While some Quakers had begun to move westward during the eighteenth century, others had emigrated to the South, primarily because they were farmers and in the South there was plenty of land which could be purchased and converted into large plantations. However, Friends who migrated south and those who were native to the South soon found themselves in a quandary because they could not reconcile their beliefs with those of many Southerners who refused to acknowledge the human rights of the Negro slaves. The Friends were recognized as one of the earliest groups in America to denounce the evils of the institution of slavery. A majority of southern Quakers fought slavery in a quiet way, freeing their own slaves and encouraging others to emancipate theirs as well.

As southern Friends realized that the South with its growing hostile atmosphere was not the most advantageous place in which to live, they began to look for new lands on which to settle where they would not be persecuted for their beliefs and practices. To the north, beyond the mountains and beyond the Ohio River was a new territory with an abundance of natural resources and, above all, it was free territory. The Ohio Country had been organized for survey and sale after Congress enacted the 1785 Land Ordinance. When the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 guaranteed that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime, was ever to be permitted in any of the territory north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River, the Quakers began to think seriously of making a mass migration northward. After the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 opened the Ohio Country to settlement secure from Indian attacks, Friends in the South began to join the great migration to "the new West" which offered economic opportunity and, of special importance, personal and political freedom. Friends from New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, and northern Virginia also began to migrate to the Northwest Territory, not necessarily to escape from the evils of a slave society, but rather to seek a change and to start what many thought would be a better life.

The first Quakers credited with settlement in the Ohio Country were George Harlan and his family who came to Deerfield on the Little Miami River, four miles from the present town of Morrow, in 1795. In February 1797, the Jesse Baldwin and Phineas Hunt families, Friends from Westfield, North Carolina, moved from near Point Pleasant on the Virginia side of the Ohio River and settled near each other in present Lawrence County opposite Green Bottom, Virginia. Other families followed quickly into the Northwest Territory from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina.

In May 1797, a group of Friends moved from the Westland Monthly Meeting in western Pennsylvania to settle at High Bank on the east side of the Scioto River, four miles below present Chillicothe. Later ' that year, Jesse Baldwin moved from his first location in Lawrence County some eighteen miles down the Ohio River to settle at Quaker Bottom. The latter site in Lawrence County was opposite the mouth of the Guyandot River in Virginia (near the present city of Huntington, West Virginia). So far as is known, this was the site where Friends in the Northwest Territory first sat down to hold a meeting for divine worship.

John Warner, son of Isaac and Mary Warner, who was born at High Bank, Ross County, on July 12, 1798, was, so far as can be determined, the first Quaker child born northwest of the Ohio River. In 1798 a group of Friends from Hopewell, Virginia, settled at High Bank, and in the same year a group of Quakers, all from North Carolina, migrated to Salt Creek, near Richmondale, Ross County. In 1799 Taylor Webster and family from Redstone, Pennsylvania, settled at Grassy Prairies, five miles northeast of Chillicothe (Ross County). From the eastern seaboard came ma6y English Quakers, with their distinctive garb and their reliance upon the "Inner Light." Especially in the eastern "backbone region" and in the southern portions of Ohio, their meetings were long an important part of the religious life.

One other group of Friends which settled in the southern part of the state came to Lees Creek, near the present town of Leesburg in Highland County, in the spring of 1802. No white person had ever lived before in this area. Since other Friends also soon moved to Fairfield (Leesburg), there began a Friends meeting at Fairfield, regularly authorized in May 1804.

A very important Quaker in early Ohio history was Thomas Beals, who is credited with being the first Friends minister to carry the message of Christ into the vast region north and west of the Ohio. Born in Pennsylvania in 1719, Beals entered into the Friends' ministry in 1753 in North Carolina. In 1775 he and several associates crossed into what is now the state of Ohio to visit Indian tribes, who were still very much in control of the land. After holding many satisfactory meetings with the Indians, the group returned safely to North Carolina. Discussing the trip later Beals reported that "he saw with his spiritual eye the seed of Friends scattered all over that good land and that one day there would be a greater gathering of Friends there than any other place in the world, and that his faith was strong in the belief that he would live to see Friends settle north of the Ohio River."

He himself helped to bring this prediction true when in 1799 he and his family moved to Quaker Bottom. Here Beals conducted regular meetings in Jesse Baldwin's house, for the nearest meeting to,them was at Westland, Pennsylvania. In 1801 Thomas Beals died and was buried near Richmondale. A meeting house was later built on the land and a meeting was held there for some time. In the planting of Quakerism in the Old Northwest, the story of Thomas Beals is but one of the many that might be cited.

Another area of settlement in the future state of Ohio was in the southwestern part'where in late 1799 several families of Friends from Bush River Monthly Meeting, South Carolina, settled near the present site of Waynesville. Some months later a group of Friends arrived from Hopewell Monthly Meeting, Virginia, and, during the same year, a few came from North Carolina. In April 1801, twelve families met for worship at Waynesville, and in October 1803, the Miami Monthly Meeting was recognized. Wilmington, in Clinton County, became a Quaker center as early as 1804, but the first regular meetin&s were not held there until 1807. The first Quakers in Wilmington came from North Carolina where they had resided after they were expelled from Wilmington, Massachusetts. (The western part of present-day Wilmington is still known -as Quaker Hill. Today, the Quaker influence in the city is witnessed primarily through Wilmington College which was organized by the Society of Friends in 1871 and constructed in 1875.)

From these nuclei developed the meetings serving Ohio west of the Hocking River, including what later became the West Branch Quarterly Meeting (Miami County) to the north and Whitewater Quarterly Meeting in eastern Indiana. Rapid settlement of Friends in the Miami valleys is shown by the fact that, in the three years from the middle of 1804 to the middle of 1807, the Miami Monthly Meeting received 367 removal certificates, bringing to that meeting the memberships of 1,697 persons.

The truly great Quaker migration westward began in 1800 with the removal of one entire meeting and part of another from North Carolina to the Short Creek region a few miles west of the Ohio River above Wheeling, Virginia. According to the minutes of the Westland, Pennsylvania, Monthly Meeting of 1799, two members, Benjamin and Joseph Townsend, visited meetings in North Carolina just prior to the mass movement of the southern Friends to the Ohio Country. Apparently the Friends from Westland exerted a great influence on the North Carolina Friends to move to an area which was more favorable to their way of life. The Coresound Monthly Meeting in Carteret County, North Carolina, instructed two delegates, Joseph Dew and Horton Howard, to survey the Ohio Country. Dew and Howard were joined by Aaron Brown, the delegate of the Trent Monthly Meeting of Jones County, North Carolina. These men made the difficult journey over the mountains to the Westland Monthly Meeting where, in June 1799, they sought advice on what land would be the best to secure. After the three agents crossed the Ohio River into the Northwest Territory, they decided that the Short Creek region in what is now Jefferson and Belmont counties, Ohio, would be their new home. The men were so impressed with the new area that they inspired the entire Trent Meeting and several families from the Coresound Meeting to move north. Certificates of removal, addressed to Westland, were granted to all members of Trent, after which there was no longer a Trent Monthly Meeting.

Although the prospect of moving over the mountains in winter to the Ohio Country may have made the Friends somewhat apprehensive, they quickly made preparations. In January 1800, they left their homes in North Carolina and journey by wagon and horseback (all children over twelve walked unless they had a horse), carrying with them their household furnishings and driving their livestock before them.

The party camped at night and lived on the food which they had brought with them and on wild game. In spite of an arduous journey under severe hardships, they always rested on First-Days, when, "at the appointed time" of their usual meeting, they gathered around a campfire for religious service.

The exact route taken by the group and the number in the party are not known, though it appears that between fifty and one hundred Friends were in the group. There were several routes by which Quakers came from the South to the Ohio Country, the area which in those days was generally referred to as the West. According to Stephen B. Weeks' 1896 study of southern Quakers and slavery, North Carolina Friends probably used one of four routes. The Kanawha road passed through mountainous areas of present Virginia and West Virginia to the falls of the Kanawha River and down that stream to the Ohio, crossing at the present site of Gallipolls. The Kentucky road proceeded by way of the western tip of Virginia, through the Cumberland Gap, and up through Kentucky to Cincinnati. The Magadee route over the Virginia turnpike, which ran from Richmond to the Ohio River at the mouth of the Kanawha River, was a favored way from 1810 until the age of railroads.

A route more likely taken by the Trent and Coresound Quakers was that over the trail of the future Cumberland or National Road (construction of the road began in 1811). It passed through Redstone (the modern Brownsville, Pennsylvania), located on the Monongahela River south of Pittsburgh. After five months of extreme hardship on the road these North Carolina migrants reached Westland, where their arrival was recorded in the minutes of the Westland Monthly Meeting, in sixth month 1800. The Westland Friends welcomed the North Carolinians and gave them the advice and assistance which were necessary to purchase land in the Northwest Territory. After resting in the vicinity of Westland and Redstone for several months, the Trent and Coresound Friends finally reached the Ohio Country in September 1800.

Near present Colerain, six miles up a small stream that empties into the Ohio River (at today's Bridgeport in Belmont County), they spent their First-Day by holding a meeting in the open. These newcomers were not the first in the area, however. The embryonic community of Mount Pleasant had had its beginnings in 1796, when, according to tradition, an advance party of twenty men-none Quakers-had scouted the area for settlement. Cutting the first road through the great deciduous forest covering the eastern part of Ohio, they camped above Short Creek. A rivalry developed over who should have the chance to buy the land from the United States government and gain the honor of being the town's founder. The decision was made by drawing lots and Robert Carothers was the winner. The Steubenville Land Office records show that Carothers purchased land in July 1800.

Later he sold seventy acres for $3.50 an acre, in what would become the west end of the town, to Jesse Thomas, a Friend, who brought his family to Ohio from North Carolina in 1802. Then, in 1803, just a few months after Ohio became a state, the two men laid out the village of Mount Pleasant, which was known for some time by its nickname "Jesse-Bob Town." For several years the village remained rather dormant with only a few log houses indicating its existence. Some of the early settlers in the Mount Pleasant area were the families of Joseph Bishop, Borden Stanton, AbigalI Stanton, Benjamin Stanton, William Patten, William Hogan, Joseph Dew, Nathan Updegraff, David Graves, Henry Mills, James Parnell, John Hatton, Jacob Griffith, Israel James, and James Raley.

This was frontier living in every sense of the word. none of us had a house at our command to meet in to worship the Almighty Being," Borden Stanton recorded. "So we met in the woods, until houses were built, which was but a short time." Meetings were often held in a tent or in the newly built cabin of Jonathan Taylor at Concord. By 1802 log meeting houses were built at Concord and Short Creek.

At this time the area of the Northwest Territory was a beautifully primitive, unspoiled wonder of nature, and the region around Mount Pleasant truly deserved that name. According to a later observer, the village was located in a picturesque setting on the summit of a broadly convex hill. From its elevated position, it was conspicuous several miles off. There was no level ground-but rounded hills and winding, narrow valleys. Clear streams, foliage of great variety, and outcroppings of shale and limestone added to the beauty of the region.

However, to a new resident who had the task of clearing a section of land from the dense forest, the beauties of nature may have appeared less appealing. Regardless of difficulties, in less than one year so many Friends came to the region that two preparative meetings were established-Concord, five miles from the future site of Mount Pleasant, and Short Creek, a half mile west of the Mount Pleasant location. In the last month of 1801 the first monthly meeting, Concord, was opened, to meet alternately at Short Creek, and in 1804 it divided into Concord and Short Creek monthly meetings.

There were several religious denominations among the people of the Mount Pleasant area. The Scotch-Irish Presbyterians from neighboring Pennsylvania were among the first settlers in Mount Pleasant Township, as early as 1798. The Reverend Joseph Anderson conducted the first Presbyterian services in a log building on Little Short Creek; eventually two brick churches were built. The Methodist Episcopal Church was also very active in the area until 1830, when the majority of members joined the Methodist Protestant Church. After a short time the Methodist Episcopal group diminished, but the Methodist Protestant Church continued as a strong organization in the community. The Reverend David McMasters was a pioneer minister among the Methodists in Mount Pleasant. Another sizable, prominent group was the Seceders (Associate Reformed). Other religions in Jefferson and Belmont counties in early years were Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal, Disciples, Lutheran, and Catholic.

One other Quaker community of note in the eastern part of Ohio was Salem (Columbiana County) which was settled in 1801-1802. The name for the town came from the word Jerusalem which was originally known as Salem. There were enough Quakers in Salem by 1805 for a monthly meeting to be organized there. (Salem later became a leading center of Quaker influence during the slavery controversy. The Anti-Slavery Bugle was published there in the 1840's.)

By the close of the year 1800, it is estimated that there were eight hundred families of Friends in the Ohio Country, who came not as land speculators but as settlers truly desirous of establishing homes. "Something like what happened here in Trent River, Jones County, N. C.," wrote Rufus M. Jones, the Quaker historian, "happened up and down the entire Atlantic coast from Georgia to Long Island, and in a less degree also in New York and New England. Whole meetings in many instances moved westward in a body, while in other meetings many families left their old homes and associations, and pushed out to find new homes and a new career in the wilderness of the north-west."

Settlement by Quakers in the Old Northwest was a life of toil, privation, struggle, and suffering; a few of them were captured by Indians and experienced death. Yet, Ohio Quakers sent back to their friends glowing reports about the land and the freedom of the Ohio Country. These reports were responsible for many more families deciding to move west, and within a relatively few years Ohio became a great center of the Society of Friends. By 1826, more than eight thousand Quakers were peacefully living among the limestone hills of Belmont, Jefferson, Harrison, and Columbiana counties in the eastern part of the state. For nearly seventy-five years, one third of the Friends in America lived within the boundaries of the Old Northwest Territory.

Another slight wave of migration occurred about 1835 to 1840 when Quakers with large families sought to secure land for their children. When the National Road was built in eastern Ohio in the late 1820's, it passed through Quaker country at St. Clairsville. Farmland increased in value and the sale of an acre there would buy ten acres of similar land in southern Morgan and western Washington counties. So, many families sold their farms and moved by wagon across the county to new homes. Within twenty years their new settlements--with Pennsville, Chesterhill, and Plymouth as centers--were as prosperous as the hills of Belmont County. Here until after the Civil War their organization, their meetings, and their schools were maintained. At present, only the Chesterhill Meeting remains; but twice a week, on First-Day and Fifth-Day, members come together for business and worship as Quakers have been doing since the time of George Fox.

SOME "FIRSTS" IN QUAKER MEETINGS