F129 .Q12 Vl^6 ^ »> 4 o ^ YP ^-^-^(||i QUAKER HILL N THE NINETEENTH CENTURY SECOND EDITION BY Rev. warren H. WILSON READ AT THE FOURTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE QUAKER HILL CONFERENCE, SEPTEMBER THE SIXTH. NINETEEN HUNDRED AND TWO Published by the Quaker Hill Conference Association Quaker Hill, New York 1907 Publications Of the Quaker Hii,l Conference Association A Critical Study of the Bible, by the Rev. Newton M. Hall of Spring^eld, Mass. The Relation of the Church at Home to the Church Abroad, by Rev. George William Knox, D. D., of New York. A Tenable Theory of Biblical Inspiration, by Prof. Irving Francis Wood. Ph. D., of Northampton, Mass. The Book Farntjer. by Edward H. Jenkins, Ph. D.. of New Haven. Conn. LOCAL HISTORY SERIES David Irish — A Memoir, by his daughter, Mrs. Phoebe T. Wanzer of Quaker Hill, N. Y Quaker Hill in the Eighteenth Century, by Rev. Warren H. Wilson of Brooklyn, N. Y. (Second Edition). Quaker Hill in the Nineteenth Century, by Rev. Warren H. Wilson of Brooklyn, N. Y. (Second Edition). Hiram B. Jones and His School, by Rev. Edward L. Chichester of Hartsdale, N. Y. Richard Osborn — A Reminiscence, bv Margaret B. Mon- ahan of Quaker Hill, N. Y. (Second Edition). Albert J, Akin — A Tribute by Rev. Warren H.Wilson of Brooklyn, N. Y. Ancient Homes and Early Days at Quaker Hill, by Amanda Akin Stearns of Quaker Hill. N. Y. Thomas Taber and Edward Shove —A Reminiscence, by Rev. Benjamin Shove of New York. Some Glimpses of the Past, by Alicia Hopkins Taber of Pawling, N. Y. The Purchase Meeting, by James Wood of Mt. (Cisco. N.Y. In Loving Remembrance of Ann Hayes, by Mrs. Warren H. Wilson of Brooklyn. N. Y. V/ashington's Headquarters at Fredericksburgh, by Lewis S. Patrick of Marinette, Wis Historical Landmarks in the Town of Sherman, by Ruth Rogers of Sherman, Conn. Any one of these publications may be had by addressing the Secretary, Rev. BERTRAM A. Warren, Quaker Hill. N.Y. Price Ten Cents. Twelve Cents Postpaid Gift Publishoi- QUAKER HILL IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. The world changed in passing from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, and Quaker Hill changed with the world. It could not remain apart and it did not stand still. From a religious center the Hill became a focus of business. In the eighteenth the saint and the soldier, in the nineteenth the saint and the capitalist give color to the story. Instead of the united meeting of the earlier years there is now to be considered a divided Society of Friends. The leaven of modern thought was at work, inducing some to make bold and daring ventures in philosophy and religion ; the practical spirit had come into the quiet devotions of the saints, leading others to desire to be like the vigorous, successful Christians of other sects. Every influence tended to rob the Hill of its peculiar relig- ious character, and to take the Quakers farther away from George Fox. Divided and separated by these two forces, the rationalist and the pietistic, the worship- pers in this house were perplexed and fear- ful what these world- forces might mean, and at last in a time of contagious panic forgot the principles for which they thought they were contending and did many things unworthy of their grave and gentle character. RESUME OF EVENTS OF CENTURY, The events of the nineteenth century on Quaker Hill, which are worthy of mention are : first, the business growth and character of the Hill, taken on in the earlier years of the nineteenth century as pronouncedly as the Quaker worship in the earlier years of the eighteenth. The business development of the Hill is a necessary outgrowth of its being a Quaker community. As surely as Irish Catholicism produces politicians, and the Church of England statesmen, so surely does a Quaker community come in time to produce acute business men. I regard Albro Akin therefore, as a product of the human forces that work in Quakerism, as true and appropriate as David Irish or Paul Osborn. The second event is the division of the meeting into Orthodox and Hicksite Societies of Friends. As a business de- velopment must be the terminus a quo, the separation shall be the terminus ad quern of this paper. I find myself unable to deal with the whole century, and am sure there has happened in the one hundred years nothing more interesting or more valuable to the historical student than the great sepa- ration of the friends in 1828. Third, the Hiram Jones Academy, from 1828 onward, of which we hear to-day, from Mr. Chichester. Fourth, the relation of the Hill to Slavery; the testimony of the preachers against it, and the operation of the "Under- ground Railway" in the homes of the Friends here and in the meeting. There are those living who have seen fugitive slaves hiding in this meeting-house. Fourth, the new relation of Quakerism to war, as developed in the War of the Seces- sion. Then the Quakers were no Tories, as in 1778 they were; and the story of that time is necessary to complete the story of the doctrine of peace on the Hill. Fourth, the coming of the railway in the valley below wrought great business changes in the place, removed the stores to the village, and sapped the neighborhood of some of its most energetic blood. It en- riched some and impoverished others. Yet through it all the Quaker Hill character remained the same. Fifth, the coming of the Hotel guest and Summer boarder, the founding of Mizzen- top and the development of that delightful and unique institution, the Quaker Hill boarding house; which is not a boarding house at all, but a hospitable Quaker home. Sixth, the founding and development of Akin Hall, the ministry of Mr. Ryder, be- loved and lamented, the beginnings of the library ; the regime of occasional preachers ; the growth of the Sunday-school, Endeavor, Church, Conference; the building of the Manse and the Library; all the benevolent designs into which God has led a rich man of sound heart, who is a true son, in his character and deed, of the nineteenth cen- tury on Quaker Hill. All these should be written, and recorded by this Conference. I have only strength and you have only time to-day for the first two, the business prosperity and the relig- ious separation of the first thirty years. INDUSTRIES AND STORES. The first thirty years of the nineteenth century were a period of great material prosperity. Farming occupied the atten- tion of the most, who devoted their ener- gies to fatting cattle, transforming corn into pork, and grass into cheese. The population of the preceding half-century, about equal to that at the present time in winter, was somewhat increased by those engaged in the making of hats. John Toifey, who married Abigail Akin, probably the first hatmaker, as he was the first Tofifey, had, in 1750 or later, planted his name and his trade in the corner so long known as Tofifey's Corners ; where his name remained for one hundred and fifty years, though his trade not more than fifty. Joseph Seeley made hats of all kinds, especially fine beaver and silk hats, on Seeley Hill, about a mile north of Stephen Osbom's. One industry which has gone away from the Hill, like the trade of making hats, is the raising and preparation of hemp. Men now living remember well the planting and harvesting of the hemp, and the laborious preparation of the stalks for market. The chapters in James Lane Allen's "Reign of Law" which describe this process might be written about fields on Quaker Hill. Three stores flourished in the early years of the nineteenth century on the Hill. At the Craft place the oldest and the last to be closed, owned by John Merritt, and later, 1832-1869 by James Craft, was the store plundered by Tories in the Revolution. At Tofifey's Corners, was the store of John Toflfey, second, father of Mrs. Anne Hayes. 6 At the Branch place was the store of Dan- iel Akin, later Judge Akin, father of Mrs. Gould and Mrs. Bancroft. SCHOOL HOUSES. The school-house then stood on the crest of the hill, where the Mizzen-top Cottage called the ''James Cottage," stands now. Thither Olive Toffey, whom this genera- tion know as Mrs. Admiral Worden, car- ried her primer to school, attended across the fields by the quaint figure of Timothy Akin, her aged bachelor uncle and devoted cavalier. Every evening the small maiden would look eastward across the fields toward her home where he was used to await her. Where, if you look now from the same spot, you will see a white stone in the field ; and where the house was, only a crumbling pile. Within the old school-house ruled Jonah Baldwin for many years, a master suitable for primitive conditions; who would doze through the droning hours of his classes while they recited well, but infallibly awake at the sound of a wrong word, or an incor- rect recitation. To him succeeded Betsey Osborn, of whom only the doughty name remains. The school-house was later removed to a location near Christian Haessler's house; and later still to the present site, about 1850, where, in 1893, the present building was erected in the Trusteeship of William B. Wheeler. Quaker Hill's educational history is not outlined without mention of the Jones Academy, of which Mr. Chichester writes fully to-day. That institution was founded about 1828, in the period following that treated in this paper. A school is maintained by the Friends on the grounds of the original Meeting- House, opposite the present site, from earliest days until after the Separation in 1828. It was a day-school, and there Rich- ard Osborn, Olive Toffey Worden, Jede- diah Irish and Daniel Toffey, the Merritts and Akins, with others of the older Friends, learned their elementary lessons. POPULATION. In the changes which have come over many places east and west, this is one com- munity which, so far as there is record of the past, seems to have had about the same population throughout the last century and a half. The settlement of the Hill may be considered as completed by 1760. In the two maps of this neighborhood, made for George Washington in 1778-80, the number of houses is about the same as at present. There are some that have disappeared from sites now grown over with tangled mint, and catnip, and currant bushes, but to fill their places in the census of the Hill there are others of modern construction on new sites ; while the Hotel brings a Summer population that makes the Hill for two months more populous than in the past. The only increase of population I am able to note in the course of years is that due to the hatmaking industry, first carried on by the original John Tofifey on the recent Anne Hayes premises ; and later by Joseph Seeley, in the early twenties, on Seeley 8 Hill, a mile and a half to the north of the Meeting-house. RESIDENTS, 1800-1830. In calling the names of the worthies of the eighteenth century, one misses many once prominent. Staunch and practical William Russell, the pioneer in deeds (as others in residence and in faith), builder of two meeting-houses, friend of Wash- ington's officers, had lived, I believe on the present Richard T. Osborn place; but his name had disappeared in the marriage of female descendants into other families. I believe that William H. Taber's great-great grandfather was his son Elihu. Also that the Peckhams, name now also disappeared, were his grandchildren. The Merrits were a great name in the early nineteenth century. Three brothers, John, David and Daniel, lived on the present Craft, Swan and Post places re- spectively; and John kept the historic store on the corner. Paul Osborn and his wife, Jemima Titus, parents of William and Richard, lived in the Osborn Homestead, now Stephen Osborn's house. Unless I mistake, this house has maintained longer than any other its character as the residence of solid, judicious Quakerism, and of leadership among the Friends. Park Haviland was living in an old house on Miss Monahan's place ; with its great chimney and its long roof sloping to the north. At Mrs. Scott's place lived Davis Marsh blacksmith, and plied his trade, making all kinds of farming tools and guns also; a straightforward and honest man. He had a trip-hammer whose stroke could be heard a mile away. On the higher road eastward lived Akin Toffey, at the Bancroft Branch farm, and his wife, Anne Akin ; and across the road in the old house now fallen into a crumbling heap, lived Daniel Toffey, father of Mar- garet Craft and Mrs. Olive Worden. With them lived Timothy Akin, son of James, whose white stone, recording almost one hundred years, you may see in the burying ground east of Akin Hall. He was a quaint old bachelor, the oldest person who recalls him remembers him as having always been an old man; a bachelor and very faithful in attendance at the meeting, but with a heart that loved children and animals so well that it must have had its story, if white marble could only tell it. The old house, now a tenant-house of Mr. Lyon's place, was then a tenant-house of the Merrit family. Of the school-house I speak elsewhere. Coming then southward, the Sherman place is next in importance, now the tenant-house on Albert Akin's farm. There lived the wagon-maker of the place, Hiram Sherman, whose father was a wagon-maker there be- fore him, and in the day before railways and before great factories the wagon- builder was a great man. Father and son were honest men and good workmen; they put no timber into a wagon till it had been seasoned two years. Sherman made for years the coffins for burial of all who died in the town. Funeral fee seven dollars. 10 On the place east of Miss Monahan's, so long known as the Garrett Ferris place, lived Jephtha Sabin, his residence a terminus of the turnpike from Pough- keepsie. Southward again, came the two Akin resi- dences, now the houses of the Misses Akin and of the Branch family. In the former, which was the Akin homestead, lived Albro Akin, father of Albert J. and William H. and their sisters ; a man of great vitality and energy. Prominent in the financial af- fairs of the community as farmer, store- keeper and financier, for a time County Judge, Albro Akin was always a leader. Op- posite him lived Daniel Akin, father of Mrs. Gould and Mrs. Bancroft, who for a time conducted a store on that site, and later became a prominent politician. He was a man of agreeable manners, wisdom and force. For many years he was elected County Judge, succeeding Albro Akin. He was probably the most prominent man of that generation in civic and state afifairs, resident on the Hill. I have spoken of the store of John Tofifey, on the old ToflFey Corners. Below the Hill lived Gideon Kirby, in the old Reed- Ferris house, now the Dodge and Arnold house, whose sons built the present spa- cious residence there. He was uncle of Miss Fannie Kirby. East of Toflfey Corners, which is now the Mizzen-top Hotel, lived, on the top of the Hill, — for the present Kirby place was built later, — Charles Wing, brother of Daniel, David, Elihu and son of Abraham. The Wakemans, Seth, — there always was 11 a Seth Wakeman, — Gideon, Denman, lived on the place recently vacated by them on top of the Hill. At the residence of Martin Leach lived Peter Akin and his son Isaac. The Irish place has been the Irish place, I believe, from the beginning until now. There at the time of the division, lived David Irish, with his father, Amos. He was ordained a minister of the Hicksite division of the meeting, after the separa- tion, in 1831. At Wing's Corners, on top of the Hill to the southward lived Abraham Wing and his sons, David, Daniel and Elihu. The Mattie Wing place was built for Daniel later; and with him lived his brother Elihu. Peter Adams was the Grandfather of George Henry Adams, and lived where now lives his grandson. On Burch Hill as one mounts the north- ward slope was the blacksmith shop of Joel Winter Church and Jesse Lane was prob- ably his apprentice. At this shop was the charger of Washington shod fifty years be- fore the separation of the meeting on the Hill. At the Adams place, where now lives Fred Osborne, was the residence of Benja- min Jones, father of the brothers, Hiram and Cyrenus, whose famous school was opened at Wings Corners the very year the Meeting was separated. At the John Hoyt place lived Isaac Squires, cabinet-maker, who contributed a bedstead to every farmhouse of his genera- tion. 12 At the Charles Jennings place in Sheman Isaac IngersoU and his son Akin Ingersoll, a farmer and currier, while opposite lived Edward Brotherton, a carpenter, — but no common carpenter : For he was the first man hereabouts to abandon the old method of erecting buildings by what was called "cut and try." Edward Brotherton believed that a build- ing could be cut out and all the timbers shaped by measure and square before they were put together. He erected a barn on this plan which was famous. Farmers came for miles to see ; came incredulous and critical, and went away convinced. Who shall say that a man so bold in the realm of mechanics was not moved by the same spirit of the times as the Quaker theologians who anticipated Moody in his orthodoxy ; or those bolder thinkers, who dared to be called heterodox for the sake of specula- tions about God that to-day shape the think- ing, as orthodoxy determines the feeling and ethics, of the evangelical churches. Northward from the Meeting-house, one comes first to the Osborn homestead. The Hoags erected their house opposite in 1860. The family came on the Hill about 1843. William D. Hoag father of Ira, buying the lands owned by Merritts for 140 years. Back of the present site of the Ira Hoag place, approached by a lane, now no more than a field-track, was the Merritt home- stead, where lived earlier Nehemiah Merritt, th^- father of John and David and Daniel. I have spoken of the Joseph Seeley hat- factory and residence, which were a half- mile north of Stephen Osborn's. The house 13 has been removed and rebuilt as the present residence of Richard T. Osborn. The form- er house on Richard Osborn's place was a brick structure, in which it is believed that the Marquis de Lafayette was entertained. In the house on the present Cass place lived Edward Howard; at the opposite side of the road lived Anthony Aldrich the grandfather, and Seth the father, of Arnold and Eli Aldrich and their brothers. The oldest place I believe on the north Quaker Hill district is that occupied by William H. Taber, and owned by him and his ancestors since the time of the earliest grants by royal patent. It is credibly nar- rated that officers of Washington's army were quartered in this house, and the gleam- ing bayonet of the pacing sentry was seen in the starlight all night through, in the Fall of 1778. Off the Hill one may call attention to the Briggs' places easterly in Sherman. To the Hurd family in the valley at Hurd's Cor- ners, who were there in 1778; to the Soule family, living near where C. Emory Baker lives now, and East of the Stephen Osborn place. Every name involves history and biography of great interest ; and recalls to the hearer events and characteristics pecu- liar and memorable. PUBLIC MORALS. When the history of centuries comes to be written, there will be recorded, among the traits of the nineteenth century its im- proved morality. Quaker Hill may serve as a guage of this rise in the tide of public morals. The records of the eighteenth cen- 14 tury are filled with the narrative of loose iamily relations, disorderly public actions, and church discipline striving inflexibly to stem the tide with rebukes, testimonies and excommunications. The walls of this meeting-house have re- sounded many a time with as solemn dis- ownments as the thunder of the papal bull. L XJ^^ scarcely a business meeting of the Oblong Monthly meeting here for a century in which there was not a member called to account for moral or ecclesiastical otfense of some kind. Every disobedience of the moral law, or of the regulations of the Friends, was called to the attention of the meeting and taken into solemn con- sideration. Then in a regular and estab- lished mode, with due time for mental pro- cesses to work without discomposing excite- ment, the case went on and on, until the offender either acknowledged and con- demned his misconduct, or if he persisted m defending it, after being visited and reasoned with by increasing committees he was finally warned and disowned, "reading out of meeting.'' Would you like to hear the words of the Anathema of Quakerism.^ Let me read them, as they were pronounced many times ^ ^f^^'i^^ ^^"^^^^ ^ century, within these walls. The ofifense charged shall be a moral one. "WHEREAS Jonathan Osgood hath had a right of membership among us, the people called Quakers, but not taking heed to the dictates of truth, hath so far deviated from the good order established among Friends 15 as to neglect attendance of our religious meetings for worship and discipline, to deviate from the plain scripture language, and to refuse to settle with his creditors, and pay his just debts; and hath shut him- self up concealed from the civil authorities, therefore for the clearing of truth and our Religious Society we do testify against his misconduct, and disown him, the said Jonathan Osgood, from being any longer a member of our Society, until he shall from a true sight and sense of his misconduct condemn the same to the satisfaction of the meeting. Which that he may is our desire for him. Signed, in and on behalf of Pur- chase Monthly Meeting this th day of the th month." The above wording except the name, is taken from the minutes of Purchase Meet- ing; and some of the offenses mentioned in a few pages of those minutes, for which men were disowned, or for acknowledgment pardoned and restored, are the following : — ''deviating from plainness of speech and apparel" — "not keeping to the plain Scripture language" ; ''going to Frol- Hcks," "going to places of amusement," "attending a horserace"; "frequenting a tavern, being frequently intoxicated with strong liquor"; "placing his son out apprentice with one not of our Society" ; "leaving his habitation in a manner dis- agreeable to his friends"; "to use pro- fane language, and carry a pistol in an unbecoming manner" ; "bearing arms" ; "to challenge a person to fight" ; "to marry with a first cousin"; "to keep company with a young woman not of our 16 Society on account of marriage"; "to be married by a magistrate"; to marry with one not of our Society before a hire- ling priest"; "to join principles and prac- tice with another society of people"; "to be guilty of fornication" ; "to be unchaste with her who is now my wife, the person afterward married by the accused." Oblong minutes: "to have bought a negro slave," "to have bought a negro wench and to be familiar with her." These stern and searching requirements reveal a code of religious government that controlled the life in its chief passions and operations. It was a good manner of life ; and without it the Hill would be a different place to-day. But one mstinctively feels that it is a code that could not be put into operation in the nineteenth century. It was the operation of this code of mor- als, and of its ecclesiastical checks and curbs, that made the Quaker Hill man and the Quaker Hill sentiment what they are. And having done its work this code at the last perhaps tended to weaken the meeting, as it had strengthened the public consci- ence. In talking recently with a sweet old lady past eighty, I asked her, "Did you ever hear anyone disowned in meeting?" "No," she never had, and doubted if there had been many. Later, her daughter said, "Why, Grandmother, you married out of meeting yourself!" Whereupon I asked again, "Well, what did they do with you then?" "Oh," she replied, not at all em- barassed, "they turned me out!" So frequent were these readings out of meeting that one would think there could 17 be no Quakers left. But the supply, both of members and of offenders, yes and of those to rebuke them and disown them, never failed. The tendency that brought the custom to a close was not a failure of members, nor of disposition on the part of the meeting, but a change in the disposition of public opinion, which had approved of the stern discipline of the eighteenth cen- tury. BETTER MORAL CONDITIONS. The nineteenth century religion was less a moral code than that of the earlier cycle, and the social life of the nineteenth was more moral than that of the eighteenth. He who reads the minutes of Oblong Meeting for the last half of the eighteenth century and compares the record of the life of the Hill of those days with the events of the Hill's last twenty years will be convinced that there were more cases of unchastity in those days in the meeting than there are in the whole community now. This is the more remarkable because the offenders were all good Quakers, clad in drab and gray, and the meeting was constantly disowning mem- bers for such offences, constantly thinning out its ranks, ever weeding out the im- moral. Yet among those who remained there were in every year more cases recorded of violation of the standard of Christian pur- ity in a tangible, overt form than all the present residents of the Hill have furnished in any one of the last eight years. The causes of this better moral tone of the nineteenth century are many. First, it is fair to say that the long period of strict church discipline, with its clear and fearless 18 testimony of a meeting that was not afraid to lose members, but was unwilling to con- done cheating and violence and adultery, must have had its effect upon this particu- lar community. The nineteenth century can afford to be lenient because the eight- eenth was so strict. Second, the former century was troubled with many degrading moral conditions. War was abroad, with attending brigandage and lawlessness. Slavery corrupted the home and perverted the sexual and com- mercial standards. The later century was awakened to these very evils and their con- sequences. Third, the earlier years of the life of any community are always more lawless than the later. Many offences are matters of bad taste, rather than of bad morals, crudities rather than crimes, and to these such a strict standard as that of the Oblong Meet- ing was the best schoolmaster. It took a century for the settler in the virgin forest to learn the authority of the Ten Command- ments over his pioneer life ; but once learned he has not forgotten it. He can be relied on to teach it to the latest arrived immi- grant from Europe or negro from the South. These raised seats were the Mount Sinai from which that law was thundered upon the dull and torpid conscience of the pioneers. THE GREAT SEPARATION. In the years 1827 and 1828 the meetings of Friends in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Indiana and Maryland were divided. Those in Virginia, Carolina, and New Eng- land, as those in England itself, remained 19 united. Yet so pervasive was the separa- tion that ever since one must call a member of the Society not merely a Friend, but an Orthodox Friend or a Hicksite Friend. The causes of this division, as has been indicated before, were general throughout the country, for all the divisions happened at a stroke in the brief period of two years. The nineteenth century was applying the newly gotten liberty to thought and re- ligion. Even the remotest places felt the influence. Religion was taking more ag- gressive and vigorous forms and this vigor was showing itself in the direction both of speculation and of evangelism. The same meetings contained men who demanded to think for themselves about God, and men who craved to present the old Gospel to sinners. Devout men were challenging and opposing a spirit which they deemed athe- istical ; while equally good men were eag- erly pondering every speculation about God. The former were taking part in re- vivals and organizing Sunday-schools ; the latter were schooling their own souls in the discernment of the true and the rejection of the false, in all the new ideas about God and nature and man. The inevitable division followed between men naturally progressive and speculative, and men naturally conservative and prac- tical. The progressive became in his haste a radical ; and the conservative an angry reactionary. On all sides men were either thinking as pioneers, or crying out against innovations. One can better understand the forces that divided the Friends, if he remembers that 20 David Irish was of the same generation as George Stephenson, the perfecter of the steam engine, and was subject to the same enhvening, intellectual influences. The first steamboat, the Clermont, was built by Ful- ton in 1807, when David Irish was thirteen years old, and steamed against the tide from New York to Albany. But stronger than the tide was the current of disbelief, scorn, derision and amazement of the men on the shore against the inventor, Fulton. Yet the boat steamed on, to the astonish- ment of the New Yorker, the wild surprise of the farmer, and the terror of the Indian. No wonder that in such a time of conflict- ing passions, and ideas too great for any one man, the Friends and other Christians accused one another of atheism on the one hand, and of bigotry on the other; and neither accusation was just. PHILADELPHIA MEETING DIVIDED. The manner of the division was on this wise. The two warring tendencies began to show themselves about 1805, in the preaching of rationalist ideas by Elias Hicks and others, and in the criticism of him by certain persons, especially in Phila- delphia. For twenty years, during which Hicks travelled widely in the country, west to Ohio, and south to Maryland, he con- tinued to influence the minds of many, par- ticularly the young, in the direction of re- ligious thinking in harmony with the intel- lectual movement of the century. For twenty years also opposers of his views, ani- mated themselves by a fervent desire to save men from the worldly philosophy of 21 the time, acting every year more in har- mony with the evangehcal fervor of the nineteenth century, became more suspicious of EUas Hicks' opinions, and more energetic to silence their advocates. Finally in 1827, after the chasm between two parties in the Society had deepened and widened beyond bridging, the two par- ties met at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, hked armed camps. Neither would yield. At this time the party which was coming to be called Orthodox was being led by a delegation of visitors from the London Yearly Meeting, among whom were most notable Thomas Shillito, Ann Braithwait and Ann Jones. The preaching and min- istry of these visitors was as obnoxious to the followers of Hicks as was the doctrine of Hicks to the Orthodox. At Philadelphia there were many, espec- ially among the Hicksite faction, who saw that separation was inevitable ; and after some preliminary skirmishing, they, find- ing themselves the weaker party, withdrew ; and following a plan of John Comly, the Assistant Clerk, created a Yearly Meeting and the other ecclesiastical machinery of their own. Asserting ever since their de- sire for re-union, they have worshipped to this day apart. The Orthodox, who retained the records, most of the property, the affiliation with London Yearly Meeting, claimed that they were the only Society of Friends, excom- m.unicated their former brethren, and de- clined a proposition for a proportionate di- vision of the property. 22 NEW YORK YEARLY MEETING RENT. New York Yearly Meeting assembled the next year in an atmosphere electric with the coming storm. The presence of Phila- delphia Friends whom the Philadelphia Orthodox had disowned, and who adhered to the Hicksite party there, offended the evangelical party. The Clerk who was Orthodox, announced it as the sense of a meeting of stormy debate that the repre- sentatives adjourn to the basement, in order to free themselves from the undesired per- sons. Those who contended for the right of the Philadelphia representatives named another clerk, who started for the desk. Instantly a stormy debate became an inco- herent riot. Men lost their heads and for- got their principles. The floor resounded with the pounding of canes. The air was rent with the clamor of many speaking at once. Hisses and cries of accusation were heard. The new Clerk found his way to the desk barred, and had to go over the railing. The minute in the hand of the Clerk who urged adjournment was almost snatched away. And between those going to the basement and those determined to remain, the table of the Clerk was pulled in pieces ; part went out with the Orthodox and part stayed with the Hicksites. When the Orthodox party in the Meet- ing-house yard demanded admission to the basement, they were denied entrance, and after pressing their demand a reasonable time they departed to Rutgers Medical Col- lege. Here for the first time in years they 83 — as perhaps also the Hicksites, — enjoyed calmly and gratefully the presence and favor of God's Spirit. The testimony which both parties bear to this return of the witness of God's Spirit to their hearts, after the strife, is the only fragment of a rainbow after the storm. OBLONG QUARTERLY MEETING. Oblong Meeting had its share of the ex- citement of the times. Ann Jones, one of the English Friends whose preaching served to crystallize the Orthodox party, had spoken here. Voices had been heard on both sides. Yet the meeting had no neces- sity to divide. The average hearer was not so offended at the orthodoxy of the one party, or at the speculations of the other, that he must choose between them. Such a degree of tranquillity prevailed indeed that, in the answers to the Queries of the Quarterly meeting as to the state of religion here, the meeting could find no graver ill- doing than this, that the worshippers here were *'not free of sleeping in meeting." The month following the Yearly Meeting in New York was June, and that month the Nine Partner's Quarterly meeting representing the meetings of Duchess county and environs, was to assemble on Quaker Hill. June is always a fair month. The woods and thickets blazed and glowed with laurel, as the representatives rode on horseback to the meeting. The bob-o-links fluttered and twittered and fiddled and fluted in the air over the field across from the meeting house, where the grave men in drab left their horses in the deep grass. 24 But the men and women in Quaker garb had no eyes or ears for beauty or harmony. This June was not to be a bridal month but a time of divorce. To this Quartely meet- ing men came anxious and expectant. A few came resolved. The two sets of repre- sentatives from the divisions of the New York Yearly Meeting were dignified and watchful. At last the doors were closed upon the representatives ; and the shutters drawn between the men's and women's meetings. In a legislative meeting of Quakers more responsibility devolves upon the Clerk than upon the Chairman and the Secretary in a Parliamentary assembly. So that the Quar- terly Meeting looked to the Clerk's desk for his action. Rising at the table, on which he had laid the books and papers, he de- clined further service, and stepped down from his place. At once a Hicksite was named to take his place. Extracts from the minutes of the Yearly Meeting are sent every year to the subordinate meetings for endorsement, and these came next in order. Objection was made by orthodox delegates but it became evident that they were out- numbered; and as it is customary for de- cisions to be reached by unanimous votes in Friends' meetings, the smaller party withdrew from the meeting to the Osborn homestead, now the house of Stephen Osborn. Here they proceeded with the in- terrupted business of Nine Partners' Quar- terly Meeting, receiving the Extracts from the Orthodox Yearly Meeting, and in every way acted on the theory that the other party was the seceders, and they the true and only Society of Friends. The Women's Meeting assembled in the Osborn house and the Men's in the barn, which had been, sixty years before, the original meeting- house. QUAKER HILL DIVIDED. In the same month of June the Monthly Meeting, which represented only the Hill and environs, assembled in this meeting- house. Upon the decision of this meeting would depend the ownership of the meet- ing house and the records; and more than all, the acceptance with the community as the true Society of Friends, The whole country-side would assemble to such a meeting. At this meeting the Hicksite party were plainly in control. There was no doubt about the Clerk, that official whose action determined so much in every divided meet- ing. The clerk of Oblong was John Wing, who remained with the Hicksites through the separation. The critical question came upon the endeavor of Orthodox representa- tives to read the Extracts from their yearly Meeting. Instantly there were opposers, who, with personal bitterness and noisy emphasis, refused them the right even to read them. Loud voices asserted that the Extracts contained falsehoods. Many were speaking at once. All order vanished. Men forgot dignity, principle, self-control and custom in the bursting of long pent feelings. The storm continued until the Orthodox members of the meeting, being clearly refused the recognition they desired for their Yearly Meeting, withdrew with what dignity and resignation they could 26 from the house their fathers had helped to build, to hospitable Paul Osborn's house. There for a year and a half they continued to meet, until the erection of the Orthodox Meeting-house, in which they still worship. The different views of duty animating the two parties in this division of brethren may best be described in the action which they each took with regard to the other faction. The Orthodox moved with zeal for doc- trines more precious to them than men, even than brethren or neighbors, disowned all members of the meeting who continued to worship in the old Oblong Meeting House after 1828. The Hicksite, influ- enced by the liberal thinking of the time, simply put on record the following in answer to the Query from the higher body as to atendance at meetings : "There is a manifest care with the most of Friends to attend all our meetings for worship and disclipine, except a few friends who with- drew from our last Monthly meeting and have not attended our meetings since." The Hicksite Friends also have reason to be grateful that, if it was the lot of the Orthodox to demonstrate the heroic side of faith, it was theirs to exhibit the gentle- ness and forbearance of the Christian and the Quaker. The following utterance read in this house after the separation, cannot be excelled as a sample of gentle forbear- ance and dispassionate tolerance : "Paul Osborn and Simeon Hermans having been named on two committees, and now having withdrawn and separated from this meet- ing, they are released from their appoint- ments." And the Hicksite meeting took 27 310 Other important action as to the divis- ion. One month later peace reigned again, and in the answers to the Queries the Clerk can only name as a prevalent form of mis- conduct the fact that worshippers at Oblong Meeting house "were not quite clear of sleeping in meeting." RESULTS OF THE SEPARATION. So the Friends became unfriendly, the Quakers were rent by a chasm ; and lamen- table have been the results of that separa- tion. The respect of the Christian World so long enjoyed by that Society has never been given to either portion of it to the ex- clusion of the other, and the whole effect of the efforts of Orthodox to discredit Eicksite and of Hicksite to deny Orthodox has been to make the Christian observer believe in neither. The honor to the indi- vidual Friend is the same as of old, and is given to him who worthily wears the Qua- ker manner of life, of whichever party. The discipline of the Oblong Meeting, for one hundred years the mightiest moral engine of this neighborhood, was wrecked in the disowning of brethren for their opinions, whose moral character was not impeached. Moreover the intellectual leadership, which in religious matters becomes prophecy, spent its forces in discussion of abstractions too high for the minds of men, and only re- motely related to living. Thus the Hill lost in the years following 1828 both its law and its gospel. Men already too prone to money-making and to pleasure ran after wealth or became more and more worldly, 28 and for a period none rebuked them, be- cause the priests of God were too busy dis- cussing heaven to serve the needs of earth. In this I am sure the Quakers were no worse and no different from other Chris- tians who have separated themselves from brethren because of opinions. It has always weakened Christianity to divide from good men, save for loftiest doctrinal reasons. What a comment upon such divisions is the remark of the New Jersey judge presiding over the Chancery lawsuit about the prop- erty of the Society, who said that his task of sifting evidence was made easier inas- much as all the witnesses on both sides agreed substantially in all questions of fact? The last act of this meeting was to raise money for black freedmen of Carolina. What a pity that Friends whose ancestors met the blood-thirsty Indian savages half- way and paid them for land granted to them by the King, visited depraved criminals in Fleet prison whose jailor dared not stand unarmed among them, could not agree with men of Christian character beyond reproach, and separated themselves from saints. What a pity that suggestions of moder- ation and advice looking toward harmony, or an agreeable division of property, should come to the followers of William Penn and Elizabeth Fry from civil magistrates and public officials. Before such as they George Fox had stood as a shining example and towering rebuke. It was reasons such as these that compelled Samuel Bettle, Clerk of the Orthodox yearly meeting in Phila- delphia, about whose personal and official position the division in Philadelphia began, 29 to declare, thirty years after, that "he be- lieved patient labor and suffering would have been better than division." The re- ligious history of Quaker Hill in the nine- teenth century, and the knowledge of the lives of her saints enforces that judicious and solid conclusion. For whether Elias Hicks was a heretic or not there came into his division of friends after separation those whose preaching alarmed and distressed him as his had dis- tressed Ann Jones and Ann Braithwaith. H he was wrong, it was the duty of right men to labor with him, not leave him. And if bigotry cannot be laid against the Orth- odox who endured the heroic sufferings of the days of separation, it was not many years before that portion was rent again with a more grievous and subtile schism, and further weakened by the spirit of divis- ion. Each party in short needed the other. The Orthodoxy of the children of light needs to be salted by the wisdom of this world ; and liberal studies need the moder- ating influence of evangelistic work; apart each runs to barrenness. The division was lamentable because it was not so much a separation from unwel- come doctrines as it was a separation of men of different types from one another. The community whose thinkers part company with its men of feeling and conscience is a wounded community. To separate the Orthodox from the Hicksite was not merely to separate men who stated their doctrine of the divinity of Christ in different ways; but it was to separate progressives and con- servatives, whom God made to be members 30 one of the other. Each was the worse for the schism. PROVIDENTIAL CAUSES. The causes of this division of friends were at work on Quaker Hill as actively as in New York or Philadelphia. Quakerism was rent by the forces at work in the world, all of them I believe salutory forces. First, by the rationalist spirit of the wonderful nine- teenth century. The century of inventions, discoveries, revolutions, enfranchisements must needs break up and dissolve every old thing to make a new world. The spirit that animated Fulton, Stephen, Gray, Edison and all the inventors ; the spirit that inspired Charles Darwin and James Martineau, and Herbert Spencer and Henry Drummond, and Horace Bushness and the scientists, inspired Elias Hicks and David Irish. Second, the evangelistic movement of the century set up a different current in the Society of Friends. The spirit that in- spired the Sunday school in Robert Raikes, the Y. M. C. A. in Sir George Williams, the C. E. in Dr. Francis E. Clark, the spirit of Charles G. Finney and of Dwight L. Moody animated also Ann Braithwait and Paul Osborn. Moreover, I trust I will not offend Friends if I say that it was impossible for them in the nineteenth century to follow Fox in the seventeenth century. And they did not follow him. I am profoundly con- vinced, from study of the whole contro- versy, and reading the deliverances of both sides and the action they took, that the 31 tendencies which both followed were away from George Fox forever. As George Fox therefore was independent of those who went before him, and we honor him for that boldness, all honor to the Quakers, Orthodox and Hicksite, who departed from him as he departed from Luther, and Cal- vin and Latimer. If you can bear with me in this state- ment my friends, you will also hear me while I say further that study of both sides convinces me also that neither party was led away from Christ, or out of the bands of Christianity. This they each humbly profess, in almost identical terms, and with a common meekness and sincerity. Perhaps he who spoke of the grain of corn falling into the ground to die, before it bears much fruit, had his own designs in the dissolution of George Fox's own com- pact and solid Society. He who looked for the leaven to be diffused in the loaf, not hoarded in a bowl by itself, may have poured out in the world the Quaker treas- ure. Certain it is that since the division the spirit and principles of the Society of Friends have been more widely prevalent and more universally accepted as a stand- ard than before. On Quaker Hill at least the principles of spirituality, of religion, of the inner light, of the equality of all men as possessing God's inner light, are, in the writer's opinion, as widely accepted and as firmly believed in 1900 as they were in 1800. QUAKER HILL MEN AND WOMEN. Yet the Quaker Hill community has lasted until the present day; and there are as many Quaker Hill men as there ever were. The Quaker Hill community is an immortal social unit, born of the soil, the scenery, the history and the faith of the Hill. The Quaker Hill man is a citizen of that community, permeated with its spirit, living by its code of morals, and guided by its etiquette for men of every station in life, a man just, sane, industrious and truthful. The Quaker Hill community is a univer- sally religious one. There lives no one here who does not desire to worship God with his neighbors. Religion has lan- guished here when it has ceased to care for men or to serve their spiritual needs, but never when it has spoken their language, and interpreted the divine message to their lives. It is a mutually helpful community. In 1765 the meeting here took action "to raise money to buy a cow to loan to Jesse Irish." In the years 1894 and 1900 the community took precisely similar action to assist in each case a neighbor on whom trouble had fallen. This was never an act of charity, but it is an old custom, as invariable as insurance, by which for over a century every dweller up and down this old road buys shares in his neighbors trouble. Quaker Hill is always potentially a stock company. No individual is lost or forgotten on the Hill; and in many instances those most obscure to the worldling's eye are highest in fame and dearest in affection. First names prevail. Unadorned surnames, even of women if well known, are the most com- » 33 mon designation, and titles are little more than Summer visitors. The community initiates new comers by free use of their surnames; the second degree is adminis- tered by general use of the first name; and a man may be said to have taken his third degree when he is called by his first name with an affectionate diminutive, as Jimmie, Willie, Annie, Robbie. Taught by God- fearing Friends we fear no man, yet no- where is a man more valued. Clear eyes and calm judgment are still here to take the measure of every newcomer; and once received into citizenship, he will not be displaced. Yet a life residence is not enough to gain a welcome for an intruder. The spirit of the Hill is one of high cour- tesy and respect for good manners. Not the manners of a parlor. They are still the manners of a religious assembly. To sit with one's wife in church may be pleasant for Summer visitors, but it would be an improbable act in the case of a resident ; and in the case of a native impossible. A Quaker Hill audience is possessed by in- herent right of the ability to sit in perfect silence in a Meeting-house. Restlessness among the young may arise in a bustling meeting of the modern type ; but the same persons would be immovable as granite if the meeting were to pause in silence for a period. Neatness in dress, at least in some gar- ment, is an inheritance from forefathers who made dress a matter of religion. The genuine Quaker Hill man wears a neck- cloth while ploughing, whose freshness and fit, unequalled by a dandy on the avenue, 34 can be seen by the passerby as a token of a dressy ancestry. In a community in which a handshake has dismissed worship for nearly two centuries, it still has its high value, and has been known to determine a friendship for life. The relations of young men and maidens are rigidly framed by many decades of Quaker discipline into a code so impalpable that Philistines do not know it exists; yet to break which in public is to forfeit public respect, and years do not efface the impres- sion made by a public offence against the customs approved. This is a community of transparent men. No one has attempted for a century and a half to hide his motives or belie his deeds. Every man's debts are known, his tastes, his likings and his prejudices. He him- self will resent any social treatment that takes him out of his proper niche in the community. The result of all this is a per- fect frankness in wrongdoing, when wrong is done, and a certain self-respect and com- placency about goodness. The fathers told the truth for so long that we do so too, and take our places in the community which self-respect and public opinion, in perfect harmony, assign us. The Quaker Hill community and the Quaker Hill man were the same in 1800 as they are in 1900, only perhaps a little less cosmopolitan. The century did not disrupt the neighborhood when it divided the meet- ing. Did not change the character of pub- lic opinion when it removed from the Hill a majority of the native blood, and filled many houses wtih strangers. The com- 35 munity has proven more immortal than the meeting. Through all the changes of one hundred years the spirit of the place has ripened ; the outward aspect has, with mow- ing-machines, city visitors, endowed church and library, and other reflections of the great world, become modern. But a man is more thought of than a man's dollars, just as of old. Sacraments and priests are believed in but little, and God-given motives are still the accepted light of life. NOTE ON MAP OF QUAKER HILL See Frontispiece. In the possession of the New York Historical Society, Second Avenue and Eighth Street, New York City, are two maps, No. 35 and 37, in the De Witt Clinton Collection, made by Robert Ers- klne for Washington's use in 1778-80. We publish as a frontispiece the second of these, not hitherto reproduced. Attention is called to the names of residents upon the farms, and to the locations of farm houses, also to the present site of Pawling, marked "Waters Divide," to the 'Headquarters/* "Auditor's Quarters," "Adjutant General's" Quarters, located at houses which still cherish the tradition of use by Washington. It is evident from this map and that published a year ago, that Washington's official headquarters were at the house on the site of the present Roberts residence, opposite the Golf Links in Pawling. 3477-125 Lot 52 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 014 109 563 8