Within the Orthodox branch of the Society a second schism developed in the 1840's. This split was the result of a visit to the United States by Joseph J. Gurney, an engaging, talented Quaker evangelical from England. He became a center of controversy be- cause some Quakers considered him too close to Episcopal or Methodist doctrine and too far from the original emphasis on the "Inner Light." One who felt strongly about this matter was John Wilbur of Rhode Island who became convinced that Gurney was a threat to the concept of the "Inner Light" and the traditional beliefs of Quakers. Those who supported Gurney were called Gurneyites or Orthodox. Those who supported Wilbur became the Wilburites or Conservatives. This controversy led to further splits, one of which occurred in Ohio in 1854 that resulted in three groups (Hicksites, Gurneyites, and Wilburites) holding title jointly to the yearly meeting house property. The Hicksites continued to hold their annual meetings in the yearly meeting house. The Gurneyites (Orthodox) met there too until 1866 when they began to alternate their annual meetings between Damascus in even years and Mount Pleasant in odd years. Late in the nineteenth century the Hicksites began alternating their meetings between Mount Pleasant in even years and Salem in the odd years. The last yearly meeting held at Mount Pleasant was by the Hicksites in 1918. |
The three groups held title jointly to the property until 1883 when the Wilburites transferred their interests to the Hicksites. In 1921, the Hicksites deeded their inter- est to the Gurney Friends, who deeded the property in 1950 to the state. The state of Ohio, through The Ohio Historical Society, restored the meeting house as a beau- tiful monument to a group of people unique in Ohio history. Members of the Evangelical Friends Church, Eastern Region, an outgrowth of the Gurneyites (Or- thodox), are the only Friends in Mount Pleasant at present. The Wilburites (Religious Society of Friends) or Conservatives have their headquarters at nearby Barnesville. There are at present six yearly meetings which serve Ohio. Quaker Life-Styles In any discussion of the Quaker pattern of living, one may assume that the Friends in Ohio generally and Mount Pleasant in particular lived in the manner of most Quakers of the period. For after the arrival of Friends in America, there de- veloped a broad uniformity of life-style which persisted for at least two centuries. When it came to transacting business or responding to political issues, they did so in much the same peculiar manner from Maine to the Carolinas and westward to the Pacific Ocean. Friends married Friends, for to do otherwise could result in dis- ownment. Friends spoke and dressed alike. Henry Thoreau, attending a meeting in 1843, observed that the women looked "all like sisters or so many chickadees." In America this uniformity of the Quakers became especially pronounced after the War of Independence. Largely because of their experience during that war they drew apart from society in order to maintain themselves and their children as "a peculiar people." They wore the distinctive plain dress which has traditionally been thought of as "Quaker." The men were attired in black, broad-brimmed, and undented beaver hats and collarless coats; the women dressed in long full skirts, shawls, often of Quaker gray, and bonnets which framed their faces; children looked like miniature adults. |
Ohio Quakers 237
Their plain speech was particularly
distinguished by the use of "thou" and "thee."
Simplicity marked the style of their
living, from home to meeting house. Quaker
meeting houses were unadorned and the
worship was uniform in its dependence on
silence. Many Friends were actually
hostile to art, music, fiction, and drama. They
did not observe the festival of
Christmas, believing that every day of the year should
be the same to Christians. They attended
meetings twice a week--on First-Day
and again on Fifth-Day. The leisure
which they had from shop or farm was gener-
ally devoted to the affairs of the
meeting. Frequently to the outside world they
appeared pious, stiff, and set apart.
While it is probably true that to the
outside world Quaker society seemed rather
drab and glum, there were both outsiders
and insiders who noted the presence of
warmth and gaiety. One such observer was
the famous eighteenth-century writer,
Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, who, in
his Lettersfrom an American Farmer, told of
his experience in a Quaker community on
Nantucket Island. He noted the simple
pleasures of walking and conversing with
each other, of physical exercises (such as
throwing the bar, heaving stones, and
"an exhilarating bowl"), and other "rural
amusements." As a consequence,
"they all appeared gay without levity. I had
never before in my life seen so much
unaffected mirth, mixed with so much mod-
esty. The pleasures of the day were
enjoyed with the greatest liveliness and the
most innocent freedom...."
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) in
reminiscing about his boyhood days in
Philadelphia remembered spending his
youth among the plainness and simple ways
of the stricter Friends but he also
remarked on the richly carved and upholstered
furniture in his grandfather's home and
on the excitement of attending a circus.
The latter event was expected to help
Quaker children better understand the won-
ders of creation by viewing the exotic
animals. However, they were required to
cover their eyes during tightrope acts
so that the sight of female acrobats in scanty
costume did not blemish their innocent
minds.
At a time when it was generally felt
that women were to be in the home, seen but
not heard, a unique characteristic of
the Friends was the prominent place given to
women in the early Quaker organization.
Quakers, with their belief in the "Inner
Light," saw that women as well as
men could be moved by the Spirit and thus they
recognized women as being equal with
men. Consequently, in each decade there
were outstanding Quaker women who, on
occasion, "suffered with equal bravery"
as the men. In 1656 when Ann Austin,
Mary Fisher, and Mary Dyer attempted to
take the Quaker message to Boston and
the Massachusetts Bay Colony, all three
were jailed. Mary Dyer was one of the
four Friends hanged on Boston Common
between 1659 and 1661.
Sarah Harrison, a traveling Quaker
minister from Pennsylvania, was effective in
persuading Quaker slaveholders to free
their slaves. Lucretia Mott was active in
the abolition movement and as organizer
of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery
Society. She, together with Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, conceived the idea of holding
a woman's rights convention, which met
in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Abi-
gail Flanner, a teacher in the Friends
Boarding School at Mount Pleasant, earned a
moment of notoriety because of her
memorable letter friendship with a famous New
York poet, Fitz-Greene Halleck, in the
late 1830's.
Typical of the Quakers was their
technique of decision-making, the "method of
consensus." No majority view on an
issue dominated; no minority view was over-
ridden. The final decision was expected
to be the result of truth as found by the
group. In the meeting, a recording clerk
listened and noted any unifying thread
238 OHIO
HISTORY
which might emerge from the comments
offered. This was the process of searching
for the "sense of the
meeting." A vote or a veto was never involved. Eventually
the clerk read out a
"minute"--the degree of unity which he had sensed--which
could undergo further modification
before being accepted. As John Sykes points
out: "It may not finally go as far
as some present may have wished, but it involves
no illusionary sense of progress; all
will act on it this far, and orderly growth from
here is possible .... The appeal is not
just to reason, or to the set authority of lead-
ers, but to the quest for right feeling
among a group of equals." It may be that this
technique for decision-making was an
important factor in the dynamism of this
group of people, for when they believed
in what they were doing they could become
master salesmen, to whom the world was
often peculiarly susceptible.
From the very outset Quakers have been
uniformly concerned about truth and
honesty. This concern led them to see
oath-taking first as futile for no oath could
turn a liar into a man of truth--and
later they viewed it as actually vicious, for
swearing implied that the man was a liar
when not under oath. So in 1682 by the
"Great Law" the Friends in
Pennsylvania provided that men should give testimony
by "solemnly promising to speak the
truth, the whole truth and nothing but the
truth." Also, out of this concern
for truth and honesty came the Quaker policy of
adopting a set price for merchandise.
They rejected the usual practice of bargain-
ing over the price of goods on the
ground that one should say at the beginning what
the item was honestly worth. To them,
this approach was a matter of telling the
truth; bargaining caught one up in a
lie.
Another feature of their pattern of
living is that Quakers have during their history
been "concerned" about many
matters. For them to have a "concern" has always
meant doing something about it that is,
"concern" goes hand in hand with action.
Their "concerns" have been for
such matters as abolition of slavery, peace, just
treatment for the Indians, and help to
the destitute, ill, imprisoned, and oppressed.
Rufus Jones used to tell about a
five-year-old boy who had been bombed out of his
home during World War II and evacuated
to the country. "Now," the little boy
plaintively cried, "I'm nobody's
nothing." This little story probably epitomizes the
concern which the Quakers have
traditionally had during their long history. As one
commentator has aptly put it, they have
demonstrated to the "nobody's nothings"
that they were "somebody's
somethings," and that an unknown somebody cared
enough to come a long way to offer the
necessities of life.
Today, Quakers still cherish the simple
directness of manner and word as their
forebears and for the same reason, but
they do not manifest it through a special
form of dress or language. (By the end
of World War II the old style Quaker dress
had died out almost everywhere except in
southeastern Ohio where a few conserva-
tive Friends still wore it.)
Nevertheless, the idea is universally present among
Quakers that they should be "a
peculiar people." Rufus Jones, believing that a new
and more demanding peculiarity was
needed in comtemporary times, said:
We live in the world.... We are bound to
live in the world and to look and speak like the
general run of people. But we must not,
we cannot, give up the idea of being a peculiar
people. Only henceforth the peculiarity must not be in outward
form, it must be in inward
life andpower. .. the absolute confrontation of our lives with the
reality of God.
Of course, so far as frontier living in
early Ohio was concerned, the life of the
Friends did not differ greatly from that
of others who were wresting survival from a
wilderness. The whole region was heavily
forested which meant clearing every acre
before it could be cultivated. Everyone
was expected to be fairly self-sufficient,
Ohio Quakers 239
which meant being one's own shoemaker,
blacksmith, weaver, miller, and doctor.
However, even the arduous tasks were
turned into social activities by the commu-
nity--house and barn raisings, corn
huskings, quilting parties, and apple cuttings
often provided the recreational and
social outlets. Other opportunities for fun were
offered by sledding, taffy pulls, games,
and debating and literary societies. There
was no dancing or card playing. Wedding
dinners and infares were special events,
with guests present from as far as
Philadelphia.
And yet, even while sharing such common
conditions in early settlements, the
Friends were "a peculiar
people" in at least one respect. They desired the advan-
tages of a primary education for their
children. Quakers were pioneers in coeduca-
tion and their boarding schools were
forerunners of the public education systems.
This activity might appear contradictory
in view of the fact that a religious society
based on the doctrine of the "Inner
Light" could easily have discounted the impor-
tance of education. But, from the very
beginning, George Fox realized its necessity.
In his encouragement for the teaching of
"whatsoever things are civil and useful in
creation," he helped to lay the
foundations for the Friends' traditional emphasis on
a pragmatic education, especially in the
areas of science and math. Not only were
they concerned with educating their own
children but, in keeping with their concern
for oppressed people, the Friends
established schools for freed Negroes and the In-
dians to provide them with a technical
education stressing agricultural skills and
trades. Consequently, Friends'
subscription schools early sprang into being. Some
meetings were able to hire a teacher and
conduct the school along modern lines;
others got no farther than to provide a
house. The term "subscription school" often
meant that it was up to a teacher to go
around in a neighborhood to solicit patron-
age. Generally, these schools limited
their offerings to the traditional "three R's--
reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic."
Occasionally, one could find an exception to this
pattern, as in the example of John
Butler. This young man from Damascus, Ohio,
wished to add geography and grammar to
the curriculum at his Friends school. His
innovation brought a prompt visit and
remonstrance from the school committee,
but they agreed to compromise and allow
the subjects to be taught on an experi-
mental basis for one year. It is
interesting to note that the new studies proved to be
a success and their propriety was never
again questioned.
Since often the Quaker institutions were
the only schools in early rural America,
they welcomed non-Quaker children as
well. However, around the time of the
American Revolution, Quakers began to
emphasize what was called a "religiously
guarded education." As Friends
turned inward and disassociated themselves from
the world, their schools began to refuse
to accept children of the "world's people."
Quaker education, then, contributed
greatly to the growing belief that Quakers were
a people set apart, "a peculiar
people."
Mount Pleasant Boarding School
The Friends of Mount Pleasant went
through variations in their educational ob-
jectives similar to those of Quakers of
other areas. A number of college men among
the early settlers of Mount Pleasant
realized the necessity of developing a sound
educational system as early as possible.
The first record of any concern among the
Ohio Quakers for the advanced education
of their children came in the 1814 Ohio
Yearly Meeting. The next year the yearly
meeting appointed a committee to study
the subject, which advised that each
quarterly meeting make provision for contribu-
tions from its members for a yearly
meeting school fund. The committee also rec-
ommended a boarding school be built
since many Friends lived too far from any
240 OHIO HISTORY
school to send their children on a daily
basis. In 1816, the yearly meeting school
fund committee membership included Abel
Knight, Jonathan Taylor, Nathan Up-
degraff, Isaac Packer, William Heald,
David Brown, Emmor Bailey, James Paty,
Richard Barrett, and George Shugart.
The school fund grew slowly until 1824
when Thomas Rotch bequeathed $5,000
to it. For the next several years
nothing was accomplished regarding a school be-
cause the Friends were too immersed in
the Great Separation problem beginning in
1828. Also, many Quaker families wanted
their children at home in the winter to
do the "chores." So it was not
until 1831 that the Friends again seriously consid-
ered the subject of a school. By that
time the fund totaled around $7,000. It was
reported at the Ohio Yearly Meeting that
other yearly meetings had taken an inter-
est in the school project and had
volunteered to supply funds. As a result, the
school committee of forty-five persons
began to seek an appropriate site for the pro-
posed boarding school.
In 1832 the committee purchased
sixty-four acres of land, near the yearly meeting
house lot, from Dr. William Hamilton of
Mount Pleasant. Also, lumber was pur-
chased for the building. The committee
recommended that the school be open to
both male and female students but that
there should be distinctly separate facilities
for the sexes. There was to be a wing on
either side of the main building for sepa-
rate classrooms and lodging and dining
halls for the students and teachers. In addi-
tion, there were to be a garden and
walks on each side connected with the wings but
entirely separate from each other.
Finally, the committee emphasized that it was
their hope that the children should
receive a religious, not a literary, education.
In 1835 the boarding school committee
decided on the building dimensions: a 40
by 46 foot center building, three
stories high, plus a basement; a wing at each end of
the building two stories high above the
basement. The principal building was to
cost $10,000 with the completion date
set for September 1836. The building was
actually completed in 1837, at a cost of
$10,450. Friends in New England and in
England pledged $2,000 each for the
construction of the boarding school. It was
designed to accommodate about 120
children and youth.
The Mount Pleasant Friends Boarding
School, or, as it was popularly called, the
"Quaker Seminary," was opened
to students on January 23, 1837. Daniel Williams
and his wife Elizabeth were the first
superintendent and matron. Robert S. Hollo-
way and his wife Abby, George K.
Jenkins, and Abigail Flanner were the first
teachers. The men were paid a maximum of
$400 and the women $250. A gover-
nor for the boys department, who was to
provide for the good order of the school,
was added in 1838. During the first six
months of operation the school averaged
about eighty-five pupils who paid a
tuition rate of $65 for the six-month term.
The proposed school calendar was two
sessions of twenty-four weeks with two
two-week vacations. During the winter
term, which normally opened the week fol-
lowing the Ohio Yearly Meeting, morning
classes began at 8:30 and ended at 11:30
o'clock, and afternoon classes lasted
from 2 until 5. There was an evening class
from 6 to 7:30. During the summer term,
the evening class was transferred to the
morning, beginning at 6 and ending at
7:30. The times of the other classes re-
mained the same. Religious meetings were
held the first and fifth days of the week.
The education received was guarded and
liberal, one of literary and scientific in-
struction as well as the imparting of
the doctrines of the Gospel and the Quaker tes-
timonies. The primary pupils had
instruction in spelling and definitions, reading,
geography, arithmetic, English grammar,
and writing. Advanced pupils studied
natural philosophy, chemistry, rhetoric,
logic, mineralogy, botany, bookkeeping, as-
tronomy, political economy, moral philosophy, political grammar, mensuration, trigonometry, algebra, geometry, use of globes, theory of astronomy and calcu- lations, French, Latin, and Greek. Also, students had Scripture recitations and exercises during the afternoon of the first day of the week and passages of Scripture were read every evening just before bedtime. Operation of the Mount Pleasant Boarding School was not without problems. Living conditions at the school were only adequate at best. Since there were no cookstoves, all preparation of meals was made over open fires. There were no washing facilities and no indoor plumbing common conditions in those days-- and communicable diseases occurred frequently. The school's financial records during the first several years revealed a deficit of $500 to $800 a year. This resulted in the need to increase tuition. The boarding school never seemed to have enough capital with which to operate. However, in the late 1850's a new superintendent, Yardley Warner, began to economize by joining several of the previously separate boys and girls classes and by having all persons at the boarding school eat in the same dining room. Despite the many obstacles, in comparison with other schools of the day, the Mount Pleasant Boarding School furnished its young students with a narrow but solid range of studies. Certainly the students grew immeasurably in the education of life, living and learning together in a religious atmosphere. But the boarding school was not destined to last indefinitely. A conflict over pos- session of the school developed from the separation created by the controversy be- tween Joseph J. Gurney and John Wilbur. In 1854 the Hoyle group (Wilburites) maintained control of the school, although allowing the children of the Binns group (Gurneyites) to attend. In 1868 the Binns group sued for possession of the property and finally, in 1874, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in its favor. Subsequently, the school closed that year. The new owners of the Mount Pleasant Boarding School were in the process of renovating the structure when it was destroyed by fire in 1875, and was never rebuilt. However, plans had been made in 1874 for a new school, which opened in 1876 near Barnesville. It is still in existence, under direction of the Conservative Friends. |
242 OHIO HISTORY
The Friends and Mount Pleasant's
Economy
The Friends played a prominent role in
the economic growth of Mount Pleasant
right from its very beginning around
1800. The village rapidly became a thriving
business and industrial center in
eastern Ohio, serving an area of more than one
hundred square miles. After the War of
1812 the community developed quickly as
small businesses and manufacturing
establishments appeared.
The Quakers were especially diligent and
thrifty and something of the envy of
other settlers in the area, for they
always seemed to be able to amass a certain
amount of wealth. W. H. Hunter commented
that "while their neighbors continued
poor, the Quakers grew in wealth, and
thus in their quiet, unostentatious way
exerted a potent influence in the
development of the county." For example, the
members of the Updegraff and Stanton
families became prominent not only in the
Society of Friends but also in the
affairs of the state of Ohio and the nation. Edwin
M. Stanton, a descendant of Quakers,
served as President Abraham Lincoln's very
able Secretary of War during the Civil
War.
In 1816, when the Ohio General Assembly
authorized six new banks, each with a
capitalization of $100,000, one of these
was located in Mount Pleasant. With the
establishment of flour and paper mills,
tanneries, saddleries, salt, woolen, and nail
manufacturies, hopes grew for the
development of a thriving metropolis. However,
these dreams were shattered by the
business panic of 1819 which hit the entire na-
tion and which was especially severe in
the "New West." For a time the paramount
task was simply surviving the panic and
the depression which followed.
Gradually, however, conditions improved
so that by 1830 the Mount Pleasant
area served as an extensive wheat market
and as the center for a thriving stock-
growing industry. Hogs, cattle, and
sheep were raised. One of the first and largest
pork-packing establishments in the
state, owned by John Hogg, a Presbyterian, was
located in Mount Pleasant. With a
readily accessible market for their livestock, the
Friends became known for a product of
superior quality. An expression often used
in the region when speaking about
something above average was, "as good as
Quaker cattle." Wool buyers from
Philadelphia and New York did business in
Mount Pleasant.
In its busy days Mount Pleasant hummed
with the activity of blacksmiths, cabi-
netmakers, printers, tanners,
shoemakers, hatters, weavers, spinners, and tailors.
One unusual business which flourished in
the village in the early 1840's was a silk
weaving factory, which was noted for
producing the first silk velvet and figured silk
cloth in the United States. With William
Watkins of Steubenville developing silk-
worms in the region, John W. Gill and
Thomas White planted twenty-five acres of
mulberry trees which, upon attaining one
year's growth, were used for the cultiva-
tion of the silkworms. The Gill Silk
Factory produced a variety of goods-dress
silks, hat plush, ribbons, satins,
cravats, hosiery, and gloves. It was a going concern
for five years, employing fifty men year
round. A vest was made for Henry Clay,
who arranged for the United States
government to order a large silk national flag
which was taken to China by Caleb
Cushing. Since Cushing's was the first United
States diplomatic mission to China, this
flag was the first American flag to be raised
in China as part of an official mission.
However, Ohio's climate was not
conducive to the development of a silk industry
and Gill's business was short-lived.
Moreover, Mount Pleasant failed to become a
flourishing metropolis when it could not
compete with neighboring cities, like Steu-
benville and Wheeling, which were more
advantageously located for transportation
services.
Ohio Quakers 243
Quakers and the Indians
One of the amazing aspects of the life
of the Quakers in colonial America was
their good relations with the Indians.
While other groups of colonists were sporad-
ically engaged in wars with the Indians,
the Quakers managed to live peacefully
with these original Americans. Quakers
attributed this unusual rapport with the
Indians to their acceptance of the
Indians as their equals. While not the only ones
to accord this treatment to the Indians,
the Quakers appear to have been more con-
sistent than others in insisting that
the Indian be treated as anybody else--that his
land be purchased rather than
confiscated, that he have trials by juries composed of
his peers, that he not be captured and
used as a slave. A notable practitioner of this
philosophy was William Penn, founder of
Pennsylvania, who felt so strongly about
just treatment for the Indians that
shortly after receiving his land grant, he sent a
letter to the Indians of his colony
expressing his "great love and regard" for them
and his eagerness to earn their
friendship by "a kind, just, and peaceable life."
As Quakers moved into the Ohio Country
late in the eighteenth century, they
demonstrated this concern for the
welfare of the Indians in various ways--through
visits to them with the message of
Christ and through the establishment of service
centers at Sandusky, Upper Sandusky, and
Wapakoneta. (Indians had withdrawn
their settlements from the Mount
Pleasant area prior to the arrival of white settlers.)
Of particular interest and importance
was the activity at Wapakoneta. The Indians
there were a remnant of the Shawnee
tribe which had largely moved west of the
Mississippi River.
The recently formed Ohio Yearly Meeting
at Mount Pleasant appointed a com-
mittee in 1818 to oversee the building
of a saw and grist mill on Indian land and
then assisted the Indians with the
management and instruction in the use of the
mill.
In 1821 Indiana and Baltimore yearly
meetings decided to cooperate in an Ohio
Yearly Meeting plan to provide a school
for the Shawnee children, a proposal that
seems to have stemmed partly from the
Shawnees' request for establishment of a
mission at Wapakoneta. A Committee of
Men and Women Friends on Indian
Concerns purchased land about five miles
south of Wapakoneta, adjacent to the res-
ervation. Two cabins were built--for a
school and for a residence occupied by Mr.
and Mrs. Jesse Baldwin, superintendents.
Operating funds were supplied by Ohio
Yearly Meeting.
In succeeding years usually between nine
and eighteen children were enrolled at
any given time. The boys assisted on the
farm and the girls in the house during
their off hours. In 1828 the monetary
support was interrupted because of the Hick-
site Separation that year, which caused
the school to close temporarily. However,
except for other brief interruptions,
the school operated satisfactorily until 1832,
when the Shawnees decided to exchange
their Ohio reservation for lands west of the
Mississippi River. It was closed after
the last Indians departed in 1833, and the
Friends committee disposed of the
property at Wapakoneta, bringing to an end this
Quaker activity in Indian affairs in
Ohio.
Quakers and Slavery
The abolition of slavery was another
major social concern of the Society of
Friends, which was one of the first
organized groups to denounce the institution.
Possibly Quakers were so sensitive to
the plight of the slave because they could em-
pathize with him--Quakers were
frequently poor, often imprisoned during the
early years, and persecuted.
Some American Quakers, especially those residing in the southern colonies, did own slaves, but in the late seventeenth century a movement began to eliminate slaveholding among Quakers. In the next century, Anthony Benezet and John Woolman were the most active in arousing fellow Quakers to the evils of slavery. In 1754 they stimulated considerable antislavery sentiment with the publication of the findings of their private investigations on the abuses of the slave trade. Benezet, a teacher in Pennsylvania who had been active in various types of social reform work, devoted himself primarily to the abolition of slavery after 1776. Even more prominent was John Woolman from Mount Holly, New Jersey. Rufus Jones, the Quaker historian, states that "more than any other man, Woolman aided the Eng- lish-speaking nations to throw off the disgrace of slavery." Suggestive of the influence of these men is the fact that beginning in 1758, one af- ter another of the quarterly and yearly meetings denounced the institution of slavery and brought pressure to bear on individual Friends to discontinue their slaveholding. Committees were organized in each quarterly meeting to visit the homes of remaining slaveowners to persuade them to relinquish their practice of holding human beings in bondage. By 1780, according to Rufus Jones, "no slaves were held by members except in peculiar cases where legal difficulties prevented manumission, as where husband or wife was not a member and would not consent." Meanwhile, to the south, ranging as far as South Carolina, Sarah Harrison, Norris Jones, and Lydia Hoskins implored Quaker slaveholders to free their black slaves. Naturally the actions of these and other Friends offended many southerners who were beginning to believe that the entire southern life-style rested on the foundation of slavery. Since slaves in the South represented a considerable amount of wealth, owners were reluctant to lose this investment, especially without receiving any compensation. Several states took direct legislative action to prevent or, at least, to discourage the Quakers' manumission operations. The North Carolina Assembly in 1796 enacted laws which were aimed directly at the aggressive antislavery Quakers. For example, "no slave shall be set free in any case or under any pretense whatever, ex- |
Ohio Quakers 245
cept for meritorious service, to be
adjudged of and allowed by the County Court
and license first had and obtained
therefor." In the eyes of their neighbors, Friends
who freed their slaves were looked upon
with hostility; they soon found themselves
living in a society which had become
uncomfortable, if not dangerous, for them. It
was at this time that many southern
Friends began to migrate to the Northwest Ter-
ritory where slavery had been prohibited
in 1787.
Thus, early in the nineteenth century,
Ohio began to feel the influence of the
Friends in many areas of social concern,
but most significantly in the abolitionist
movement. Historians have pointed out
that perhaps no other sect was so unani-
mous in its support of abolitionism as
the Quakers, but because they were torn be-
tween their hostility to slavery and
their traditional preference for peaceful rather
than violent reform, they did not
provide the principal leaders of the movement.
Though this statement was probably true
nationally, Ohio did produce individuals
of Quaker background who became very
active in developing the antislavery move-
ment in the state. Moreover, Mount
Pleasant became known as a center of anti-
slavery activity in Ohio. Many of the
Quakers living there in the early part of the
century were the same individuals who
had left the South because of their abhor-
rence of the institution of slavery;
some had brought freed slaves with them. Also,
the proximity of slave territory, just
across the Ohio River in Virginia, made the Jef-
ferson-Belmont county area a natural
refuge for escapees from the Wheeling slave
market.
By 1816 apparently, Jefferson County and
Mount Pleasant had earned reputa-
tions well-known to runaway slaves as
places where they would be welcomed and
receive aid in their quest for freedom,
because by that year the Underground Rail-
road was operating in the area.
No single issue concerning slavery
divided the Society of Friends more than the
question of members' involvement in the
Underground Railroad, which was a series
of routes for runaway slaves to follow
on their journey to Canada and eventual free-
dom. Few organizations kindled the fire
of resentment among southern slave-
holders as did the Underground Railroad.
Southerners said the system was rob-
bing them of their rightful property as
well as millions of dollars which had been
invested in Negro slaves. Though Quakers
never officially sponsored the Under-
ground Railroad, many individual Friends
played very important roles in the sys-
tem. Active participation distressed
many Quakers, not only because it was a viola-
tion of the Fugitive Slave Law (after
1850), but because it necessitated lying when
questioned by the authorities--and
Quakers traditionally prided themselves on
maintaining a reputation for strict
honesty. Quakers often would deny there were
slaves on their property because they
did not recognize that any person could be a
slave.
Ohio was one of the leading states in
the Underground Railroad since it bordered
slave states and was close to Canada.
Levi Coffin, a Cincinnati Quaker, was called
the "president of the Underground
Railroad." He had been raised among Quakers
in New Garden, North Carolina, where
even as a youth he helped slaves escape
along the Underground Railroad.
According to his own estimates, Coffin helped
more than three thousand slaves escape
to freedom during his twenty years of activ-
ity in the system.
In the Mount Pleasant area, the Hanes
Mill on the Colerain Pike, built by Borden
Stanton in 1801, was one of many
"stations." According to tradition, there was a
tunnel under the mill through which many
slaves passed to freedom. Among resi-
dences in Mount Pleasant which were
known to have hiding places for runaway
slaves was Quaker Hill. Members of other religious groups also participated ac- tively in the Mount Pleasant Underground Railroad strategy--the Reverend Ben- jamin Mitchell, Presbyterian minister, operated a noted station, and the Seceders, led by the Reverend John Walker, were prominent in aiding slaves to gain liberty and in working for abolition. Mount Pleasant was the center for other antislavery activities also, a strategic lo- cation from which to influence Quaker opinion. One Mount Pleasant Friend, Charles Osborn, in 1817 began publishing The Philanthropist, the first American newspaper to advocate the abolition of slavery. Osborn, a native of North Caro- lina, opposed all colonization schemes because he claimed they were designed for the perpetuation of slavery in the South and for ridding the northern states of freed- men. In 1818 he sold the weekly paper to Elisha Bates, who published it until 1822. One of the Ohio "agents" for, and contributors to, the paper was Benjamin Lundy, a New Jersey Quaker who migrated to Ohio in 1807. He formed the first Ohio antislavery organization, the Union Humane Society, at St. Clairsville in 1816. In 1821 Lundy moved to Mount Pleasant to begin publishing his own Genius of Universal Emancipation, a monthly wholly devoted to the cause of abolition. Be- cause his publication secured widespread circulation quickly, Lundy became the first really effective force in the antislavery movement in the United States. Unable to find a printer near Mount Pleasant willing to publish the paper, he walked with the manuscript twenty miles to Steubenville, where it was published on the press of James Wilson, grandfather of Woodrow Wilson. While Lundy waited for the paper to be printed, he worked a few days for a saddle maker (he was a saddle and harness maker by trade) to earn money. In Steubenville he stayed with Benjamin Stanton, a Quaker and uncle of Edwin M. Stanton. Then Lundy carried the papers back to Mount Pleasant, where he sent them out with the postal mark of that town. Eight monthly issues were published in Ohio before Lundy moved his publishing venture to Tennessee in 1822. |
Ohio Quakers 247
Unlike Osborn, Benjamin Lundy supported
the aims of the American Coloniza-
tion Society which was organized in 1816
due to the inspiration of a Massachusetts
Friend, Paul Cuffe, a black. This
society hoped to send many free Negroes to Af-
rica as a means of resolving the racial
and slavery problems. Some Quakers op-
posed the society for fear that it would
diminish the desire of slaves to seek freedom,
while other Quakers supported the
society because it might induce slaveholders,
who were to be compensated for freeing
their slaves, to give up their property. One
of Lundy's most important contributions
to the movement was the recruitment of
the man who became known as the leading
abolitionist in pre-Civil War days, Wil-
liam Lloyd Garrison, who later published
the noted Liberator in Boston.
One of the more unusual antislavery
activities in Mount Pleasant was the estab-
lishment of a free labor store where
nothing raised or made by slave labor was
bought or sold. Similar stores were
organized in several other states, beginning in
1826. When prominent Mount Pleasant
residents decided that one way to strike a
blow against slavery was to boycott all
goods produced by slave labor, they organ-
ized the Mount Pleasant Free Produce
Company of Ohio in 1848. At a meeting in
George K. Jenkins' schoolhouse, it was
decided to sell 250 shares of stock at $10 a
share to raise capital to purchase goods
to be sold, rent space for the store, pay a
manager, and provide for the store's
initial operation. The stockholders--who in-
cluded a few non-Friends--elected a
five-man board of managers to conduct the
everyday business of the company--George
K. Jenkins, John W. Watkins, Ezra
Cattell, William C. Williams, and
Jonathan Binns. The managers in turn elected
Jenkins their president and Binns,
secretary.
The sixty-seven original stockholders
approved articles of association in which
they stated that the Free Produce
Company was established "for the sale of goods,
wares and merchandise in general which
shall be exclusively the product of free la-
bor." In the event that the company
was not a success, or if the stockholders wished
to dissolve it, provision was made that
after three years of existence the company
could be dissolved by a majority vote of
the stockholders. Stocks could be trans-
ferred to others with the approval of
the board of managers.
The board negotiated with Joseph
Williams to take charge of the store and sev-
eral rooms in Williams' establishment
were rented for the free labor store. The
board of managers bought its goods in
Philadelphia from a Quaker merchant. A
committee fixed the retail price on the
goods, audited the books, took inventory, and
attempted to sell new shares of stock.
By the end of 1848 the Free Produce Com-
pany showed assets totaling nearly
$3,000; by 1850, the net worth was $3,281.
No additional stock was sold after 1850.
In 1853 the stockholders voted themselves
a four percent dividend, though the
company was not really a profit-making organi-
zation. The Free Produce Company
apparently did a fairly good business for the
first few years of its existence,
selling a variety of merchandise ranging from grocer-
ies to dry goods--but not tobacco.
Because of the Quaker aversion to use of to-
bacco, no smoking or chewing tobacco,
snuff, or cigars were sold.
In the next few years the position of
storekeeper changed hands several times and
various attempts were made through
advertising to gain greater sales.
Nevertheless, the stockholders of the
Free Produce Company became disgruntled
and grew fearful that they might lose
the money they had originally invested. In
the early part of 1857 at a special
meeting of the stockholders, a vote of 160 to 22
called for the dissolution of the
company by the spring of that year. Stockholders
were encouraged to buy goods from the
store rather than to ask for cash when they
sold their shares of stock. The
remainder of the merchandise was sold at public
auction and the proceeds were divided among the stockholders in proportion to the amount of stock held by each. The closing of the Free Produce Company after nine years was not caused by any lessening of antislavery sentiment in Mount Pleasant. In fact, the antislavery atti- tude was more pronounced in the immediate pre-Civil War years, as witnessed by the increased activity of the Underground Railroad in the region. Rather, the cause for the dissolution seemed to be a fear of economic loss on the part of individual stockholders. Possibly also contributing was the Friends' slowly growing con- viction, especially after 1845, that political action was going to be the only solution to the slavery issue. Prior to the Civil War Friends participated in antislavery organizations which in- cluded members of many religious denominations. The continuing prominence of Mount Pleasant as an antislavery center was attested when the 1837 convention of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, the first major abolition meeting in Ohio, was held at Mount Pleasant. At the close of the Civil War, work among the freedmen became the main social concern of the Society of Friends. Now Quakers could cooperate with the government, rather than confront it, to assist the Negro. Quaker groups all over the United States helped form relief agencies to aid the Negroes with food, clothing, shelter, and education. Levi Coffin, for one, helped organize the Western Freedmen's Aid Commission which sent aid to freedmen in Mississippi and Ar- kansas. This practical relief work was yet another expression of the compassion for people in need which Friends have shown through the years. Quakers and Temperance Beginning in colonial times, as Friends gave themselves increasingly to maintain- ing themselves as "a peculiar people," they became interested in another social con- cern--temperance. As one early writer pointed out, they began intensively "to la- bour for a Reformation in Respect to the Distilling and Use of Spirituous Liquors |
amongst Friends and the Polluting Practice of keeping Taverns, Beerhouses, etc." Apparently these efforts were rewarded with some success for they began to report "a number of Friends having Used Spirituous Liquors very Sparingly in the time of our late Harvest and others have with great satisfaction used none at all." As Friends moved westward, their influence in the temperance cause was felt. It is of some significance that all of the temperance legislation in Indiana prior to the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment was championed by Friends. Further- more, Quaker women rallied to the support of the crusade. For a number of years the presidents of the Ohio Woman's Christian Temperance Union were Friends. Mount Pleasant reflected this concern for temperance. In 1837 the village had a society favoring total abstinence and in 1840 a temperance society was organized, which included many non-Friends as members. When John Hogg, one of the town's wealthiest merchants, began to stock liquor along with his other merchan- dise, it stirred considerable protest. His refusal to listen to the pleas of the temper- ance people led in 1851 to a concerted campaign by the Quakers and other religious denominations to discourage this business. Twelve men and twelve women, on horseback, visited every home in the township with petitions to be signed requesting that Hogg stop selling whiskey. All but two men signed, and Hogg quit selling the intoxicating beverage. Near the end of the nineteenth century, when a saloon- keeper attempted to set up business in Mount Pleasant, a substantial fund of money was collected to campaign against his saloon. A picket line of members of several denominations was organized in shifts from 6 A.M. to 10 P.M. to take the names of any patrons of the establishment. After three days and only one customer, the sa- loonkeeper recognized "the handwriting on the wall" and quietly capitulated and left.
Quakers as Peacemakers Finally, the Society of Friends is well known for its concern for peace. Quakers |
250 OHIO
HISTORY
have been thought of traditionally as
pacifists and nonresisters to violence and war,
although this is not an entirely
accurate picture. As Rufus Jones put it, "They seek
always to organize and to level against
it [any great evil] the most effective forces
there are." Nevertheless, from the
very inception of the Society, Friends have at-
tempted to avoid war by doing away with
the causes and the occasion for war.
Quakers have often attempted to be the
peacemakers by leading exemplary lives as
well as by developing conditions which
would make violence unnecessary.
George Fox's original testimony that war
is intrinsically wrong, that it is not a
necessary evil with which one has to
live, and that no effort required in working for
its abolition is too great, came at a
time when most people thought of war as noble
or at least inevitable. This Quaker
testimony was, and still is, difficult for many
people to accept. As a result, Quakers
have often suffered for their convictions.
George Fox's own simple style of
dress--his leather trousers, umbrella, and long
hair--was his way of protesting against
the militarism of Oliver Cromwell's day.
William Penn's establishment of the
"Holy Experiment" in Pennsylvania is con-
sidered to be the most important early
event in developing an attitude of peace
among Americans. Pennsylvania became a
model for liberalism, truth, justice,
honor, and peace in the American
colonies. Because of their beliefs in honesty,
peace, and the equality of men, the
Quakers of Pennsylvania--and one could sup-
pose that the same would be true of most
Quakers everywhere--developed a better
relationship with the American Indians
than any other English group. The Quak-
ers treated the Indians with respect,
traded with them honestly, and respected their
treaties. It has been reported that
there were never any known organized Indian at-
tacks on Quaker settlements in
Pennsylvania.
The American Revolutionary War, proved
to be an extremely difficult period for
the Quakers for, on the one hand, many
of them rejoiced in the possibility of free-
dom from England but, on the other hand,
they abhorred the violence which was
bringing it about. Some Quakers who
joined the Revolutionary Army formed their
own society and were called Free
Quakers.
The attitude of the Ohio Yearly Meeting
toward war was clearly expressed in its
original Book of Discipline of 1819
which reads:
... it is the earnest concern of the
Yearly Meeting, that Friends may adhere faithfully to our
ancient testimony against wars and
fighting.
That furnishing waggon, or other means
for conveying of military stores, is a military serv-
ice ... and that a tax levied for the
purchasing of drums, colours, or for other warlike uses
cannot be paid consistently with our
Christian testimony.
It is further the sense and judgement of
the Yearly Meeting, that it is inconsistent with our
religious testimony and principle, for any
Friend to pay a fine or tax, levied on account of
their refusal to muster or to serve in
the militia, although such fine or imposition may be ap-
plied toward defraying the expenses of
civil government....
The greatest, and possibly most
difficult, time of violence for Friends came during
the American Civil War. Many Friends had
difficulty deciding whether to stand by
their peace convictions or to approve a
war in which they thought one belligerent
was definitely on the side of justice.
This problem was especially acute for Friends
who lived in the South. Many southern
Friends left their homes to move westward
during the Civil War. Those who remained
in the South as conscientious objectors
were called abolitionists and traitors
and were subjected to extreme harassment.
However, Friends in the Confederacy were
not the only ones to suffer. Northern
Friends faced an equally difficult
situation, even though some northern Quakers did
Ohio Quakers 251
volunteer for service. In all, about two
hundred to three hundred Quakers enlisted
in the Union forces. Most of these came
from Indiana where Colonel John Palmer,
a Hicksite Friend, led a regiment which
had many Quaker officers and men.
The spirit of patriotism swept through
Mount Pleasant when President Lincoln
called for 75,000 volunteers in 1861.
Approximately 160 young men from Mount
Pleasant Township, none of them Quakers,
joined the Union Army. Several of
them were enrolled in the First Virginia
Regiment which was commanded by a
Colonel Thoburn, who was the son-in-law
of Mount Pleasant resident Dr. Benjamin
Mitchell, a Presbyterian minister.
Duncan Milner, a Presbyterian from Mount
Pleasant, fought in the Civil War and
nearly died as a result of wounds received in
the battle of Chickamauga. He was asked
by Mrs. Sarah E. Jenkins, a noted
Quaker minister, how he, being a
Christian young man, could have attempted to
take the life of fellow men. Milner
responded that it was not an easy question dur-
ing war. "I suppose under the same
conditions I would again become a soldier, but
I hate war."
Even though a few Quakers did fight
during the Civil War, the vast majority re-
fused to violate their peace testimony
and thereby suffered the consequences.
Northern Friends who refused to enroll
in the army after being drafted or to pay the
muster fines for such refusal often had
their property confiscated as payment for the
delinquent fines. Minutes of the
meetings for sufferings revealed that property con-
fiscated from dissenting Friends was
much more valuable than the amount of the
fines imposed. In 1862, a Barnesville,
Ohio, meeting for sufferings addressed a let-
ter to Governor David Tod protesting a
gubernatorial directive requiring all men
eligible for military service to enroll
for the draft, but no change resulted.
That same year Ohio Yearly Meeting sent
the following letter to President
Lincoln:
The Ohio Yearly Meeting of Friends
convened at Mt. Pleasant Jefferson County Ohio 9th
month 1862 respectfully
represents.--That owing to the present unhappy condition of our
country and the enrollment of names in
order to draft therefrom some thousands to be
placed in the Army--Many of our members
who are now sharing in common with other
good citizens the trials of the times
are subject to the still greater trial of having for con-
science sake to decline in this
particular to obey the authorities of a government under which
we enjoy many privileges and blessings
and to which we hope ever to be found loyal.
We would briefly call the attention of
the President to the fact with which he is no doubt
acquainted that our Society has from its
rise (a period of more than two hundred years)
borne a testimony against all wars and
fightings believing them to be at variance with the
pure and peaceable dispensation of the
Gospel of Christ--and have constantly under all
governments felt constrained to refuse
to bear arms or pay an equivalent in lieu thereof--
Also to the legislation of various
States of this Union in which our members are exempt from
military services-And therefore
respectfully submit whether there cannot be something
done by the authorities of the general
government for the relief of all members of our
Society not already exemted [sic] by
state enactments.--In conclusion we would express our
deep sympathy with the President in the
various difficulties which press upon him in this day
of sore calamity.
In December 1863 Ohio Yearly Meeting
rejected a proposal by Secretary of War
Edwin Stanton, a resident of
Steubenville in Jefferson County whose grandmother
had been a minister among Friends in
Ohio. He suggested that Quakers purchase
exemption from military service by
payment of $300 into a special fund for Negro
refugees, but the Quakers declined,
"inasmuch as it would be the payment of a sum
of money in lieu of military service
which we cannot conscientiously comply with."
252 OHIO
HISTORY
Friends established committees to give
advice and render aid to individuals drafted
or persecuted for their beliefs
concerning the war. Eventually, Secretary Stanton is-
sued orders for the release of many
Friends who had been drafted into service.
The attitude of the Society of Friends
regarding the issues of war and violence has
changed little over the years. By their
example Quakers hope to become peace-
makers. As Rufus Jones said:
The world will at least be better off if
there is a Christian group ... resolved to live for these
hopes [peace], for this way of life, to
bear their clear testimony for peace and love at any cost
and at any price, and ready, if the last
supreme sacrifice is demanded, to die for that faith
and for that vision.
And D. Elton Trueblood has written:
The Quaker dedication to peace, when
rightly understood, is something which is cherished
not for the sake of a doctrine and not
even for the sake of Quakers. It is cherished for the
sake of the world. The only
purpose is to aid, as imaginatively and as bravely as possible, in
taking away the "occasion of all
wars."
Conclusion
The Mount Pleasant Meeting House, for
many years the home of the Ohio Yearly
Meeting, was the first yearly meeting
house west of the Allegheny Mountains, which
gave it its claim to being "the
mother meeting house of all Quakers west of the Al-
leghenies." Often referred to as
the "Gateway to the New West," Mount Pleasant
and the surrounding region served as a
base from which all Quakerdom west of
Ohio spread. It can be assumed that the
Friends moving westward from here made
similar contributions to the development
of a peaceful and orderly society, the pro-
motion of education, and the advancement
of the economic well-being of people
generally as did those Quakers who
settled in Ohio. Today, the stately meeting
house stands as testimony to the dynamic
spirit which emanated from this small, but
influential, community during several
decades of the nineteenth century.
Ohio Quakers
253
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254 OHIO
HISTORY
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Ohio Quakers 255
GLOSSARY
(Definitions are phrased in the past
tense because they are applicable primarily to the early
nineteenth century, though some are
current today in various Friends meetings.)
MEETING FOR WORSHIP--Held on First-Day
and at midweek, usually Fifth-Day. Begun in
silence, with each person entering
"into the inmost sanctuary of his own heart, ... to be
alone with God ... that His voice may be
clearly heard within"; those persons "moved
by the Spirit" might be prompted to
offer vocal prayer, preaching, testimony, or
prophecy.
MEETINGS FOR BUSINESS-Clerk presided and
laid before the meeting each item to be con-
sidered; each member could give his
views; the clerk gathered the sense of the meeting
and announced the decision, which was
not recorded unless there was unity or a willing-
ness of dissenters to defer to the rest
of the meeting. Types of meetings for business
were the following:
Preparative or particular meeting. With the consent of the nearest monthly and
quarterly meetings, a preparative
meeting could be established wherever there were sev-
eral Friends who wished to unite for
worship. They sent delegates to the nearest
monthly meeting. Following one midweek
meeting for worship each month, a prepara-
tive meeting was held where business
matters were prepared for reference to the
monthly meeting.
Monthly meeting. The basic administrative unit and policy-making body of
each
Quaker district. It made decisions with
regard to business affairs as well as non-busi-
ness matters such as solemnizing wedding
vows. Elders and overseers were the congre-
gational leaders. A person became a
member of the Society of Friends through the
monthly meeting, and membership in
quarterly and yearly meetings automatically fol-
lowed. These meetings were held once a
month following a midweek service.
Quarterly meeting. An area organization of two or more monthly meetings
located
close enough to make it convenient for
delegates and others to attend business sessions
every three months. Quarterly meetings
often alternated among the monthly meetings
within the supervision of the quarterly
meeting district. Quarterly meeting was usually
held on Sixth-Day and Seventh-Day.
Yearly meeting. Regional organization of several quarterly meetings,
frequently
including all quarterly meetings located
within a state. Also, the actual gathering held
annually for several days. The major
legislative and administrative body, yearly meet-
ing was the authoritative interpreter of
the discipline and the final court of appeal. De-
cisions of the yearly meeting were
binding on all meetings within its jurisdiction. Each
yearly meeting was independent of all
other yearly meetings.
Meeting for sufferings. Acted for yearly meeting when it was not in session;
heard
accounts of suffering and extended
assistance to members under suffering for their be-
liefs and to those in need.
MINISTERS-Ministers were those who felt
the call to preach and were recognized (or "re-
corded") as possessing a spiritual
gift by the meeting to which they belonged. Recorded
ministers had the same rights as
ordained ministers in other denominations. After the
Civil War, considerable variation
developed in regard to pastoral functions but min-
isters are still "recorded,"
not ordained.
BOOK OF DISCIPLINE--Each yearly meeting
prepared and adopted its own book of dis-
cipline for the regulation of its
meetings and members. A yearly meeting could change
its discipline at any given year. Ohio
Yearly Meeting adopted its first discipline in 1819.
CONCERN--A matter about which one felt
so deeply that he was moved, sometimes almost
against his will, to do something about
the issue.
DESIGNATIONS OF TIME--Days of the week
and months were designated numerically, as
First-Day for Sunday and First Month for
January.
JAMES L. BURKE
DONALD E. BENSCH
Mount Pleasant and
The Early Quakers of Ohio
In the charming old village of Mount
Pleasant, Jefferson County, Ohio, stands a
monument to one of America's small but
influential denominations, the Society of
Friends, or Quakers. People of other
religious affiliations settled in Mount Pleasant
too, but the early history of the Mount
Pleasant area was strongly influenced by
those Friends who were among its first
settlers. Their monument is the large brick
meeting house, erected in 1814 for the
Ohio Yearly Meeting of Friends, which is
owned today by the state of Ohio and
administered by The Ohio Historical Society.
For a better understanding of the events
leading to the construction of the Mount
Pleasant Meeting House, as well as the
contributions of the Society of Friends to the
development of Ohio, we must begin our
story considerably before 1814.
Quaker Origins
Though there were Quakers in America as
early as the 1650's, the origin of the
Society of Friends was in England where
George Fox (1624-1691), its founder,
chafed under a government and a society
where deviation from accustomed reli-
gious practices brought persecution to
dissenters. As a young man, Fox believed
that he had received a divine call to
witness to the Lord and especially to preach to
men the renunciation of worldly
pleasures so that they might more clearly see God's
way. Fox said:
When I came to eleven years of age, I
knew pureness and righteousness; for while I was a
child I was taught how to walk so as to
be kept pure. The Lord taught me to be faithful in
all things, and . .. that my words
should be few and savory, seasoned with grace; and that I
might not eat and drink to make myself
wanton, but for health, using the creatures in their
service, as servants in their places, to
the glory of him that hath created them....
None of the established religious groups
seemed to give Fox the inner peace
which he was seeking. He talked to
ministers and priests but found none who could
help in his search. Eventually, with
divine guidance, Fox discovered that "being
bred at Oxford or Cambridge was not
enough to fit and 'qualify men to be ministers
of Christ'; and I wondered at it,
because it was the common belief of people." It
was shortly after this realization that
Fox began to preach that "Christ speaks
Dr. Burke is associate professor of
history and former chairman of the department of history at Capital
University, and Mr. Bensch is professor
of history and current chairman of the department of history at
Capital. This article was edited by
Marilyn G. Hood, editor of special publications at The Ohio Histori-
cal Society.