In the Introduction to Professor Carver's "Sociology andSocial Progress" is a passage of great significance to one who would understand Quaker Hill, or indeed any community, especially if it be religiously organized. The writer refers to: "a most important psychic factor, namely the power of idealization. This may be defined, not very accurately, as the power ofmaking believe, a factor which sociologists have scarcely appreciated as yet. We have such popular expressions as 'making a virtue of necessity,' which indicates that there is a certain popular appreciation of the real significance of this power, but we have very little in the way of a scientific appreciation of it.
"One of the greatest resources of the human mind is its ability to persuade itself that what is necessary is noble or dignified or honorable or pleasant. For example, the greater part of the human race has been found to live under conditions of almost incessant warfare. War being a necessity from which there was no escape, it was a great advantage to be able to glorify it, to persuade ourselves that it was a noble calling—in other words, a good in itself.
"Another example is found in the case of work. Work is a necessity as imperious as war ever was. Looked at frankly and truthfully, work is a disagreeable necessity and not a good in itself. Yet by persuading ourselves that work is a blessing, that it is dignified and honorable, our willingness to work is materially increased, and therefore the process of adaptation is facilitated—in other words, progress is accelerated. Among the most effective agencies for the promotion of progress,therefore, must be included those which stimulate this power of idealization. In short, he who in any age helps to idealize those factors and forces upon which the progress of his age depends, is perhaps the most useful man, the most powerful agent in the promotion of human well-being, even though from the strictly realistic point of view he only succeeds in making things appear other than they really are. From the sociologist's point of view this is the mission of art and preaching of all kinds."
The quotation from Professor Carver bears the impression of incompleteness, or rather of suggestiveness. If "making a virtue of necessity" is idealization, is not symbolism also a form of "make believe." If the "ability to persuade oneself that what is necessary is noble or dignified or honorable or pleasant," is exhibited on Quaker Hill as a "most important psychic factor," so is also the idealization of the commonplace the "making believe" that peace and plainness, that simple, old-fashioned dress, and seventeenth century forms of speech are spiritual and are serviceable to the believing mind. The power of idealization is nowhere exhibited as a social force more clearly than in a Quaker community. Professor Carver's word, "make believe," is most accurate. Quakers act with all sincerity the drama of life, using costume and artificial speech, and attaching to all conduct peculiar mannerisms; casting over all action a special veil of complacent serenity; all which are parts in their realization of the ideal of life. Their fundamental principle is that the divine spirit dwells and acts in the heart of every man; not in a chosen few, not in the elect only, but in all hearts. Quaker Hill to this day acts this out, in that every person in the community is known, thought upon, reckoned and estimated by every other. Towns on either side have a neglected population area, but Quaker Hill has none. Pawling in its other neighborhoods has forgotten roads, despised cabins, in which dwell persons for whom nobody cares,drunkards, ill-doers, whom others forget and ignore. Quaker Hill ignores no one. There are, indeed, rich and poor, but the former employ the latter, know their state, enjoy their peculiarities, relish their humor. It has apparently always been so. Elsewhere I have described the measures taken by popular subscription to replace the losses suffered by the humbler members of the community, in the tools of life (see Chapter VII). It need not be said that the poorer members bear the rich in mind. Every person resident on the Hill has come to partake in this sense of the community, this practice of new Quakerism. No one is out of sight and yet there is no dream of equality behind this communal sense. It is as far from a communistic, as from a charitable state of mind. It is the result of years of belief in common men and common things.
This "make believe" that commonplace things are the spiritual things was a corollary of George Fox's life as much as of his doctrine. He opposed pomp and ritual, salaried priests, ordinations and consecrations; he disbelieved in "the imposition of hands." His followers therefore went so far as to find in plainness a new sanctity. They adapted at once the "plain garb" of the period of William Penn and Robert Barclay, and the generations of men who followed felt themselves morally bettered by a drab coat and breeches, a white neck-cloth, and a broad-brimmed brown hat; the women by dresses of simple lines, low tones of color, bonnets of peculiar shape, shielding the eyes on either side.
Of course in time this exceptional garb by its uniqueness defeated the very desire George Fox had for "plainness." It was not commonplace but extraordinary. Roby Osborn's garb is thus described by her biographer: "Her wedding gown was a thick, lustreless silk, of a delightful yellowish olive, her bonnet white. Beneath it her dark hair was smoothly banded, and from its demure shelter her eyes looked gravely out. Hervest was a fine tawny brown, of a sprigged pattern, both gown and vest as artistically harmonious as the product of an Eastern loom. Pieces of both were sewn into a patchwork quilt, now a family heirloom."[10]
For more than a century now "plainness in dress" has been extravagance in dress. A proper Quaker hat for man or woman costs twice or thrice what plain people of the same station in life would pay. But be it so. In its day, which is now gone—for only one person now wears "plain dress" on Quaker Hill—it was a true expression of the "make believe" of sanctity in plainness. The quiet colors, the prescribed unworldliness involved a daily discipline, and infused into the wearer an emotional experience which mere economy and real commonness would never so continuously have effected.
The "plain speech" has the same effect. It is part of the same dramatic celebration of an ideal. It is a use of quaint and antique forms, not grammatically correct nor scriptural, in which "thee" takes the place of "thou" and you in the singular, both in the nominative and objective cases. It is not used with the forms of the verb of solemn style, but with common forms, as "thee has" instead of "thou hast." Another element of the "plain speech" is the use of such terms as "farewell" for "good day"—which is declared to be untruthful on bad days! The Quakers also address one another by their first names, and the old-fashioned Friends addressed everybody so, refusing to use such titles as "Mr.," "Mrs.," or "Miss."
Of late years the younger members of the Meeting, while maintaining their standing there, have used with persons not in the Meeting the ordinary forms of speech, as they have refused to assume the Quaker plain garb. With fellow-Quakers and with members of their own families they say "thee."
Before the period of the mixed community this power of idealization, of "making believe," had wrought its greatesteffects, but it still has full course and power without the highest direction. The minds of the residents of the Hill are very suggestible; but the persons who have the power to implant the suggestion are no longer inspired as of old, with a sublime and unearthly ideal. They are only animated with an economic one. But the result is the same. It is social, rather than religious. It was one thing for the early Friends to cement together a community through the feeling that in every man was the Spirit of God. A wonderful appetite was that for the assimilation of new members coming into the community. It was a doctrine that made all the children birthright members of the Meeting and so of the community.
But in our later time, between 1895 and 1905, this power of "making believe" had suffered the strain of a division of the meeting. It was harder to believe that the Spirit of God was in all men, when half the community was set off as "unorthodox." It had suffered the strain of seeing the wide social difference caused by money. Yet it bravely played the game. Children are not more adapt at "making believe" than were these old Friends. They deceived even themselves; and their "pretending" assimilated into the communal life every newcomer. For it created underneath all differences a sense of oneness; it kept alive, in all divisions, many of the operations of unity. It compelled strangers and doctrinal enemies to "make believe" to be friends.
I find it difficult to describe this elusive force of the communal spirit in the place, just as the communal character of the place is itself evanescent, while always powerful. I know clearly only this, that it proceeded, and still on Quaker Hill proceeds from the old religious inheritance, and from the present religious character of the place; that it tends directly to the creation of the community of all men, of all different groups, and that it is ready at hand at all time, to be calledto the assistance of anyone who knows how to appeal to that communal unity; and that it is a power of idealization, meaning by that "a power of making believe." In this power, I recognize this community as being more expert and better versed than any I have ever known.
The dramatic expression of an ideal has had great social power. Upon the casual observer or visitor it has wrought with the effect of a charm to impress upon them in a subtle way the ideal of Quakerism. Expressed in words, it would have no interest: acted out so quaintly, it awakens admiration, interest, and imitation, not of the forms, but always in some degree of the substance of the Quaker ideal.
Thus the Quaker ideal has given authority to the Friends, especially to the older and more conservative of them; has furnished a subtle machinery for assimilating new members into the community and thus has been an organizing power.
From the first the members found themselves subjected toa clear, simple standard of morals. Its dominion was unbroken for one hundred years, and came to an end with the Division of the Meeting; though that event was a result as much as a cause of its termination. For one hundred years a local ethical code prevailed. While they lived apart the Quakers in their community life rejoiced in the unbroken sway of a communal code of morals, the obedience to which made for survival and economic success. When, with better roads to Poughkeepsie and to Fredericksburgh, newcomers began to invade the community; when in 1849 the railroad came to the neighborhood, immersing the Quakers in the world economy, the Quaker code was insufficient, retarded rather than assisted survival, and rather forbade than encouragedsuccess. It therefore lost its force. Only in a few individualshas it survived.
The residents of the Hill, from their earliest settlement in 1728 to the time of the Division in 1828, knew no other government than that of the Meeting. They accepted no other authority, hoped for public good through no other agency, even read no other literature, than that of the Quaker Monthly Meeting of the Oblong. The religious Meeting House was also the City Hall, State House, and Legislature for the patriotism, as it was the focus of the worship and doctrinal activity of this population. This cannot be stated too strongly, for there was no limit to its effect. It explains many things otherwise diverse and unexplained.
During all the periods of war the Quakers showed theirseparateness by refusing to pay taxes, lest they contribute to the support of armies. In the Revolution, the Meeting exercised unflinching discipline, for the purpose of keeping members out of the patriot armies, and punished with equal vigor those who paid for the privilege of exemption from military duty and those who enlisted in the ranks. In every act of the discipline of the Quaker Community appears the purpose of the Meeting, namely, to keep its members to itself and away from all other moral and spiritual control. This will appear in definite illustrations below.
The standard of morals which the Meeting thus upheld with jealous care was a simple one, and logically derived from the distinctive doctrine of the Society of Friends. That the Spirit of God dwells in every man was their belief,[11]and from 1650, when Fox was called "a Quaker" before Justice Bennett at Derby, England, to the Division in 1830, they applied this doctrine in practical, rather than in metaphysical ways. They were a moral, rather than a theological people. It will appear in this chapter that only when the moral grip of the Meeting was broken in a division did doctrinal questions come to discussion on the Hill.
The moral bearing of the one cardinal doctrine of Quakerism is well expressed in the following quotation from a Friend qualified to speak with authority:
"The Friends have been consistent in all their peculiarities with one central principle, the presence and inspiration of theDivine Spirit in the human soul. This has been the reason for their opposition to slavery. They felt, You cannot hold in slaveryGOD! And God is in this black man's life, therefore you cannot enslave God in him. So you must not inflict capital punishment upon this man in whom is God.
"The same argument dignified woman, who was made the equal of man. The same argument applies to the impossibility of war. You cannot think of God fighting against God. The Quaker had no sentimental idea of suffering; but he believed that you cannot take life, in which is God.
"The same argument applied to weights and measures; the Quakers early demanded that they be officially sealed. So they believed in only one standard of truth, rather than one for conversation and one for a court of justice. No oaths were necessary for those who spoke for God all the time."[12]
In this belief one sees the principle on which were selected the reforms in which the Quaker Preacher was interested. "He appears to have had ... his mind strongly influenced to an active protest against the evils of slavery, war, capital punishment and intemperance."[13]Each of these reforms was inspired by reverence for human life, which was thought to be desecrated or abused.
This simple code expressed itself in abstinence from practicesbelieved to defile the body. Members of the Meetingearly adopted a strict rule against the use of intoxicating liquors. It is said of the ancestors of Richard Osborn that: "Of these six generations not a man has ever been known to use spirituous liquors, or tobacco, to indulge in profanity, or to be guilty of a dishonest action."[14]
A sense of personal degradation underlay their opposition to poverty among members. There is record of an order of theMeeting, in 1775, for the purchase of a cow "to loan to Joseph ——." The practice thus early observed has since then been unbroken. The member of the community who comes to want is at this day taken care of by popular subscription. Through the early century the Meeting accomplished this end, sometimes by formal, sometimes by informal methods. In the later years of the nineteenth century it was accomplished by special funds to which everybody gave. Thus simply was poverty forestalled. The family assisted soon came to self-support again. No debt was incurred, and no obligation remained to be discharged; but every member of the Meeting and of the community felt obliged to give and was glad to give to this anti-poverty fund. The basis of it seems to have been respect for human embodiments of the Divine Spirit.
This ideal of personality, divinely indwelt, created a sense of personal duty, even in opposition to all men. In the years of anti-slavery agitation David Irish and his sister "made their protest against slavery by abstaining as far as possible from slave-made products; and together they made maple, to take the place of cane sugar, and used nothing but linen and woolen clothing (largely homespun)."[15]This later Quaker, possessed of the spirit of the community of his fathers, shows his inner conflict with the ideals of a competitive age in the expression "so far as possible." It was not as practicable in 1855 to "abstain from slave-made products," as it would have been in the year 1755.
The hospitality of the neighborhood expressed this simple code. It was the custom to entertain the traveler in any house to which he might come. It would have been wrong to exclude him; he was welcomed with a dignified and formal respect by these old Friends, because entertainment of guestsin those days was a vital reality, as well as a religious practice. These settlers in the wild forests believed that in every wayfarer was a divine voice, a possible message from heaven. They also treated every traveler as a possible object of their "preachments," and spared not to "testify" to him of their peculiar beliefs and "leadings." It was the Friends' method of propagating their gospel to send men and women on journeys, without pay, to distant states and provinces. This religious touring was not peculiar to them, but it was made by them an official agency of great power in evangelizing the Colonies.
As an itinerant Friend, Woolman, the anti-slavery apostle, came to the Hill in 176-. So Paul Osborn joined himself to a party of Friends "travelling on truth's account," and with them visited the Carolinas, in the years before the Revolution. The same pioneer left in his will directions for the entertainment of such travellers upon his estate forever.[16]
This religious itinerating was a part of the economic life of those days as well; for the Friends never separated the one from the other. Wherever they went they "testified," and to every place they came with shrewd appreciation of its value as a place of settlement. Says James Wood: "Each Quaker home as it was settled became a resting-place for those who followed, for it was a cardinal principle of Quaker hospitality to keep open house for all fellow-members, under all circumstances."[17]
The development of the hospitality that was a part of the religion of the Quakers would be itself a sufficient study. It has furnished some of the most interesting chapters of the history of the Hill. It is now completely transformed, through the pressure of competitive economic life; and, with undiminishedactivities, has become a means of revenue in "thekeeping of boarders." Seven of the old Quaker homes, in the period of the Mixed Community, took on the aspect of small hotels. For this business the Quakers have a preparation in their history and traditions. They have an inbred genius for hospitality. They have also a thrift and capacity for "management" which have made their efforts successful. One is impressed in their houses by a union of abundance with economy, impossible to imitate.
Like other American pioneer neighborhoods, of a religious type, the Quaker community at Oblong had a history in the matter of sexual morality. The relations of the sexes offered to the Friends a field in which their favorite doctrine of the indwelling divine spirit produced moral harvests. The records of Oblong Meeting are filled with cases of moral discipline. There is scarcely a meeting in whose minutes some case is not mentioned, either its initial, intermediate or final stages. No family was exempt from this experience. The best families furnished the culprits as often as they supplied the committees to investigate and to condemn.
The regular method of procedure in marriage will best exhibit the moral standards of the time. When a couple would marry, they indicated to the Meeting their intention; and a committee was at once appointed to investigate their "clearness." That is, these two must be free of other engagements, and must be free of debt or other incumbrance of such sort as would render marriage impossible or unadvisable. At the next monthly meeting the report of the committee advanced the case one stage; and if they were found "clear of allothers," another committee was appointed "to see that the marriage was orderly performed."
The parties on the day set appeared before the Meeting,[18]and in its regular course, stood up and said the words of mutual agreement which made them man and wife. A certificate was used, and to it the guests signed their names. But no minister had official part in the ceremony. It was their belief, to which they adhered with logical strictness, that the divine spirit in each of the parties to a marriage made it sacred, and that in marrying they spoke the will of the Spirit.
Entire continence was expected of every unmarried person, and the strictest marital faithfulness of man and wife, because of the sacredness of personal life. But in a pioneer society, through those rough early decades, when for long times war was disturbing the serenity of social life, the conduct of men and women, not mindful of propriety, was determined by the strong, masterful passions of an out of door people. Besides, the government of the Meeting was contrary to the general opinion of the countryside, and the Meeting House members were immersed in a population whose standards were looser, as well as sanctioned by authorities not recognized by the Meeting. The result was that in the first century of the Hill, 1728-1828, there were many instances of sexual immorality, many accusations of married persons untrue to their vows, and a resulting attention of the whole community to this theme which we do not know to-day. Frankness of discussion of these matters prevailed. The punishments inflicted,the public confessions demanded, the condemnation of specific and detailed offences read from the steps of the Meeting Houses, were all as far from present day approval as the offences themselves from modern experience. The writer is sure that, comparing the records of the Quaker Community with his own knowledge of the annals of the Mixed Community, there were more offences of this kind considered by the Monthly Meeting of Oblong in any one year, 1728-1828, than were publicly known in a population of the same extent in the ten years 1890-1900. The commonest of these offences were simple cases of illicit relations between unmarried persons, or between persons, one of whom was married; the offence often being associated in the minds of the accusers with "going to frollicks." In these, as in all cases, the Meeting received the complaint and appointed a committee to investigate and to labor with the accused. On receiving its report, if guilt was evidenced, the Meeting pressed the matter, often increasing the size of the committee. It always demanded an expression of repentance, and the restoration of right conduct, without which no satisfaction was to be had. If the accused persons, being found guilty, did not repent, they were in the end "disowned." The disownment by the Meeting was a serious penalty. It diminished a man's business opportunities, it shut the door of social life to him, and it effectually forbade his marriage within the Meeting.
Its power is shown in a number of cases recorded in the minutes, in which the ban of the Meeting had been laid upon some one, who was compelled later to come to the Meeting, make a tardy acknowledgement, and be restored, before he could proceed freely in some of the communal activities controlled by the Meeting. Often the committee appointed by the Meeting reported that they were not satisfied with the repentance offered, seeing in it evidently more of policy than penitence. Usually they received, in later visitations of theaccused, sufficient tokens of submission, and the Meeting was satisfied; but not always.
The most curious instance of the working out of this control exercised by the Meeting, especially over the sexual relations, is in the marriage of Joseph —— with Elizabeth ——. The first act in the little drama was the formal written statement of Joseph that he was sorry for "having been familiar with his wife before his marriage to her." The Monthly Meeting appointed a committee, as usual, after making record of this "acknowledgment." After a month the committee reported that they had visited Joseph, and found his repentance sincere; and another committee was appointed to draw up a testimony against his former misconduct, to which Joseph was required to subscribe; and in a later month to hear it read from the steps of the Preparative Meeting in the neighborhood where he lived—or perhaps in that in which the offence was best known. After this had all been done, with patient detail, and reported and recorded, a further month elapsed, and then announcement was made at the Meeting of the intention of Joseph and Elizabeth to marry. The reader is astonished, thinking that Joseph has already evidenced his loyalty to his wife. A closer re-reading of the stages of the incident shows that the wife mentioned in the original offence was now dead; but that the offence was not dead. Joseph had to be restored to the Meeting before he could marry Elizabeth, who was very evidently a devoted member. To win his new wife, he had to make acknowledgment of the offence which preceded his former marriage.
This incident illustrates the whole attitude of that community toward these moralities. They were thought to be defilements of the body, the temple of God. No change of outward condition could eliminate the offence, which must be wiped out by repentance, public acknowledgment and formal restoration.
It is evident from the foregoing that the Meeting maintained control over the community, at least of its own members, by possessing an effective power to approve or to disapprove of the economic and the marital condition of each individual.
The code of morals practiced in this community required strict business honesty. The Quaker has moral discretion in economic affairs. He "expects to get what he pays for, and he expects to give what he has agreed." The honesty of "stroke-measure," by which bushels are topped off, the faithful performance of contracts and payment of debts were inculcated by the Meeting and enforced by its discipline.
This chapter may fitly close with a statement of the anathema of Quakerism, pronounced many times in a year, during the century. The offence selected 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 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 himself 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 Purchase Monthly Meeting this th day of the th month."
The above wording except the name is taken from the minutes of Purchase Meeting; and some of the offences mentioned in a few pages of those minutes, for which men weredisowned, 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 Frollicks," "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 disagreeable to his friends;" "to use profane 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 Society on account of marriage;" "to be married by a magistrate;" "to marry with one not of our Society before a hireling priest;" "to join principles and practice 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."
It was the operation of this code of morals, 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 tended to weaken the Meeting, as it had strengthened the public conscience. 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 embarrassed, "they turned me out!"
"But what was the outcome of it all?" asks James Wood, in the closing sentences of his monograph, "The Purchase Meeting." He continues: "As a church the Quakers heremissed their great opportunity. As settlers came among them in increasing numbers, the Friends became solicitous to preserve the strictest moral observance among their members. They withdrew from contact and association with the world about them and confined their religious influence and effort to themselves. The strictest watch was maintained over the deportment of old and young. Members were dismissed for comparatively slight offences. Immigration further reduced their numbers. Hypercriticism produced disagreements among themselves. Finally, doctrinal differences arose which resulted in a disastrous separation into two bodies in 1828."
Quaker Hill has been always a place of peace. The earliestsettlers came to make an asylum for the propagation of the principles of peace. I have spoken elsewhere of their consistent belief and practice of this principle.
The community always acted promptly in response to the known injury of its members. The Quakers have a "Meeting of Sufferings," at which are related and recorded the persecutions from which they suffer. This community, which for one hundred years was Quaker, has always been prompt to act "solidly and judiciously" in support of the injured. An illustration is the riot in opposition to Surgeon Fallon, who in January, 1779, was left here with convalescent soldiers in the Meeting House. It is very interesting as showing the length to which men will go in the interest of peace, even to the use of violence. It illustrates also the fact that kindness to the sick and wounded, simply because they are helpless and needy, is modern, a humanitarian not a dogmatic development.
To superior power the Quakers of this place have always submitted. Their forefathers were loyalists in England, and they in America, till far into the Revolution. But see the resolutions passed in April, 1778:
"The answering of the 14th Query Respecting the Defrauding of the King of his dues is omitted by reason of the Difficulty of the times therefore this meeting desires the Quarterly meeting to Consider whether it would not be well to omit the answering that part of the Query in future until the way may appear more Clear." This action was taken bythe meeting five months before the coming of Washington to the Hill, immediately after the heroic winter of Valley Forge and just before the British retreated from Philadelphia. An official body which could speak of dues to the king at that time, after their country had been separated from him for three years, surely represented a community in which the great majority were Loyalists, and the disorderly and violent were Tories.
But the non-resistant character of the neighborhood, perched between the Connecticut Yankees, who took ardent interest in the Revolution, and the aggressive settlements of Pawling, Fredericksburgh and Beekman, rendered the Hill at times an asylum, strange to say, of the most adventurous forces. Whenever in Colonial days an adventurer or soldier sought a peaceful region in which to recruit his forces, he thought upon Quaker Hill; and in four memorable instances used the Hill as a place of safe refuge. There no one would by force resist his enjoyment of a time for recruiting.
The first instance of this is the so-called "Anti-Rent War," which in 1766 excited the inhabitants of Dutchess and Columbia Counties. Its sources were in the land grants made by the Crown, and in the independent character of the settlers in this state. The series of disturbances so caused continued until well into the years of the nineteenth century. They concern the local history only in one year, 1766.
The Anti-Rent War of 1766 is a forgotten event. But in that time it aroused the Indians and the white settlers to revolt. Bodies of armed men assembled, British troopers marched from Poughkeepsie to Quaker Hill, to seize a leader of rebellion; and at the time of his trial at Poughkeepsie in August, 1766, a company of regulars with three field-pieces was brought up from New York.[19]
The prime cause of this insurrection was the granting of the land in great areas at the beginning of the century to favored proprietors, so that the actual settlers could not become owners but only tenants. Fragments of such great estates remain in the hands of certain families till our time. The ownership of Hammersley Lake by the family of that name is an example. The exercise of authority by these monopolists of natural opportunities drove the actual tillers of the soil, who had given it its value, to desperation. I have shown that in 1740 no land owners were enrolled on Quaker Hill, and that the list of its most representative citizens in 1755 contained few landowners.[20]A further cause of this conflict may have been that, in the year of the settlement of the boundaries of the Oblong it was granted to one company by the British Crown, and to another by the Colony of New York. This brought the title of all the lands on the Oblong into dispute. Moreover, boundaries were carelessly indicated and loosely described, a pile of stones or a conspicuous tree serving for a landmark. All this worked great confusion, for the settlement of which in a crude community courts were ineffective.
Finally the popular discontent broke out to the north in armed refusal of settlers to pay the rents exacted. The movement spread from Dutchess to Columbia County. William Prendergast, who is said to have lived in a house standing on the ground now part of the golf links in Pawling, was the leader of the insurgents in this county. He assembled a band on Quaker Hill so formidable that the grenadiers at Poughkeepsie waited for reinforcements of two hundred troopers and two field pieces from New York before proceeding against him. The sight of the red coats was enough. Prendergast surrendered. But so great was the local excitement that, to forestall an attempt to rescue, he was taken a prisoner to New York. In July he was brought back for trial; and on thesame boat with the King's counsel, judges, lawyers and prisoner came a company of soldiers to put down the continued disturbance in Columbia County.[21]
The trial occurred the first fortnight of August. Prendergast was assisted in his defense by his wife, who made a strong impression on the jury, proving that her husband, before the acts of which he was accused, was "esteemed a sober, honest and industrious farmer, much beloved by his neighbors, but stirred up to act as he did by one Munro, who is absconded." So ardent was this woman advocate that the State's attorney forgot himself and moved that she be excluded from the court room. The motion was denied, and the mover of it emphatically rebuked. But there was not lacking proof of the fact of treason, and Prendergast was convicted and sentenced to be hanged in six weeks. Then this valiant woman's energy and perseverance rose to their highest. She set off for an audience with the Governor, Sir Henry Moore, Bart., and returned about the first of September with a reprieve. Just in time she arrived, for a company of fifty mounted men had ridden the whole length of the county to rescue her husband from the jail. She convinced them of the folly of such action as they proposed, and sent them home, while she turned to the task of obtaining a pardon from the King. Here, too, she was successful; for, six months later, George III, who required six years to be subdued by a Washington, released her husband. They arrived home amid great popular rejoicings.
William Prendergast and Mehitabel Wing, whose descendants settled later about Chautauqua Lake, New York, were bound to the Quaker Community by ties of marriage and of trade. William was not, so far as I can learn, a member of the Meeting; but Mehitabel was a daughter of Jedidiah Wing,whose family was devoted to the Society from 1744 until the "laying down" of the Meeting in 1885. William Prendergast was, however, a member of the community. His name heads an account in the ledgers of the Merritt store, in 1771 and 1772, and his purchases indicate that he was a substantial farmer whose trading center was Quaker Hill.[22]Prendergast was an Irishman.
Before the Revolution he with his family and possessions, a caravan of seventeen vehicles and thirty horses, emigrated westward, going as far south as Kentucky, then north through Ohio and New York. A part of the family company proceeded to Canada. His son James settled, with other Prendergasts, on Chautauqua Lake, and became the founder of Jamestown, where his family, now extinct there, has given the city a library. When William Prendergast and Mehitabel Wing, his resolute wife, died, is not known. None of that name is later found on or near Quaker Hill.
The motive of their hegira appears to have been chagrin and a sense of humiliation at the sentence of death pronounced upon the head of the family. In the Prendergast Library at Jamestown is a book containing family histories, which came from the Prendergast private library. From this book two pages had been cleanly cut away. The Librarians set themselves to replace the lost material, and after patient efforts in many quarters, discovered another copy, and had typewritten pages made and pasted in. Upon the missing pages, thus replaced after the extinction of James Prendergast's family, was found the account of William Prendergast's sentence to be hanged. His descendants, had they lived longer, might have been more proud than ashamed of his rebellion against injustice.
The Quakers, because they would passively tolerate an intrusion, were forced to harbor another rendezvous of turbulent men. It is said that Enoch Crosby, the famous spy of the Revolution, who is believed to have been Cooper's model for the hero of the novel, "The Spy," came to Quaker Hill during the Revolution, in pursuance of a plan he was at that time following, and got together a band of Tory volunteers, who were planning to join the British army; and delivered them to the Continental authorities, as prisoners. In this he was assisted by Col. Moorehouse, who kept a tavern on a site in South Dover, opposite the brick house which now stands one-half mile south of the Methodist Church.
INTERIOR OF OBLONG MEETING HOUSE On the "facing seats" are: Olive Hoag, Roby Osborn, Betsy Post, Richard Osborn, John L. Worden
INTERIOR OF OBLONG MEETING HOUSEOn the "facing seats" are:Olive Hoag, Roby Osborn, Betsy Post, Richard Osborn, John L. Worden
I have spoken above of the sullen loyalty of theQuakers to the British Crown during the Revolution. It may have been in part owing to their loyalty that their neighborhood became more congenial for the Tories who during that period harried the country-side. The Quakers were Tories, and are so called in the letters of the period; but the word "Tories" remains in the speech of Quaker Hill as a name of opprobrium. It describes a species of guerrillas who infested parts of New York and Connecticut.
The "Tories" of the Revolutionary days furnish the substance of the stories of violence that are told about the fireside to Quaker Hill boys and girls. It is difficult, however, to persuade those who have heard these tales to relate them. Those who know them best are the very ones who cannot recall them in systematic or orderly form. I mention only one more of the free lances of the time. The chiefest of all bandit-leaders of those turbulent times was Waite Vaughn. It is related that this fellow was the head of a band of Tories, which means locally the same that the term "Cowboys" or "Skinners" means in the history of Westchester County. The latter were lawless bands who infested the regions in which the armies made civil life insecure, and subsisted by stealing cattle, plundering houses, robbing and often murdering citizens. "They seemed," says a writer, "like the savages to enjoy the sight of the sufferings they inflicted. Oftentimes theyleft their wretched victims from whom they had plundered their all, hung up by their arms, and sometimes by their thumbs, on barndoors, enduring the agony of wounds that had been inflicted to wrest from them their property. These miserable beings were frequently relieved by the American patrol."[23]Waite Vaughn lived in Connecticut in the part of New Fairfield known as Vaughn's Neck. Under the house, recently demolished, in which "Dr. Vaughn," his brother, is said to have lived during the Revolution, was found rotted linen below the cellar floor. Behind the great heap of the chimney also was found a secret cellar, for years forgotten, in which, among other rubbish of no significance, are said to have been found counterfeit coins of the Revolutionary period and other evidences of outlaw practices in that time.[24]
Vaughn used to ride at night with his troop to Quaker Hill, through Connecticut neighborhoods, which knew the sound of his passing. The Pepper family still relate the tradition of his riding up "Stony Hill," past the point where stands Coburn Meeting House, in the night, while they and their neighbors stayed discreetly indoors. This rendezvous was a place in the woods on Irish land, about half way between Sites 96 and 120, now known as "The Robber Rocks." Here the Vaughns are said to have concealed booty at times, and from this point they made forages upon farmhouses in the richest neighborhoods of this vicinity. Probably they spared the Quakers. I will speak later of the fact that Quakers have ways of their own for protecting themselves against intruders. Moreover, their men were not gone to the war.
The record of these years, on the pages of the clerk's minute-book, are a disappointment. One searches in vain for even the slightest trace of the presence in the Meeting House of the troops. There is no record of the presence in the Meeting House of the "Tories" or guerrillas of the Revolution; and not a word about the makers of the rifle-ports in the gables of this building which the present writer discovered there, unless it be the unruffled and serene utterance, under date of 8th Month, 9th, 1781, the very period at which the "Tories" must have been at their worst: "Samuel Hoag is appointed to take care of the Meeting House, and to keep the door locked and windows fastened, and to nail up the hole that goes up into the Garratt." The "Tories" robbed the store on Site 28. They had hidden for that purpose in the loft of the Meeting House and were discovered by some young Quakers who were skylarking in the Meeting House under pretense of cleaning it. The story is that one of the young men, being dared—of course by a maiden—to open the trap-door into the garret, and look for the Tories, found them hiding there. The bandits, being discovered, tumbled down the hole from the garret, and compelled their discoverers to go with them to the store; and proceeded at once to plunder it, relying no doubt on the non-resistant character of the people of the Hill. They stacked their arms at the door and went about their business in a thorough manner. But there was that in the blood of some Quakers there that could not contain itself within the bounds of non-resistance, and one of them, Benjamin Ferris, cried out, "Seize the rascals." In the scrimmage that resulted from the excitement of this remark, the leader of the Tories was recognized by the young lady who had by her challenge to the young man discovered them, and being taunted by her was so incensed that he stabbed her. It is only said in closing the story that the blood of both the fair and adventurous young Quakeress whose abounding spirit brought on all the trouble, and that of the leader of the "Tories," flows in the veins, of some who live on the Hill in the twentieth century.
Samuel Towner, a relative of Vaughn, resident in the region of Fredericksburgh (now Patterson), returning froma trip, once found Vaughn at his home, and urged him at once to leave, as his property would be confiscated, if Vaughn's presence there were tolerated.
Vaughn was once pursued by farmers near Little Rest, and was sighted and surrounded in a lonely road. He turned upon his pursuers coolly and said: "Now, gentlemen, you can arrest me, or kill me, but you must take the consequences; for I will kill some of you." Daunted by his resolution, they stood motionless while he crossed a fence and a field, and disappeared among the trees of a wooded hill.
Quaker Hill became known as Vaughn's rendezvous, and here he met his end, I think about 1781. His band had robbed the home of one of the Pearce family, then as now resident in the valley where Pawling village stands. The victim was hung up by his thumbs till life was almost extinct. The next day, Capt. Pearce, of the Revolutionary army, returned unexpectedly to his home, and set off with armed assistance for the Robber Rocks on Quaker Hill. Near that spot, in the fields east of Site 97, on the Wing lands, Vaughn and his men were resting, some picking huckleberries, and some playing cards on a flat stone. Pearce gave no warning, but opened fire at once. Vaughn fell mortally wounded. He was carried to John Toffey's residence, Site 53, where he soon died. He is buried under the trees outside the "Toffey Burying Ground," beside the brook, in the very heart of Quaker Hill, into which he had intruded because in that peaceful neighborhood he had for a time a safe asylum. With his death it is believed that his band dispersed, and their depredations ceased.
A peaceful people like the Quakers must find means of their own to protect themselves against intruders. No one can live long on Quaker Hill without knowing that they have done so. One may brusquely intrude once, but he will be a violent man indeed, not to say a dull one, who continues to enjoy invading the preserves of the "Friends." The fourthinstance of a forcible invasion of the Hill was that of Washington's army, which encamped in the vicinity in the fall of 1778, the Headquarters being in John Kane's house, on a site now within the borders of Pawling Village. See on Map I, "HeadQrs."
On his arrival, September 19, 1778, Washington,[25]with his bodyguard, was entertained for six days at the home of Reed Ferris, in the Oblong, Site 99,[26]an honored guest, when he moved to the place designated as his Headquarters on his maps by Erskine. His letters written during his residence here are all dated from "Fredericksburgh," the name at that time of the western and older part of the town of Patterson. Washington's general officers were quartered in the homes of various residents of the neighborhood. One was so entertained by Thomas Taber, at the extreme north end of the Hill. It is natural to suppose that others were housed in nearer places. That Lafayette was entertained at the home of Russell, who lived at Site 25, now the Post-office, is reliably asserted. The brick house standing at that time was torn down by Richard Osborn, who erected the present house. That Washington, with other officers, was entertained at Reed Ferris's home is asserted by the descendants most interested, and is undoubtedly true.
The Meeting House was appropriated by the army officers for a hospital, because it was the largest available building. The only official record, says Mr. L. S. Patrick, is that of Washington's order, Oct. 20th, "No more sick to be sent to the Hospital at Quaker Hill, without first inquiring of the Chief Surgeon there whether they can be received, as it is already full." Arguing from the date of Washington's order above, Oct. 20, and from that of Surgeon Fallon below, thisuse of the building for a hospital continued three and perhaps five months. Meantime the Friends' Meetings were held in the barn at Site 21, then the residence of Paul Osborn. This barn had been the first Meeting House erected on the Hill in 1742. It was removed to Site 21 in 1769, when it was used as a barn till 1884, when it was removed by the present resident.[27]
There is no mention, even by inference, in the records of Oblong Meeting that proves this occupation of their building by soldiers. It was not voluntarily surrendered; other records show that the use of the building was supported by force; its surrender was grudging, not a matter to be recorded in the Meeting. It is characteristic of the Friends that they ignored it.
This toleration of the Hospital was never sympathetic. A letter of great interest to the student of those times was written to the Governor of the State of New York, Hon. George Clinton,[28]by Dr. James Fallon, physician in charge of the sick which were left on Quaker Hill, in the Meeting House, after the departure of the Continental army. He could get no one to draw wood for his hospital in the dead of winter, till finally "old Mr. Russell, an excellent and open Whig, tho' a Quaker," hired him a wagon and ox team. He could buy no milk without paying in Continental money, six for one. He declared that "Old Ferris, the Quaker, pulpiteer of this place, old Russell and his son, old Mr. Chace and his family, and Thomas Worth and his family, are the only Quakers on or about this Hill, the public stands indebted to." The two pioneers of the Hill, the preacher and the builder, were patriots as well. He denounces the rest as Tories all, the "Meriths," Akins, Wings, Kellys, Samuel Walker, the schoolmaster, and Samuel Downing, whom he declared a spurious Quaker andagent of the enemy; also the preacher, Lancaster, "the Widow Irish;" and many he called "half-Quakers," who were probably more zealous, and certainly more violent for Quaker and Tory principles than the Quakers themselves.
The trouble culminated in Dr. Fallon's impressing the wagons of Wing, Kelly and "the widow Irish," to take fourteen men to Danbury and Fishkill to save their lives. The former impress was not resisted; but the soldiers who took the Irish team had to battle with a mob, headed by Abraham Wing and Benjamin Akin, who used the convalescent soldiers roughly, but could not prevent the seizure. They were not the first men to do violence for the sake of the principle of non-resistance. One can see, too, that modern Quakerism has taken a gentler tone.
The small violence done by Abraham Wing and Benjamin Akin, like that of young Ferriss to prevent the robbery of the Merritt store, was ineffective. But the Quaker mode of self-protection was more effective than violence. They "froze out" the doctors and their soldiers from the Meeting House, by leaving them alone in the bitter winter, by letting them starve. The bitterness of their Toryism, and the zeal of Quaker ideals, the ardor of their "make-believe," carried them too far. They forgot mercy for the sake of opposing the cruelty of war.
Among the soldiers who lay sick in the Meeting House many are said to have died. They were buried in the grounds of the resident on Site 32, in the easterly portion of the field facing the Meeting House. No stones mark their place of rest, as none were ever placed in the cemetery of the early Quakers in the western part of the same field. Over them both the horses of persons attending meeting were tethered for many decades. The ploughman and the mower for years traversed the ground. But it is not forgotten who were buried there.
Says L. S. Patrick in his attempt to estimate the amount ofsickness and death of soldiers on the hill that winter:[29]"Of the conditions existing, the prejudices prevailing, and the probable number in the Hospital, Dr. Fallon's letter to Governor Clinton furnishes the only account known to exist: 'Out of the 100 sick, Providence took but three of my people off since my arrival.' On the occasion of the arrival of Col. Palfrey, the Paymaster General, at Boston from Fredericksburgh, General Gates writes to General Sullivan: 'I am shocked at our poor fellows being still encamped, and falling sick by the hundreds.'
"The death list—out of the oblivion of the past but four names have been found—John Morgan, Capt. James Greer's Co., died at Quaker Hill Hospital, Oct. 19, 1777(?); Alexander Robert, Capt. George Calhoun's Co., 4th Pa., Nov. 6, 1778; James Tryer, Capt. James Lang's Co., 5th Pa., Oct. 22, 1778; Peter King, 1st Pa., enlisted 1777, Quaker Hill Hospital, N. J.(?) 1778 (no such hospital).
"Some doubt may exist as to two of these, but as the hospital is named, an error may exist in copying the original record."
The roads were originally bridle paths, and to this daymany a stretch of road testifies in its steep grade to its use in the days of the pack saddle. No driver of a wheeled vehicle would have selected so abrupt a slope.
In the early days the roads had a north and south direction. In the Period of Transition, with the diversion of commerce to the railroad in Pawling, the roads of an east and west direction became the principal roads, though the one great Quaker Hill highway north and south is still the avenue of communication on the Hill.
As the years passed wagons were used; indeed, by the time of the Revolution, in the second generation, they were bearing all the transportation. The state of the roads is shown, however, by the fact that Daniel Merritt was accustomed to pay, in 1772, £1, or $5, for carting four barrels of beef to the river; that is, about 1,000 lbs. constituted a load. At the present state of the country roads, a Quaker Hill employer would expect 2,000 lbs. to make a load. The state of the roads before the turnpikes were made, that is, before 1800 to 1825, is described by a resident as follows: "The road was so full of stones, large and small, that people of to-day would consider impassable for an empty wagon, to say nothing of drawing a load over it. In the fall of the year it is said that toward evening one could hear the hammering of the wheels of thewagons on the stones of the road a distance of four or five miles."[30]
I cannot learn that Quaker Hill was during the Quaker Period on any main line of country travel. Marquis De Chastelleux records in his "Travels in North America," that he journeyed in 1789 to Moorehouse's Tavern (see Map I) along the Ten Mile River, two or three miles from the Housatonic to "several handsome houses forming part of the district known asThe Oblong. The inn I was going to is in the Oblong, but two miles farther on. It is kept by Col. Moorehouse, for nothing is more common in America than to see an inn kept by a colonel ... the most esteemed and most creditable citizen." There was no inn on Quaker Hill and no colonel. The Quaker aversion to military titles was then as great as to the sale of rum. The houses referred to by the French traveller were probably the northern boundary of the Quaker community, at what is now Webatuck. I cannot find record of any post road coming nearer than this, until in the 19th century a stage was maintained between Poughkeepsie and New Milford, by way of Quaker Hill, making the journey every other day, and stopping at John Toffey's store at Site 53.
The building of turnpikes became, in the years following 1800, a popular form of public spirit. Says Miss Taber: "In fact, turnpikes seemed to be a fad in those days all over the state and probably a necessary one. The longest one I learn of in this part of the country was from Cold Spring on the Hudson River to New Milford in Connecticut. The turnpike in which the people of this neighborhood were most interested was the one incorporated April 3, 1818, and reads, 'That Albro Akin, John Merritt, Gideon Slocum, Job Crawford, Charles Hurd, William Taber, Joseph Arnold, Egbert Carey, Gabriel L. Vanderburgh, Newel Dodge, Jnrs., and such other persons as shall associate for the purpose of making a good and sufficient turnpike road in Dutchess Co.' It was named as the Pawlings and Beekman Turnpike, being a portion of what is known as the Poughkeepsie road passing over the West Mountain, but we do not find that anything was done until after the act was revived in 1824, when Joseph C. Seeley, Benoni Pearce, Samuel Allen, Benjamin Barr and George W. Slocum were associated with them."
The Pawlings and Beekman Turnpike maintained a tollgate till 1905, when it was burned down; and the company, which had long discussed its discontinuance, then abandoned its private rights in that excellent stretch of road. The turnpike which crossed Quaker Hill ended at the Jephtha Sabin residence, known to the present generation as "the Garry Ferris place," Site 74. The roads of the neighborhood were the same in 1778-80 as at the present day, as will be seen from a comparison of Map 1, made by Erskine for Washington, and Map 2, which is a copy of the U. S. Survey; except the road from Mizzen-Top Hotel to Hammersley Lake, made after the hotel was erected. The comparison of maps shows also, to one who knows the use of these roads, that they have changed from a north and south use to an east and west use; the highway on the northward slope of the Hill in Dover, and on the southward slope in Patterson, being but little used to-day. The road from the Meeting House and cemetery westward, which was once much favored, is now scarcely ever used, and being neglected by the authorities, is little more than a stony gutter.
The whole character of the neighborhood was changed by a revolution in transportation. Not turnpikes effected the change, but railroads. The early years of the nineteenth century were filled with expectation of new modes of travel. Robert Fulton was building his steamboat amid the derision of his contemporaries, and to their amazement steaming up the Hudson against the tide. At first canals seemed tocountry folk the solution of their problem. They occupied in the dawn of the 19th century the place which trolley cars occupy in the minds of promoters to-day. A canal was planned to run through the Harlem valley, where now Pawling stands, and Quaker Hill men were among the promoters of it, among them Daniel Akin and Johnathan Akin Taber.
Presently, however, came the promotion of railroads, and many of the same men who had favored the canals, entered heartily into the new projects. The foundation of Albert Akin's fortune was made when, about 1830, he began to borrow money of his neighbors and invest in the rapidly growing lines of steam-cars in New York State. There were those, however, who foresaw dire things from the new iron highway, and old residents tell of "one man who said that whosoever farm that locomotive passed through would have to give up fatting cattle, as it would be impossible to keep a steer on the place."
For many years the railroad came no nearer than Croton Falls. Richard Osborn used to tell the story of one resident of the Hill who boasted that he could go to New York and return the same day. This he finally attempted and accomplished by driving with a good pair of horses to Croton Falls in the morning, taking an early train to New York, returning in the evening, and driving home before night. This story, which is well authenticated, proves the good condition of some of the roads before 1849, for the drive to Croton Falls is about twenty miles. Among leading Quaker Hill residents who promoted railroads in the valley were Jonathan Akin, Daniel D. Akin, J. Akin Taber, John and Albert J. Akin. The two men who were most influential in completing the last link of the road—from the local viewpoint—were Albert Akin and Hon. John Ketcham, of Dover, both recently deceased. They supplied cash for the continuation of the road from Croton Falls to Dover Plains. To Mr. Akin the promise was made that if he would supply a building for a station the road would place an eating house at the point nearest Quaker Hill. There was then no such village or hamlet as Pawling, the locality being known as "Goosetown." Patterson was an old village, west of its present business center one mile, and was known as Fredericksburgh. Dover also was a place of distinction in the country-side. Mr. Akin, with several yoke of oxen, hauled a dwelling to the railroad track from the site on which Washington's Headquarters stood in 1778; and thus was initiated the settlement of the village which is now among the most thriving on the road.