USA > Ohio > Miami County > West Milton > Centennial anniversary of West Branch Monthly Meeting of Friends, 1807-1907 > Part 12
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and bonds, that it is better to minister to the needs of men than to create a fortune by oppressing the peo- ple. We need to bring a knowledge of the peace of God to men engaged in the great economic struggles of our day, to teach men glutted with outward things but hungry of soul, where to find spiritual bread, and to show them by the light of Christian culture, health, contentment, and joy the vanity of lust and greed. The Quakerism of the future should teach the world. full of the knowledge of outward things, to know the laws and beauties of the spirit, to know, in addition to the laws and forces of the outward world, the God who is the author and builder of this universe and the Father of all.
LETTER FROM ALLEN JAY, WHO WAS UNA- BLE TO BE PRESENT.
RICHMOND, INDIANA, First Mo. 14, 1908.
Anna M. Pemberton DeCou,
My Dear Friend :
In reply to thy letter requesting me to say some- thing in memory of old West Branch, I could write , much about my early recollections of the dear old Friends constituting that Quarterly Meeting. One of my earliest recollections is sitting in the Quarterly Meetings listening to the transaction of the business and of my father sitting at the clerk's table as the clerk of the meeting. On one occasion the business lasted so long that it became necessary to bring in lights so the clerk could see to read and write his min- utes. This to a boy twelve or thirteen years of age, who knew he had to ride horseback seven or eight miles before he could get his dinner, made a lasting impression. Yet I can remember that I took great interest in the business of the meeting and often found myself mentally preparing a minute on the subject be- fore the meeting, to see how it would correspond with the one that the clerk might finally read on the sub- ject. While I did this without any reference to the future, yet I believe it has been a great benefit to me in helping to decide matters that have come be- fore meetings for discipline, in this and other Yearly Meetings, where I have been a member ; but as I turn back to those early days, there is one scene that stands
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out more vividly than any other to me in the history of old West Branch. It was during the "considera- tion of the state of Society," a dear Friend arose with a concern on his mind and for some one who was present. With his face turned to the far corner of the house, where I sat with the young people, he entreated that we should yield our hearts to the tender visita- tion of God's love; he went on with his loving mes- sage, pointing us to the Spirit of God, that would lead us in the way of truth and righteousness. The mes- senger has long since died, but the message is not forgotten. Meeting closed, I rode horseback in com- pany with other young people, but did not enjoy the laughing and foolishness of the crowd. After sup- per I went out in the orchard and sat down to pray. I wanted to kneel down and offer prayer, but my education was such that I felt that none but those called to public prayer should kneel down. After
sitting in silence a while, I arose to go to the house. The burden was so great that I returned and ventured to kneel down, thereby hoping to find peace ; and now I felt that I wanted to open my mouth and speak out the burden of my soul; here again my training was such that I was afraid to speak out unless called to the public ministry. We had been told that we could pray by thinking as well as speaking. I arose and started to the house again, but the burden was so great that I went back and fell on my knees and broke out in vocal expression, confessing my sins and ask- ing God to forgive them. Joy came to my soul, sweet peace filled my heart. After waiting awhile to wipe away the tears of joy from my eyes, I went into the house. I tried to hide my feelings, but a mother's loving heart and watchful eye, saw that something had come over her boy. I remember when the time came to go to bed, she put her hand on my shoulder and remarked that we had had a good meeting today, and she hoped I would rest well. Dear mother wanted to say more, but her failing like others at that time, was to repress all religious conversation. I have often wondered what would have been the result, had she taken me to her embrace and told me. of what the change was that I had passed through. It might have saved me days of darkness and doubt in coming years.
In reviewing this blessed experience, I am often im- pressed with the fact of how little theology there was mixed in the ministry of those dear saints, compared
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with the hair-splitting doctrine and controversies we hear of in some places in our church today ; but after three score years watching the results of the minis- try of that day and comparing it with the dogmatic and superficial teaching of some of the present day, who point us to their own experience in spiritual things, I am ready to say that our fathers' ministry produced men and women of stability of character and noble worth. that I fear sometimes is not produced in the method of the modern revivalist,-men and women who are the salt of the earth. who walk the earth in the fear of the Lord, unspotted from the world.
With this testimony to the worth of old West Branch, I am prepared to say that I believe that many individuals, meetings and places have felt the effect of that Quarterly Meeting in this and other lands dur- ing the last hundred years.
With these pleasant recollections of the past, I am glad to subscribe myself one of her dear children.
Thy sincere friend, ALLEN JAY.
FROM MAHALA (PEARSON) JAY, RICH- MOND, IND.
My life covers almost eighty years of this centennial period. By birth I belonged to Union, the most northern of the three Monthly Meetings that originally made up West Branch Quarterly Meeting, but at some time of my life I have had my membership in each of the other Monthly Meetings, West Branch and Mill Creek, and I have found their members all really one people ; one in their flight from the blight of slavery in the South, and in their struggles to conquer the prime- val forests and make homes for themselves along the west branch of the great Miami River ; one in efforts to establish a community of industrious, moral, God-fear- ing people, with schools for the education of their children, and meetings where they worshipped God and carried on the business of the church in the sim- ple manner of the early Friends.
As a rule families were large in those days and par- ents not only attended meetings themselves but brought their children to meeting twice a week, on First-day morning, and at Union, on Fourth-day morning. On looking back the body of the meeting seems young, many mothers with infants in their arms and large ret-
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icules by their sides which held what the babes might need in two or three hours' absence from home, and toys or food to keep them quiet in meeting. By the side of these young mothers might sit one or two chil- dren a little older than the baby that yet needed par- ental oversight during the meeting hour ; while on the other side of the partition the 'father seated the little boys by him and cared for them from the time they could leave the mother till they attained the coveted age when they could be trusted to sit with other chil- dren. Memory brings up whole benches full of such children, eight or nine years old and upwards to young men and women, occupying the back part of the meeting house. On two raised seats facing the body of the house sat the ministers and elders and other older Friends, the men wearing their broad-brimmed hats and the women looking straight before them through their tunnel-like silk bonnets, but withal calm and sweet and venerable to our young eyes. The younger women often wore bonnets of calico and ging- ham of their own making and both men and women were dressed, in part or entirely, in home-spun clothes, as pioneers must be in those early days.
The meeting house that I remember best, though in later years it gave place to a brick house, was built of hewed logs, in two rooms, with a partition three or four logs high between the rooms. Above these logs was a movable board partition called the shutters, or- dinarily drawn apart up and down, opening up between the rooms, but in business meetings drawn together, separating them. A large wood stove stood across this partition line, the logs being cut away just for- ward of the facing or gallery seats to make room for it and a door between the two rooms. The door of the stove opened into the men's side of the house and they put in the wood and kept up the fires during meet- ings in the winter. On the flat top of the stove many bricks and brick-bats were laid and these when heated the Friends, especially the women, came and carried to where they sat and warmed their feet upon them, for the uncarpeted floor with many an open crack was cold in cold weather. A boarded up lean-to, or porch, eight feet or so wide was built across the entire south side of the meeting house, which furnished a needed room in which wet wraps could be hung during the meeting and to which a mother could withdraw with a fretting child, and, on the men's side, it made a place in
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which stove wood could be stored and kept dry and the saddles brought into off of the horses on a rainy day, for there were no horse or carriage sheds there then. The most of the members rode to meeting on horseback. Not more than two or three carriages were owned by the members in early times.
The meetings were solemn, and often very spiritual, held much in silence. Here as elsewhere among Friends the close of the meeting was indicated by the shaking of hands. The man appointed to time the meeting offered his hand at the proper time to the man at his side, then reached across the partition and shook hands with the woman that sat next to him, and they each shook hands with the next till this symbol of fel- lowship passed along the whole upper seat, and along other seats as feeling or convenience of members prompted.
Not far from the meeting house stood the school house built of undressed stone, in which was taught a summer school for the younger children, while the older ones assisted their parents at home. Their turn to go to school came in the winter when the summer work was done. The school attended the Fourth-day meeting.
From the ample meeting house grounds a graveyard was fenced off, in which the departed of the meeting were laid away, usually with only a rough low stone, lettered it might be on the spot, to mark their graves. There, near the entrance gate may still be read upon these stones the names or the initials of some of the earliest settlers, as those of Samuel and Rebecca Tleague, Benjamin and Esther Pearson. Yes! and many other of the original names in the meeting, as Furnas and Jay, Coppock and Miles, Coate and Peirce, with Elleman, Pemberton, Iddings and others of early and of later date, for this graveyard enlarged is still used in the neighborhood, and tombstones or markers less simple than the early ones now mark many of its newer graves, or replace those of earlier times.
On the east side of the West Branch river, locally known as the Stillwater, lived a good many families of the Friends composing Union Meeting, though the larger settlement and the meeting house were on the west side. The river was unbridged in these earliest days, and in the time of freshets it sometimes rose too high for even these daring settlers to ford. Many a rash act, as it would now seem, was committed in 9
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crossing the river and getting to meeting in those days.
One way of caring for the youth in these early days was by holding "Youths' Meetings," usually appoint- ing them at request of some visiting minister. These were often much appreciated by the young people. I have in mind, as an example of these, one held at request of Jeremiah Hubbard, a somewhat noted min- ister of that day among Friends. His tall, erect form, and his straight, glossy, black hair evidenced the In- dian descent that he claimed. This meeting was held in a grove near West Branch Meeting House. Benches were carried from the meeting house and placed un- der the fine forest trees, and youth from all the meet- ings of the Quarterly Meeting, and from the outside neighborhood, gathered and were seated upon them, or stood near by when the seats were filled. A few older people were in front near where the preacher was to stand. He came forward, drew up his splendid fig- ure to its full height before us. He looked over his audience and at the beautiful grove in which they were seated, then hie raised his eyes still higher and surveyed the heavens from right to left and with a graceful upward wave of his arm as he looked up into the blue sky, he began :
"The spacious firmament on high.
With all the blue ethereal sky," &c.
and with this beginning from a poem that all school children of that day knew, he preached the mighty power, and care and love of God for all, manifested in the works of nature.
Though they felt just pride in the historical. kindly and influential relations of Friends with the Indians of our country, yet it seemed to many a wild project. when it became known in 1837, Moses and Sarah Pearson, of Union Meeting, were planning to go with their family into the then far West and re-establish Friends' work among the Shawnee Indians. These Indians had had care from Friends while living in Ohio. before the government had moved them to lands now included in the state of Kansas, and had asked that they would come and live again among them and teach them. The long journey of seven hundred miles was made by five weeks' travel in a wagon. They opened up a mission home. held meetings, and started a school, making what would now be called an Industrial Mis- sion.
After some more than three years of service, these
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Friends returned home in safety, satisfied that the Lord had led them all their way. May we not be- lieve that this circumstance helped to give a broader outlook to the staid meeting at home? Certainly it implanted in the minds of the missionaries' children a lasting sympathy with the less favored peoples of the earth.
Whatever the influences that have brought it about we rejoice to hear of these meetings of our early home, in the third and fourth generations from their founders, kindling with interest in missions and bring- ing in their offerings heartily for this work of the church for the world.
FROM MARY PIERCE, TROY, OHIO.
My first recollections of old West Branch go back 70 years to the time when father's family went to Quarterly Meeting with Enoch and Polly Pearson in a big wagon. In those days of separate business meet- ings, it was the custom to have a few minutes' inter- mission for lunch between the sessions. The minis- ters of those early days were Denny Jay, Jesse Jones and Daniel Hutchens. After I grew up the young peo- ple went to Quarterly Meeting on horseback. We all wore plain silk bonnets, many of which were made in Richmond.
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