God had visibly clothed him with a divine preference and authority, and indeed his very presence expressed a religious majesty, yet he never abused it, but held his place in the church of God with great meekness, and a most engaging humility and moderation.1From the age of eleven he had been deeply religious but even as a young man of nineteen he felt profoundly perplexed with the tremendous gap between the actions and the beliefs of those who professed religious faith. Born in 1624, Fox reached maturity in an era of religious upheaval, marked by the Puritan Revolution and the reign of Oliver Cromwell, in which new sects of Puritanism, (e.g., Ranters, Seekers, Brownists, Independents, Milenarians, Diggers, Separatists, Anabaptists, and Familists) and new religious beliefs abounded.
Quakers seem to have chosen 1652 as the date of the founding of the Society of Friends and thus in 1952 the tercentennial of the founding was celebrated. Two significant events occurred in 1652--upon climbing Pendle Hill in the Pennine range on the border of Lancastershire and Yorkshire George Fox experienced a vision: "the Lord let me see a-top of the hill in what places He had a great people to be gathered." He went out from there and preached and won more and more followers.
Also in 1652 in a remote part of Lancastershire near Ulverston, Fox met Margaret Fell the wife of Judge Thomas Fell. Although the Judge never became a Quaker he was sympathetic to the Quaker mission and fully supported Margaret Fell as she became the most influential woman in the movement and her home--Swarthmore Hall--became the center of activities for the growing body of Quaker ministers who went out to bring the truth to others. Margaret Fell was an integral part of this effort communicating by letters to the growing numbers of men and women throughout the country who became convinced of the Quaker message. The judge died in 1658. Eleven years later George Fox and Margaret Fell were married.
As Fox gathered more followers the authorities began their persecution. Quakers were persecuted because they refused to remove their hats in the presence of their "superiors" or to address them with the formal "you", they refused to swear oaths, to marry under the prescribed rules (i.e., with an ordained minister), and to pay tithes to the state church. The persecution that began under the reign of Cromwell continued after the restoration of James II in 1660 and by the time it ended in 1686 some 15,000 had suffered and almost 500 died while in prison.
The early followers of Fox called themselves "Children of the Light" or "Friends" and later collectively the Society of Friends. The reader of these minutes will notice that the word 'Quaker' does not appear in them because in the early years of the movement 'Quaker' was a term used by outsiders to convey contempt. However, Penn himself, used the term 'Quaker' in the title of one of his essays--The Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers (1694)--and by the late 19th century members began calling themselves Quakers and to rejoice in the name.
There are two different but similar accounts of the origin of the name 'Quaker'. One account is found in Fox's Journal. The story is that George Fox, the founder of the sect, standing before the bench of a Judge Bennett, told the judge that he ought "to tremble before the word of God." To this the judge replied "you are the Quaker, not I."2 Another account is found in Robert Barclay's Apology (1676) considered to be the greatest work of Quaker theology:
The priest scoffed at us and called us Quakers. But the Lord's power was so over them, and the word of life was declared in such authority and dread to them, that the priest began trembling himself; and one of the people said, 'Look how the priest trembles and shakes, he is turned a Quaker also'.3Both stories suggest that the name originates in the phenomenon of shaking or quaking. Under the strain of intense fervent meditation early Friends would sometimes be observed to tremble or shake. Hence, 'Quaker' fits well.
The name 'Friends' comes from the Bible. According to the author of the Book of John (15:12-15), Jesus said to his followers:
This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends: for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.4
Quakerism is frequently referred to as left-wing Puritanism. Puritans assumed that the first Christians--the earliest followers of Jesus--practiced the purist form of "primitive" religion free from the superfluous elements that were added as history progressed. The problem was to determine which elements were superfluous. The first Puritans, during the reign of Henry VIII, removed the Pope from his authoritative position, eliminated the Mass, five of the seven sacraments and removed images from the church. The Church of England was the result.
John Calvin, the founder of Presbyterianism, removed the bishops replacing them with presbyters or elders. Congregationalists eliminated centralized church government replacing it with a more democratic and decentralized system of governance. The Baptists eliminated infant baptism and emphasized the spiritual gift of conversion as essential to church membership. And then the Quakers eliminated all ritual, all programmed worship, the professional ministry, and all offices of religious authority. Later elders, overseers were appointed and unpaid ministers were recognized but these positions held no authority over the members of the Friends but were thought of, instead, as instruments of the meeting.5
With very few exceptions, Quakers were Christians and accepted the basic tenets of Christianity, viz., the existence of God, the divinity of Christ and the centrality of the death and resurrection of Jesus. But the Christianity of Fox's day was a dry heartless affair. When Fox left home at the age of nineteen to discover religious truth for himself he questioned ministers, priests, and other "professors", as he called them, who seemed to possess it. He discovered, however, that none he met had answers that could satisfy him. Fox wrote in his Journal:
When all my hopes in them and in all men was gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, Oh then, I heard a voice which said, 'There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.' And, when I heard it my heart did leap for joy....This is the germ of the central theme of Quaker thought--the idea of continuing revelation frequently expressed with the metaphor of "the Inner Light". Here Fox tells us that he experienced an "opening" to God but it was something that every person could experience:My desires after the Lord grew stronger, and zeal in the pure knowledge of God and of Christ alone, without the help of any man, book, or writing. For though I read the scriptures that spake of Christ and of God, yet I knew Him not, but by revelation, as He who hath the key did open, and as the Father of Life drew me to His Son by His Spirit.6
...every man was enlightened by the divine light of Christ...and they that believed in it came out of condemnation to the light of life, and became children of it.7Fox was not a systematic theologian--and Quakerism, perhaps to its credit, never developed a systematic theology--and thus no clear statement of the nature of the Inner Light was ever produced. But it would appear that Fox believed that Christ revealed himself as an Inward Teacher and that his purpose was to bring others to see it:
I was commanded to turn people to that inward light, Spirit and grace, by which all might know their salvation and their way to God....Fox believed that in the ancient world God had spoken to man and the scriptures are a result of that revelation. But each person, man or woman, educated or uneducated, of high or low birth, Christian or non-Christian, theist or atheist can still be "enlightened by the Divine Light of Christ." Revelation is still to be looked for--still to be expected. True religion is not assent to dogma or to doctrine, Fox called them airy notions--but experiential "living in the light". Dogma, doctrine, and even the Bible itself are hollow "external" shells unless illuminated for us by the Inner Light.
Quakers spoke of the Bible as "the words of God" not "the Word of God". The early American Quaker theologian Robert Barclay observed that the Scriptures
are only a declaration of the fountain, and not the fountain itself, therefore they are not to be esteemed the principal ground of all truth, and knowledge, nor yet the adequate primary rule of faith and manners. Yet because they give a true and faithful testimony of the first foundation, they are and may be esteemed a secondary rule, subordinate to the Spirit, from which they have all their excellency and certainty; for as by the inward testimony of the Spirit we do alone truly know them, so they testify, that the Spirit is that Guide by which the saints are led into all Truth; therefore, according to the scriptures, the Spirit is the first and principal leader.9Neither the Bible, the sacraments, confessions, nor creeds, provide an adequate foundation for faith. All of these are external superfluous trappings--idols which lead people astray. Barclay again:
Knowledge then of Christ, which is not by the revelation of his own Spirit in the heart, is no more properly the knowledge of Christ, than the prattling of a parrot, which has been taught a few words, may be said to be the voice of a man; for as that, or some other bird, may be taught to sound or utter forth a rational sentence, as it hath learned it by the outward ear, and not from any living principle of reason actuating it; so just such is the knowledge of the things of God, which the natural and carnal man hath gathered from the words or writings of spiritual men.10True religion is not found in blind acceptance and adherence to doctrine or dogma but in walking in the light. The apostle Paul said to "walk as children of light" (Eph. 5:8) and that "Ye are all the children of light" (I Thess. 5:5). Following the light leads to salvation--ignoring it leads to damnation. Barclay and William Penn as well distinguished the Inner Light which they identified as Christ guiding the believer from the seed of Christ which they viewed as being present in every person. Let the seed of Christ within grow and one gradually develops in holiness and achieves sanctification and salvation. It is a universal message: salvation is open to all people not just those who have heard the message of the Gospels and have been converted to Christianity. Conversion is unnecessary. The Quakers believed that merely accepting or believing a dogmatic theological proposition was neither necessary nor sufficient to being saved. What you believed was not as important as how you lived. Salvation was achieved through a life long effort at becoming perfect. Salvation was achieved not by conversion but by sanctification.
When John Woolman, considered by many Quakers to be worthy of sainthood, went out among the Indians in 1762 he went not as a Quaker missionary to convert them but went so that
I might feel and understand their life and the spirit they live in, if haply I might receive some instruction from them, or they be in any degree helped forward by my following the leadings of Truth among them.11His attitude was that he possessed no truth they did not have. They lacked nothing necessary for salvation. To the Friends, the indians were neither godless nor heathen, nor savage. Those distinctions were more properly attributable to the Puritans who hanged Quaker missionaries and massacred indians who lived on the lands they coveted. According to Barclay, the true church was to be found "among heathen, Turks, Jews, and all the several sorts of Christians." The disagreements among different religions and different sects were superficial--the "holy light in their souls" bound all to God as "true members of this catholic church."12
In accord with this view is George Fox's observation that no degree from Oxford or Cambridge is sufficient to qualify a person to be a minister. Divine instruction comes from within rather than from the training received by a professional minister. No intermediaries were required for salvation.
The idea that all people have something of the divine in them--that the Light of Christ is in everyone--was directly contrary to the Puritan doctrine that only those of the elect are saved. Fox directly attacked this doctrine in his journal with a Biblical quotation: the Light is the inward "gospel which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven" (Col. 1:23). It is the inward gospel that has been proclaimed to everyone not the outward gospel. "I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth" (Isa. 49:6).
This doctrine which Quakers called "Gentile Divinity" was developed by William Penn in his Advice to his children:
That blessed principle the Eternal Word...by which all things were at first made and man enlightened to salvation is Pythagoras' great light and salt of ages; Anaxagoras' divine mind; Socrates' good spirit; Timaeus' unbegotten principle and author of all light; Hieron's God in man' Plato's eternal, ineffable and perfect principle of truth; Zeno's maker and father of all; Plontinus' root of the soul' ...the divine power and reason, the infallible, immortal law in the minds of men, says Philo; the law and living rule of the mind, the interior guide of the soul and everlasting foundation of virtue, says Plutarch.13Christ's saving grace is extended, by this doctrine, to every person even to those who lived before him and to those who have never heard of him. The Light is in every person in virtue of being a creature of God. God is "the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" (John 1:9). Barclay called this "the Quaker Text".14
Christianity in America, since the mid-1830's, has emphasized the evangelical concept of conversion or rebirth. Conversion and thus salvation, to the evangelical, are almost instantaneous events. The Quaker, on the other hand, saw salvation as the result of a slow and gradual process of growth. For the evangelical Christian salvation is obtained in the instant that Christ is "accepted into one's life". For the Quaker, salvation is achieved by growing in holiness.
Plain, still, quiet living was seen as the key to spiritual growth, to purification and to sinless sanctification. Quiet living, inward solitude, peace and separation from the encroachments of the world all came to be rigidly enforced and codified in a disciplinary code. Friends were to avoid use of honorary titles that implied superior social status. It was customary practice in the seventeenth century to address superiors with the plural 'you' rather than the singular 'thou'. One person is one person, so Fox saw using the plural 'you' as semantically dishonest. Only God was deserving of the respect suggested by the use of the formal 'you'. Use of 'you' was a form of flattery that puffed up self-esteem beyond the bounds of proper measure. Barclay:
This way of speaking proceeds form a high and proud mind...because that men commonly use the singular to beggars and to their servants; yea and in their prayers to God--so hath the pride of men place God and the beggar in the same category.15Fox directed his followers to eschew the pagan names of the months and days and to call the days and the months simply first day, second day,... and first month, second month, and so on.
Simplicity was emphasized in styles of Quaker clothing which was characterized in general by the lack of "gay colors, fringe, ribbons, embroidery, buttons, lace, full sleeves and gaudy shoes".16 George Fox had said in 1667:
Keep out of the vain fashions of the world; let not your eyes and minds, and spirits run after every fashion [in apparel]. ...Therefore keep all in modesty and plainness.17And Penn in 1693 added:
Choose thy cloaths by thine own eye, not anothers. The more simple and plain they are, the better. Neither unshapely nor fantastical, and for use and decency, not pride.18Plainness in Quaker clothing did not equate to cheapness. Those with money wore nothing but the best fabrics in the thought that only the best lent dignity to their simple style of dress. One of the standard fabrics was called Quaker gray which was worn by just about all the men. It was made from a undyed mixture of white and black wool. Soft colors from natural dyes was also common. Drabs, greens, browns and cream colors were often used. Black was considered worldly and was avoided until the second half of the 19th century.
Perhaps nothing is more symbolic of Quakerism than the broad brimmed hat and the bonnet. The hat was widely fashionable in the 17th and 18th but Quakers wore it without the decoration of buttons or loops. The women's bonnet which actually was composed of three parts: the cap, the bonnet, and the bonnet cover. The cap was worn at all times. Made of soft linen or cotton, it was tied under the chin and fitted close to the head. Again the style was plainness. No ribbons and only modest colors.
Simple Quaker dress expressed not only their membership in a unique religious group but made a moral statement. Writing in 1726, Hannah Hill warned against hoops and heels and bare breasts. Insisting on the Quaker apron so "That we might be unto the Lord, A Chosen Generation, A Royal Priesthood, An Holy Nation, A Peculiar People."19
Baptism is a pre-Christian ritual signifying cleansing and purification. Quakers, noting that Jesus never baptized anyone and that they view themselves as Christians and not as Johnians (after John the Baptist), viewed Baptism as practiced with water as a superficial ceremonial ritual and developed in its place the concept of gospel baptism consisting of an inward experience of a holy visitation of God in times either of great sorrow caused by periods of tribulation and suffering or (but this seems to be less frequent and important) during periods of joy and happiness. Righteousness could be achieved not by water but only by spiritual growth fed best, it would seem, by suffering.
Friends living in the light, would express satisfaction in times of suffering and grief since they believed it prepared them for salvation. Besides physical suffering, Friends frequently referred to mental depression or anguish from no distinct cause as a source of suffering. "Low and much stripped" was a much used phrase. A sad even grim outward countenance was a sign of inward tribulation and grace. One Quaker wrote in 1841: "by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better."20
William Penn had said, "no cross, no crown" and so Quakers summed up their view of how to live--the baptisms under suffering, their quiet separation from the world, their plain life in the phrase, "bearing the cross". Joseph Edgerton, a leading Ohio Friend, wrote:
The daily cross must be experienced whereby being crucified to the world we may be made to follow the blessed captain of salvation in the straight and divine grace which...brings salvation to all who...walk under its divine influence."21
Rufus Jones, professor of philosophy at Haverford College, editor of " The Friend " , the founder of the American Friend's Service Committee, and the leading light in Quakerism from the late nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth century, puts the Quaker position on war in the most succinct terms: "The Quaker flatly insists that it is absolutely and eternally wrong morally, that Christianity and war are utterly incompatible."22 We should note that not all Quakers have been pacifists. Clearly some have felt it right to take up arms and this was especially true during World War II but even some of the early Quakers, e.g., during the Revolutionary War and during the Civil War took part in the fighting. Until this century, however, the usual outcome was disownment.
The early Quakers pointed to numerous passages from the New Testament to justify their refusal to fight. "Love your enemies," "Blessed are the peacemakers," "Resist not evil," "All they that take up the sword shall perish by the sword," "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal," "Wars and fightings come of your lusts." The list could go on and on. Almost every page of the New Testament supports the pacifist imperative. Because there is something of God in every person, the realistic method to resolve disputes is to appeal to and rely on the light within. Use of force can only produce superficial resolutions to conflicts.
Christianity, according to Quakerism, sets a high standard on the worth of each individual human being. But neither loss of life nor loss of property are themselves moral evils. Loss of life represents to the Christian a spiritual gain in that one is, according to Quaker belief, immediately united with God. Suffering evil is neither morally wrong nor evil. Only doing evil is wrong.
The standard criticism of the Quaker position is that it is impractical at best and impossible at worst. It is impractical because there is so much evil in the world, so many people committing evil acts, the man or woman of peace will be trampled to death. A critic of pacificism said to Joseph Hoag who was speaking publicly for the Quaker view of war: "Well, stranger, if all the world was of your mind I would turn and follow after." To which Hoag replied, "So then thou hast a mind to be the last man to be good. I have a mind to be one of the first and set the rest an example."23
Peace, for the Quaker, is not accomplished by having a strong defense policy--a powerful military force in reserve. We are commanded by God to love our enemies and to overcome evil with good not with overwhelming force. Quaker pacificism reflected a theist position: peace cannot be brought about by human action but only by the power of God working through people.
Other critics of the Quaker view on pacificism say that it is impossible. Violence and war are necessary evils. The choice, they argue, is not between doing good and doing evil but between doing the lesser and the greater evil. The Quaker reply is that Christianity is a religion for this world and that no support for the view that its principles are impossible to follow can be found in the scriptures. Nor is it true that we are doomed to choose the lesser of two evils. When the Quaker refuses to fight the result may be imprisonment or martyrdom but neither of these, in the eyes of the Quaker, is an evil. The Christian is expected to behave in a Christ-like manner, seeking to give rather than get, overcoming evil by gentleness and love rather than force, and preferring to suffer from injustice rather than acting unjustly.
The Quaker pacifist cannot, however, be merely passive in life. Pacifism requires enormous effort. To overcome evil, it must be fought with every fiber of one's being. Peace is not possible where injustice and hate are present. To prevent war, to prevent evil in general, means removing the conditions that support and lead to it. Rufus Jones writes:
Anyone who is intending to claim his own right to walk the path of peace must take also his share of the heavy burden of trying to build a world in which the gentler forces of kindness, love, sympathy, and cooperation are put into function.24The task is a difficult one but neither George Fox nor the Quaker leaders that followed him expounded explicit prohibitions against self-defense. Fox, at least, displayed a tolerant and lenient attitude to those who "following their light" were not brought immediately to the Quaker view. Eventually, it was felt, they would come to see the truth. There is an old tradition that William Penn continued to wear his sword after becoming a Quaker. When Penn asked Fox if it was wrong for him to wear it Fox answered, "Wear it as long as though canst", i.e., wear it as long as your own conscience--your own view of Christian service permits it.
In July of 1787 the Continental Congress enacted the Northwest Ordinance setting forth the conditions underwhich the territories west of the Alleghenies and north of the Ohio River would be settled and eventually become states. Article six of that docu-ment was of major importance to Quakers living in southern slave holding states. Article six reads, in part, "there shall neither be slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory." Actual settlement of Ohio was delayed however until the indians there were nearly exterminated and peace was established with the signing of the Treaty of Greenville in 1795.
Beginning in 1800 Quakers moved to Ohio in massive numbers . They came mainly from the Mid-Atlantic states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey and the southern states of Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia. The greatest concentrations of Quaker settlement were in a three county area in eastern Ohio consisting of Columbiana, Jefferson and Belmont Counties and in a five county area in southwest Ohio.
Prior to 1800 significant Quaker populations existed in Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, and while many of these Friends owned slaves those that did not suffered as a result of living in an economy that depended upon slavery rather than upon hired workers and in a culture that devalued manual labor. The injuries to the slaves were obvious but Quakers observed the corrupting influence of slaveholding on the slaveholders as well. John Woolman noted that the minds of slave owners
were brought to an inward desolation, and instead of the spirit of meekness, gentleness, and heavenly wisdom, which are the necessary companions of the true sheep of Christ, a spirit of fierceness and the love of dominion too generally prevailed.25With Woolman leading the way, Quakers were among the first to recognize the evils of slavery and, in Woolman's words, "that though we made slaves of the negroes...that liberty was the natural right of all men equally".26 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting was the leader in the antislavery campaign. In 1758 it moved to disown anyone who bought or sold slaves. Rhode Island in 1773 proposed to forbid the holding of slaves. Although civil law stood in the way of it, Virginia Yearly Meeting in 1779 urged Friends to manumit their slaves and when the law was changed in 1784 making freeing of slaves possible, Friends were then required to free their slaves. It was accomplished within a decade. In North Carolina, however, the law did not permit manumission and when slaves were freed they were promptly seized by government authorities and resold.
Although it was a risky venture, Quakers in the south and well as in the north were under instructions from their yearly and monthly meetings to educate slaves as well as freed African-Americans. Where they could do so, they established schools for slaves or included them in existing classrooms. The Quaker concern for the just treatment of the African-American is no less astounding today than it was in the 19th century. Quakers believed that the freed slave was due reparations or compensation for his years of forced uncompensated labor. When Abraham Lincoln advocated reparative compensation he thought it was not the ex-slave that should be compensated for his labor but the former slave holder for his loss of property. Compensation to the African-American was rejected by the federal government after the civil war and, even after an additional one hundred years of employment and education discrimination, still rejected today.
The desire to escape a morally bankrupt culture based on a system of treating people of African descent as less than human beings is perhaps sufficient to explain why so many Quakers from the south left their homes to settle in Ohio but it does not explain why so many others from Pennsylvania and New Jersey left their homes to start their lives over again on the frontier. There were probably a number of factors that in varying degrees were involved in causing the migration: social, economic, political, and religious. Ohio was widely viewed as an American Paradise and the early arrivals were eager to convey that message to those back home. An anonymous tract was typical of many others of the period:
...this territory of the Ohio enjoys every advantage of climate and soil which is to be found in the back parts of Virginia, but in a much higher degree, the soil being far more fertile, and the climate more pleasant and more wholesome.27Before a move could be made, Quakers were required to receive the consent of the Monthly Meeting to which they belonged. Economic motives were not viewed favorably. There is very little written about the motives for the migration of Quaker families from southeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey to Ohio. Cheap land was certainly an important motivating factor but the desire to establish a religious community apart from the rest of the world where their unique beliefs could flourish was also probably an important factor. This theory is that Ohio and the Northwest Territory represented a new Zion to rural Quakers from the Delaware River Valley.
Quakers had set up a religious community in the new world safe from the persecutions suffered in England. But by the late 18th century, having become a minority in their new world communities in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and having lost political power in a world inexorably becoming more secular and cosmopolitan, they had given up hope of creating a universal religion and some of them turned instead to create a new more insular, more exclusive society on the frontier where they could live according to the principles of their faith without outside interference. Under such conditions they could tighten control over their members.
Whether this was the primary motive to move to the frontier is open to debate but it is clear that Quakers intended to set up their own spiritual communities separate from the world. Issac Baldwin settled in Indiana with this intention: "When I and other Friends came here to found this New Settlement we came with the fixed determination to keep ourselves and our homes unspotted from the world."29
Whatever their motives, Friends poured into Ohio in the first two decades of the 19th century. In eastern Ohio the first Quaker meetings were established in 1800 in Belmont County located just across the Ohio River from Wheeling, Virginia. These meetings, one at Short Creek and one at Concord, were the result of the removal of an entire meeting--Trent River Monthly Meeting--and part of another both from North Carolina. Quakers from the Delaware River Valley area (i.e., from eastern Pennsyl-vania and New Jersey) settled 50 miles north of Concord where the first gathering of Friends, at Salem in Columbiana County, occurred in 1804. By 1806, 800 Quaker families had arrived in Ohio after passing through the Quarterly Meetings at Redstone and Westland, Pennsylvania. By 1825, 5,000 Friends from the Delaware Valley area and from ten to twelve thousand Quakers from the south had moved to Ohio. For nearly twenty years after their arrival, the Quakers were the sole organized religious presence in the growing community of Salem.
George Hunt in his History of Salem and the Immediate Vicinity writes:
The first immigrants arrived in 1802 and 1803; of whom, in this connection might be mentioned Samuel Davis, Elisha Schooley, Jacob Painter, Caleb Shinn, Zaccheus Test, and Joseph Wright, with their families. Their nearest meeting was then Middleton, about twelve miles east. ...In the summer of 1804, the first meeting was held--in the house of Samuel Davis.... About a dozen persons assembled and held a silent meeting.30At this original meeting, which no doubt included Zaccheus Test, Elisha Schooley, and their families, an interesting event occurred. After the meeting had started an indian chief and his wife entered the house.
On receiving an explanation of what was being held, they took seats and sat in a respectful manner until the Friends shook hands. The red strangers had no communication to offer in the meeting, but, being invited to take dinner, the chief was so well satisfied with what he had eaten that he exclaimed, "Go six days," meaning, without eating any more.31Horace Mack in his History of Columbiana County relates much the same story:
The first settlers of the town [of Salem] were members of the religious Society of Friends, who first gathered for religious purposes, in the summer of 1804, in the log cabin of Samuel Davis.... A little later, Samuel Davis donated to the society two acres of ground for meetinghouse purposes.... On this plat of ground a double log cabin was erected, the chinks whereof were stopped with wooden blocks and mortar, and was used for meetings and school purposes.32John Straughan (or Strawn)33 and Zadok Street began the project of starting the town of Salem and they were soon joined by Samuel Davis and Israel Gaskill. The two acres of land that Samuel Davis donated to the Friends were located on the north side of Main Street (today's East State St.). Another two acres were donated on the south side of Main Street by Israel Gaskill. The first Friends meetinghouse--a double log cabin-- was built on the north side of Main Street on the land that Samuel Davis donated. So, the minutes of Salem Monthly Meeting that are contained here, through the August 12, 1806 meeting, record the transactions held in this log meetinghouse.
We can only speculate what this log meetinghouse was like. It was probably built in a day or two by the members of the meeting in the fashion of a barn raising. The floor was probably made from rough hewn boards cut from split logs with an axe. Or it may have had a packed dirt floor like many of the cabins of settlers. Men and women met together during ordinary worship meetings but when business meetings were held once a month the men and women met separately. In many of the meet-inghouses--the Quakers never referred to them as 'churches' --the room was divided by an elaborate set of hinged shutters that were raised and lowered by a mechanical device consisting of gears and cranks. However, in the log meetinghouse at Salem they probably merely hung up blankets to create a temporary partition to separate the men's from the women's business meetings. In any case, Quaker meetinghouses tended to conform to a simple basic style and surely this double log cabin conformed to that pattern. Certainly it was simple in any case. We can hope that it included a couple of fireplaces for warmth in the winter.
While the ordinary church tends to be narrow (side to side) and long (front to back), the old Quaker meetinghouse was just the opposite--it was wider than it was deep. In the front were two doors, one on either side--the door on the right was for the men and the door on the left for the women. The benches for the members faced the back of the room where another row or two of benches were located--called the ministers' gallery where the elders and ministers sat. These benches were placed so the elders and ministers faced the members. No pictures, no curtains, no alter, no cross, nor any other decoration that might distract or disturb one's meditation were permitted.
Notice that on page eleven of the minutes reference is made to building a "meeting-house" at Salem to "accommodate a Quarter" or rather a Quarterly Meeting. This house was built of brick in the summer of 1807, according to Mack, on the south side of Main street on the land donated by Israel Gaskill. This meetinghouse, built nearly opposite the log meetinghouse, was 25 feet by 50 feet and one story high. The old log meetinghouse continued to be used as a school. The town was still very much a frontier town. After the mortar for the foundation was laid and left to cure overnight, the masons discovered the next morning that a bear had walked through their work and left its foot tracks. The foundation, apparently, was not well laid and after about thirty years cracks appeared in the wall due to settling. In 1845 a new meetinghouse was built.
A year before the establishment of the Salem Monthly Meeting the Salem Particular Meeting was established in the 10th month of 1804 under the direction of the Redstone Quarterly Meeting at Brownsville, Pennsylvania. The structure of Quaker meetings is important to understand since several passages in the minutes of the Salem Monthly Meeting refer to quarterly meetings, yearly meetings and the setting up of a new particular meeting at Springfield, Ohio.
The Particular meeting is the ordinary 1st day meetings or Sunday morning meetings of worship held every Sunday of the year. Typically it also held a worship meeting in the evening in the middle of the week, usually on the fifth day. Once a month, after one of the worship meetings, the shutters would be lowered (or other means used) to divide the meetinghouse into two rooms, and the leading or "weighty" male and female members of the meeting, including the elders, overseers and ministers, would gather in preparative meetings, the men on one side the women on the other, to determine or prepare the matters of concern which were sufficiently "weighty" or serious to be referred to the monthly meetings--the men's monthly meeting and the women's monthly meeting. Generally, no records were kept of the proceedings of the prepara-tive meetings.
Monthly meetings were composed of the representatives of two, three, or four preparative meetings and as the name indicates, these meetings were held monthly. While all meetings of Friends were worship meetings, the primary purpose of the monthly meeting was to pursue business matters and careful records of them were kept. Rufus Jones points out, however, that
by the "world's" methods, all our business could have been transacted in twenty minutes. We often spent two hours at it, because every affair had to be soaked in a spiritual atmosphere until the dew of religion settled on it. 34Every item under consideration would require an appropriate measure of meditation. As on the preparative level, the monthly meetings consisted of two meetings--one for the men and one for the women.
The men's meeting was not entirely separate from the women's meeting. If a matter arose that was of concern to both then a committee consisting of representatives from both the men's and women's meeting might be appointed to consider it. For example, on page 14 of the minutes a report is offered on a proposal for a new building to house a quarterly meeting (the future Salem Quarterly Meeting) and that report is signed on behalf of the committee by James McConnell, Zaccheus Test, Catharine Hannah, and Elizabeth Wright.
A step above the preparative meeting and the monthly meeting is the quarterly meeting. The quarterly meeting consists of the appointed representatives from the several monthly meetings that are under its jurisdiction. Not only did the appointed representatives attend the meeting but any Quaker in good standing could and did attend these meetings that usually lasted several days. Indeed, the occasion of these meetings was generally a time for festive reunions among family and friends that included large picnics on the meetinghouse grounds. Those attending from out of town would stay with friends or relatives. It was not unusual for young men and women to form attachments during these visits. Warnings were issued from time to time about young men returning home in their buggies late at night.
As the name implies the quarterly meeting met every three months or four times a year. The quarterly meeting had the authority to set up new monthly meetings as the need arose. As communities grew more particular meetings were set up followed soon by the creation of new monthly meetings.
Quarterly meetings addressed those issues or concerns that were considered too "weighty" for the monthly meetings to resolve including matters of doctrine and policy. If the matter was sufficiently weighty then the quarterly meeting would refer the matter to the yearly meeting. Obviously, the names of the various meetings can be confus-ing. Reference simply to the Quaker meeting without specification whether the reference is to the particular meeting or to a monthly meeting usually means the meeting for worship--the particular meeting.
The yearly meeting was at the top of the hierarchy of meetings. It met, again as the name implies, once a year. The first yearly meeting in America was established in 1661 at Newport, Rhode Island. After that, yearly meetings in America were established as follows: Baltimore Yearly Meeting 1672, Virginia Yearly Meeting (1673), Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (1681), New York Yearly Meeting (1695), North Carolina Yearly Meeting (1698), Ohio Yearly Meeting (1813), Indiana Yearly Meeting (1821), Western (1858), Iowa (1863), Kansas (1872), Wilmington, Ohio (1892), Oregon (1892), California (1895), and Nebraska (1908).
The names of the various yearly meetings suggest the area over which the meeting held authority but this is not quite accurate. The Ohio Yearly Meeting covered western Pennsylvania and western Virginia in addition to Ohio. And when the Indiana Yearly meeting was established in 1821, the region of Ohio west of the Scioto River (which courses through the middle of the state) became a part of the Indiana Yearly Meeting. Until the establishment of the Ohio Yearly Meeting, all meetings in Ohio and western Pennsylvania were within the domain of the Baltimore Yearly meeting.
Each yearly meeting was autonomous. Although the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting was attended by Friends throughout the nation and its decisions, as were the communica-tions from the London, England Meeting, were considered as being of the utmost importance to all American Quakers, there was never a central meeting or legislative body that could decide matters of theology or policy ("discipline") binding on all the other Yearly Meetings. As the list of yearly meetings indicates, no yearly meetings were created in the eighteenth century while the nineteenth century marked an era of rapid westward expansion. The Ohio Yearly Meeting was the first yearly meeting created in over a century and the first one created west of the Allegheny mountains. Many more soon followed.
After reporting that the representatives from the preparative meetings "appeared", i.e., were present, the first item of business of the Salem Monthly Meeting was the appointment of the clerk--the person who would lead the meeting and record the minutes. A committee was appointed to propose "a suitable friend to serve this meeting as clerk...." At the next meeting it was recorded that Zaccheus Test was selected and appointed clerk. The appointment may have been arranged ahead of time since the minutes to the first meeting are already in his handwriting.
The reader of these minutes will notice a complete lack of reference to elections and votes. Although votes were never cast, Friends meetings were democratic. But majorities did not decide issues--minorities were never overruled. Decisions were arrived at by consensus. The meeting was expected to find the truth as they con-sidered a matter of concern and if consensus was not reached then it was concluded that the truth had not yet been found and the concern would be continued to a later meeting.
The clerk sat at a table at the front of the meeting. In the case of the men's meetings (the women had their own clerk), he would have on the table the record book, a copy of the book of discipline and certificates of new members that would be read at the beginning of the meeting. He would listen closely to the discussion to discover if unity on an issue emerged. Throughout these minutes the reader will notice frequent use of the term 'unite' meaning that the meeting is united or in agreement on a matter. When the clerk sensed that unity on an issue had been achieved then he would compose and read a draft minute expressing the unity or the degree of unity he thought had been achieved. Rufus Jones describes the scene. After a period of silence
...the clerk would rise and say: 'It appears that it is the sense of the meeting,' to do thus and so. Spontaneously from all parts of the house would come from variously pitched voices: 'I unite with that,' 'So do I,' 'That is my mind,' 'I should be easy to have it so.'Modification was always possible and if unity was not fully present then the meeting would go as far as possible but no further than "unity" permitted. There was no appeal to "reason", to argument, to authority, or to majority rule. A decision was ac-cepted when the group felt it was appropriate or satisfactory to truth. If the draft minute was acceptable to the meeting then it was later copied and became a part of the minutes of the meeting.Occasionally there would be a Friend who had 'a stop in his mind,' or who 'didn't feel easy' to have things go as the rest believed they should go. If he was a "weighty Friend," whose judgment had been proved through a long past, his "stop" would effectually settle the matter; but if he was a persistent and somewhat cantankerous objector, the clerk would quietly announce that the "weight of the meeting" seemed decidedly favorable to action.35
Zaccheus Test served a one-year term as the first clerk of the Salem Monthly Meeting. The meetings during his term were held on the following dates:
| Sept. 17, 1805 | Jan. 14, 1806 | May 13, 1806 |
| Oct. 15, 1805 | Feb. 11, 1806 | June 17, 1806 |
| Nov. 12, 1805 | Mar. 11, 1806 | July 15, 1806 |
| Dec. 17, 1805 | April 15, 1806 | Aug. 12, 1806 |
It is the minutes of these meetings that are transcribed and contained here. In addition to these minutes, the minutes of the September, 1806 meeting and part of the minutes to the October 1806 meeting , in the hand of the new clerk--Jesse Holloway--are also included.