USA > Ohio > Miami County > West Milton > Centennial anniversary of West Branch Monthly Meeting of Friends, 1807-1907 > Part 6
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The advantages for an education offered here were
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sought by others besides those residing near for stu- dents from a distance were often found in attendance. This school drew from no public fund for its support, but the fathers went down in their pockets to pay the tuition of their children. And in this building of one room, 18x24 feet, not only were the common branches taught, but those of the high school of today. Many yet living can recall with pleasure the memories of those happy days as their thoughts revert to the spot made almost sacred by a thousand pleasant associa- tions.
The records of these early days tell frequently of the attendance of traveling ministers, some of these coming long distances and invariably with the added endorsement that their company and gospel labor had been to their edification. Also the record is made that the resident ministers were diligent in their calling, preaching the gospel both near and far. The ministers of these early days as well as of later years, were then, Susannah Hollingsworth, John Simpson, Enoch Pear- son, Wm. Neall, Abijah Jones and John Jones, and later Enos Pray, Elizabeth Bryan, Juliann McCool, Thomas Jay, Smith Gregg, Margaret Gregg, Sarah Compton and Joseph and Enos Pemberton. Memories of these days call to mind how these fathers and moth- ers, in the church, so faithful in their attendance at meeting, sat in their accustomed places, their counte- nances betokening their reverent waiting upon God and holding communion with Him who is invisible, even when no words were expressed.
Oh, the solemnity of those meetings either with or without vocal ministry! Near the close of these rev- erent periods, some one, whose duty it was, would be heard expressing the desire not to break the solemnity overspreading the meeting, but would suggest that the time was at hand to attend to the business interests of the church.
Who will undertake to measure the influence for good exacted by the establishment of West Branch Church and its multiplied activities, not only upon the people living during all these years but may we not hope upon succeeding generations ?
MEMORIES OF FIFTY YEARS.
BY WM. A. JONES, WEST MILTON, OHIO.
We have heard the story of pre-historic West Branch; how men with heroic spirit left the homes of their nativity and braved the dangers incident to travel at that time, to found homes in the then un- broken wilderness of the west. In that story we are told of the laying of the foundation and the prepara- tion of material for the building of West Branch Monthly Meeting.
In the story of the first fifty years we are told of the rapid development of the country, the evolution of West Branch Monthly Meeting from the small band that assembled in a crude log cabin a hundred years ago to the strong, vigorous meeting it was at the end of fifty years. We have had the story of the dawn, the sun rise and the bright light of midday. My story must be of the afternoon, the evening and the sunset.
I will state here that what I say will refer mostly to West Branch particular meeting ; the place to which I was first carried in my mother's arms in the meet- ing house two miles south of here on the ground where the first monthly meeting was held a hundred years ago.
Memories of fifty years take me back to when I was a very small child. My first recollection of West Branch Meeting seems like a dream. How old I was I can not tell, but it was when I sat upon my moth- er's lap. As memory reaches back to that remote per- iod it seems like a century has intervened.
If I were gifted with the skill of an artist and could place upon canvass a picture of West Branch Meeting as it was stamped upon my memory fifty years ago, it would be as follows :
At the head of the meeting sat David Mote, one of the leading men of the meeting at that time. On the women's side Mary Brown sat at the head while clustered close around her were Rebecca Haskett, Mary Jay, Elizabeth Thaver, Mariam Mote and Rebecca Jenks. On the second seat facing sat a row of old men. I can not name them all but can mention Denny Tav, Andy Sinks, Solomon Yount and Noah Hoover. I know but little about these men, but as they appear to me after a long separation I would judge that they
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were men of sterling integrity. There is one of them that I feel I can not pass without making more spe- cial mention, that of Denny Jay. I shall never forget his kindly face and hearty shake of the hand he gave the boys at the close of meeting. We will now pass to another period.
The row of old men have disappeared and their places are filled with another class. The impressions of a child will give way to those of a boy twelve years of age, an age when a boy is not inclined to look upon the serious side of life, but rather upon the pleasure side as being best adapted to his nature.
Were I to draw a picture of West Branch Meeting now it would be quite different from what it was ten years ago. The coloring would be of different tints.
The perspective would present a different view. This view is taken from the sunny period of memories of fifty years. The meetings at this time were perhaps at its strongest period. Large congregations met there every Sabbath, some of them coming several miles. I will not attempt to give a lengthy account of the per- sonnel of the meeting, but will only mention some of those with whom I was best acquainted.
I will first mention Thomas Jay, who after the death of David Mote, sat head of the meeting. He was a man of remarkable physical and spiritual energy, and was possessed with a spirit of devotion which made him a power in directing the affairs of the meeting. His sermons while not composed of flights of oratory, or polished with fine touches of rhetoric, were given with power and bore evidence that they came direct from the heart.
I will next mention L. S. and Charity Mote. Smith Mote, as he was usually called, was a unique char- acter in the meeting. No one was closer identified with the meeting through out a long life, than he. He possessed a wonderful fund of knowledge of local church history and at the age of 86 years his mem- orv of early events was not impaired. He outlived all his old associates.
Another man who added great strength to the meet- ing was Smith Gregg, who with a large family came into the limits of the meeting about forty years ago. He was a minister of ability and was one of the noble men of his dav. He had a large family when he came here, but before he died, he saw all but one of
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them pass to the silent beyond; most of them before they reached the age of twenty. The remaining one has died since. He was a man of sorrow and ac- quainted with grief; but he bore it in meek submis- s1011, never wavering from the path of duty.
Time forbids that I should any more than mention the names of others. They were Samuel and Anna Jones, Linus and Hannah Mote, Henry and Rachel Compton, Aaron and Matilda Macy, Enoch and Lydia Ann Jones, Thomas and Louvena Haskett, Riley and Charlott Davis, Pharos and Dalitha Ann Compton, Benjamin and Dorcas Pearson, David and Mary Coate, David and Eunice Jones, Eunice Kendall, Deb- orah Mote, Sarah Jay, Nancy Pearson, Rhoda Pear- son and many others with whom I was not so well ac- quainted.
I feel that I can not dismiss from further notice these boyhood friends without giving expression to the high regard in which they are held by one who at that time they were forming the character for future life. Though their lips have long been silent they are speaking today in audible tones in the lives of those with whom they came in contact during the for- mative period of their lives. I feel that I scarcely do them justice when I say that they were true to themselves, their country and their God.
I have described the meeting as it was forty years ago.
I will now attempt to trace the history of its de- cline and show some of the causes leading to it. To one not acquainted with its history it will seem strange that a meeting possessing all the elements of strength should so soon be stricken with disease, decay and death. The disintegrating forces began their work just prior to, and during the Civil War. I might mention here that several of the young men of the meeting enlisted in the army, which was a violation of the discipline and made them liable to disownment, but the committee appointed to deal with them brought in a magnanimous report and they were allowed to retain their membership. The wisdom of this act has never been questioned for they not only made valiant soldiers in fighting for their country, but after the close of the war some of them became active mem- bers of the meeting and one of them has been a val- ued and able minister in the Monthly Meeting ever since.
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The opening up of the settlement of the great wes- tern country caused many families to seek homes in that then almost unknown country previous to the war. After the close of the war, and the soldiers returned home, the reaction that is always sure to fol- low a great crisis was upon the country and how to meet it was a problem the people were confronted with at that time. The business of the country had been running at a tremendous high tension and now the time for slowing down had come. Everything had to be adjusted to meet new conditions. The number of laborers was increasing with a constantly decreas- ing demand for labor. Fortunately for the country at that time, the building of the Union Pacific railroad had opened for settlement, in the great west and northwest, a vast empire and the tide of emigration started in that direction and assumed such propor- tions that it looked for awhile as though some sec- tions of the east would almost be depopulated.
The Friends from West Branch Monthly Meeting were among the first to get caught in this tide and they were swept into Kansas, Iowa and nearly all of the western states until I question whether you can find a quarterly meeting west of the Mississippi river that does not have in it some one from West Branch Monthly Meeting. This exodus continued for several years, not so much among the older as the younger people, until there was scarcely a family not repre- sented in other states. This was especially noticeable among the young men. Most of them being raised upon the farm, seeing the great opportunity to secure cheap homes in this new country, followed the ex- ample of their ancestors and went to establish a new civilization among the savages of the wild west.
Other young men to whom farm life had ceased to be attractive left home to engage in other pursuits. In a few years West Branch Meeting was mostly composed of elderly people. From some of the large families the young people were nearly all gone. The Jays, the Hasketts, the Motes and the Davises, and those whose parents had largely directed the affairs of the meeting were all gone. Though the meeting remained full of life and apparently of strength, it needed no prophet to portray the future. Its ranks were being rapidly depleted with no one to fill the vacancy.
I have given one of the principal causes for the de-
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cline of the meeting. There were other causes though of a different character which proved equally disas- trous. There was quite a body of Friends living a few. miles northwest who desired a more convenient place to attend meeting. In 1866 they made application to have a new meeting set up, which request was granted by the Monthly Meeting, and Center Meeting was es- tablished and a meeting house was erected about two miles northwest of Milton. This took away about half
of the membership from the parent meeting. The Monthly Meeting was held alternately between the two places. Shorn of half of its membership the meet- ing continued with unabated interest, but death was making rapid inroads upon its aged members.
The Quarterly Meetings which had always been held here and were occasions for remarkable gatherings began to shift to other places. The prestige that West Branch Meeting had always held of being the center of Friends influence throughout southwestern Ohio was giving way and it was plainly written that it was only a very short time until it would have to yield its prominent position to another. The glory of the past could not check its rapid decline and the future con- tained no star of hope.
The Quarterly Meetings were always looked for- ward to with great interest, as it was usually visited by ministers of distinction. Among those of my earli- est recollection were David Tatum, Eli Newlen, Isaac Jay, Jehu Jessup, Daniel Hill, Sarah Ann Linton and a few years later Robert and John Henry Douglas, Calvin Pritchard, Jane Jones, Ascenith Clark and others. These meetings were times of considerable spiritual uplift and the social features connected with them I fear are lost to the present generation. As be- fore stated West Branch was now beginning to lose its Quarterly Meeting, as it was held at Van Wert a part of the time.
I have but one other cause to narrate, and my story is ended. It is said that it is the last pound added that causes the mighty cable to break; it is also the last blood taken from the body that causes death. The final and fatal blow to West Branch Meeting is about to be given.
It had withstood the exodus which took from it its young life, it had survived the separation of its men- bership into two distinct bodies, it had heroically re- sisted the storms of adversity, but like the giant oak
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who has been swayed by the tempests for centuries, yields at last and falls to the ground.
The story is brief. A meeting was established at West Milton; a Monthly Meeting house was built there; the Monthly and Quarterly Meetings were tak- en there; Thomas Jay moved to Milton; Smith Gregg also attended there as well as many others. West Branch Meeting was left without ministers and with but very few members. The last picture to be drawn is both heroic and pathetic. Heroic from the stand- point of the great effort that was made by a very small number to keep up the meeting and pathetic from their sad faces and almost broken hearts when they saw that their efforts were in vain.
I can not write these last lines without being touched with a feeling of sadness. Though not one of the ac- tors in these last scenes I was so closely connected with them that they made a deep impression upon my mind. The meeting was now reduced to but four persons who made any effort to keep up the meeting. They were Smith and Charity Mote, David and Samuel Jones.
It was the place they had attended meeting from childhood and to them it had become a sacred shrine. It was so closely connected with their whole life's his- tory that it had become a part of them. It is not strange that they would cling to it as they would to life. Every Sabbath during the summer they could be seen wending their way to the old church, some- times all four of them, sometimes three and occasion- ally only two, but no matter as to the number, they never failed to have meeting and I have frequently heard them speak of what a good meeting they had.
The meetings continued during the summer months and into the cool days of autumn. No provision was made for warming the house, and the end must soon come.
One cool, gray Sabbath day in late October when the trees were casting off their mantle of green and death had placed its seal upon all vegetable life, David Jones wended his way to the old meeting house as had been his custom for seventy-five years. When he ar- rived there no hand was there to greet him and no heart to cheer him. He entered the meeting house alone and within its dark, damp walls he sat for awhile in silence. He arose and with a sad heart departed. The wick had burned to the socket, the light went out.
West Branch particular meeting has passed into his-
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tory. The old meeting house stands as a solemn re- minder of what was once a power for good with no. Nehemiah to return and rebuild its wall or an Ezra to replenish its treasury, but like a dead planet it has entered upon its long rest.
West Branch Monthly Meeting still exists, full of life and full of hope and today we celebrate its hun- dredth anniversary. Our forefathers had burdens to bear that we do not, yet we are not without responsi- bilities. Must we attempt to duplicate the dead past or must we accept the higher ideals as God is reveal- ing them in this the Twentieth Century? If we follow the message as God is revealing it, ever keeping in view the divine Christ, West Branch Monthly Meeting at the end of another century will have achieved great- er things than in the past.
7 P. M. REMINISCENCES OF WEST BRANCH. ROBERT W. DOUGLAS, VERSAILLES, OHIO.
Impromptu-No paper.
I think we all felt our hearts touched this afternoon when our dear friend, William A. Jones, so beauti- fully alluded to old West Branch particular meeting, and in his paper gave us an account of its death and burial.
I was just thinking that while we not only believed in the death and burial, we also believed in a Resur- rection, and I thought since he preached on the Death and Burial of old West Branch that if I was to preach tonight, it would be on the Resurrection of West Branch Monthly and Quarterly Meeting, and that it would still live and its usefulness grow as the years went by.
My reminiscences of, and associations with, West Branch Monthly and Quarterly Meeting, go back a great many years. I came here some time before the war and I had very pleasant associations with the mem- bers of West Branch Quarterly Meeting in those early days.
They did not have the automobile at the church door at that time, as we have today. They did not have the steam railway nor the interurban line. We either had to go to meeting on horse back or walk. When I came up here at that time, I came to visit Wil- liam Jay, a beloved minister of the Gospel. He and
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I were very close friends and conducted a series of meetings together. We went to Pleasant Hill, Cov- ington and several other points together. I always thought his wife could make the best cherry pie I ever ate in all my life. We held meetings together at old Sugar Grove meeting house, but now that church has been torn down and a new one erected in the village of Frederick. I cannot very well talk about reminis- cences of West Branch and some of the early history of the Friends' church in Ohio without talking some- what of myself, but I do not wish to do it in any sel- fish way. I am seventy-three years old and at that age am considered a "back number." I am one of the "Has Beens." Do you know that I am one of the old- est recognized pastors of the Friends' church? I am the first minister that ever performed a marriage cere- mony in the Friends' church. The old way was to marry in meeting, a beautiful ceremony that prevailed in those times.
We had moved to Wilmington, the County Seat of Clinton County, Ohio, where I started in to be a min- ister in the Society of Friends, devoting all my time to church work. It was the first church amongst Friends that had a regular pastor. Well, I got along pretty well, the Friends all stood by me, and we would have great crowds come to attend our meetings. We had the services in Clinton Hall to start with, but I thought it would wear out in a few weeks, but the meeting continued to grow and the hall was crowded every Sabbath. There was a flourishing Methodist meeting there when we organized and the pastor of that church afterwards became one of my warm per- sonal friends, and I filled his pulpit for him at differ- ent times. As the Friends grew and prospered, a little rivalry developed between the two congregations and in talking with this minister one day upon the street, he laughingly twitted me with the fact that I was no preacher, for said he, "If you were, you could per- form the marriage ceremony." He also said that the Society of Friends was not a church at all, etc.
Well, the result of the bantering was, that I told him if he would go with me down to the Probate Court, I would prove to him that I was a preacher and that the Society of Friends was a church and that I would get a license to perform the marriage ceremony the same as any other church or minister. When we arrived at the Court House, and went before the Judge,
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I told him I was a minister of the Society of Friends and that I wanted permission to solemnize marriages in the State of Ohio, and the Probate Judge said : "Mr. Douglas, I have no hesitancy in saying that you are a minister of the Gospel, and I will gladly give you per- mission to solemnize marriages in the State of Ohio, the same as other ministers in other churches."
That was the first license ever granted to a minister amongst Friends to solemnize marriages, and at that time it was considered quite an innovation in the Friends' church. There are too many scenes and stories that come trooping through my mind, to be spoken of at this time. I shall continue to preach the blessed Gospel as long as I live and hope at the close of life that I can truly say, that I have kept the faith and fought a good fight.
THE QUAKERISM OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
ELBERT RUSSELL, PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL INSTRUCTION, EARLHAM COLLEGE, RICHMOND, INDIANA.
On an occasion such as this it would be most pleas- ant to give one's self up to eulogy of the past. But it is an interest in the future that brings me to take part in this program. As an oarsman looks backward at the shore he is leaving in order to shape his course as he rows away from it, so we shall consider the Quakerism of the Nineteenth Century, not to praise or to blame it, but to secure from its experiences guid- ance for the present and future.
Whether studying from books the history of the past century of Quakerism in this country, or listening to reminiscences of it as on this occasion, one is im- pressed first of all by the moral heroism and rugged- ness of the early pioneers. We feel this heroism as we see them moving from the Carolinas to escape the blight of slavery, coming to this land amid perils of savages and wild beasts, hewing out homes in the wild- erness and denying themselves the comforts of life in order to build up churches and establish schools for themselves and their children. These pioneers were most conscientious in all matters of life, carrying their religion, at whatever cost, into their daily living, main- taining in their strange customs a living testimony to
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its spirituality and democracy, interested everywhere in humar. welfare and philanthropy. They were kind and self-sacrificing, not only toward their neighbors, but their hearts beat in sympathy for the suffering in the world at large, and the slave and the Indian were objects of their philanthropy. Their moral heroism shows itself in the sacrifices they made to keep up their meetings and to establish schools even while their own homes were not yet provided with the ordinary com- forts of life. The stories told by our grandfathers, of the long rides to meeting through the woods on horseback, with the wife behind, and a child in front, help us realize what it cost these pioneers in time and hardship to maintain such meetings as the one founded here at West Branch. We admire at the same time their rugged independence and self-sufficiency. Their moral heroism was not that of impractical dreamers, nor their philanthropy the result of weakly sentimental- ism.
Their own hands were able to provide the necessi- ties of life, and in their religious work and worship they were self-supporting.
As we follow the career of these Quaker pioneers, we find that their religion comes by and by into "peril of change." A conscientious people are always in dan- ger of missing the essential point in the midst of a changing life ; of clinging to forms that have lost their meaning. The peculiarities of speech and dress and manner which these pioneers brought with them into the wilderness had once been testimonies to the equal- ity of men and the spirituality of worship, but the changes which a half century in the new country brought, steadily robbed them of their significance. Yet these changes came so gradually that a large propor- tion of the Friends did not realize their extent and consequences. To maintain the ancient testimonies and to keep up their religious meetings and their schools. had cost them much in the way of sacrifice, but as the forests were felled, the roads opened and the fields brought under cultivation, ease and comfort took the place of the hardships of the pioneer life. The log cabins gave way to frame houses, the homespun to fabrics from the looms. Roads were lengthened and railways built. Commerce brought in the comforts and even the luxuries of the older civilization of the East. As the toil and hardship of pioneer life were succeeded by comfort and wealth, as neighborhoods
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grew in size and the means of travel were increased, it no longer involved so great sacrifices to maintain the religious services and education. It no longer cost so much in time and effort and money to attend meet- ing, to transport and support ministers and to carry on the schools. The wider world was soon to call for new sacrifices from the church for church extension, for missions and philanthropy and pastoral care, but these had not yet come.
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