Early Quakers

Excepts presented here from the booklet:

Mount Pleasant and The Early Quakers of Ohio

By James L. Burke and Donald E. Bensch

In the charming old village of Mount Pleasant, Jefferson County, Ohio, stands a monument to one of America's small but influential denominations, the Society of Friends, or Quakers. People of other religious affiliations settled in Mount Pleasant too, but the early history of the Mount Pleasant area was strongly influenced by those Friends who were among its first settlers. Their monument is the large brick meeting house, erected in 1814 for the Ohio Yearly Meeting of Friends, which is owned today by the state of Ohio and administered by The Ohio Historical Society. For a better understanding of the events leading to the construction of the Mount Pleasant Meeting House, as well as the contributions of the Society of Friends to the development of Ohio, we must begin our story considerably before 1814.