ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE QUAKER COMMUNITY.
The economic activity of the early Quaker Community was varied. All they consumed they had to produce and manufacture. Though the stores sold cane sugar, the farmers made of maple sap in the spring both sugar and syrup, and in the fall they boiled down the juice of sweet apples to a syrup, which served for "sweetness" in the ordinary needs of the kitchen.
Every man was in some degree a farmer, in that each household cultivated the soil. On every farm all wants had to be supplied from local resources, so that mixed farming was the rule. The land which its modern owners think unsuited to anything but grass, because it is such "heavy, clay soil," was made in the 18th century to bear, in addition to the grass for cattle and sheep, wheat, rye, oats and corn, flax, potatoes, apples. Of whatever the farmer was to use he must produce the raw material from the soil, and the manufacture of it must be within the community.
Two lists which come to us from early days cast light on the population and occupations of the early period. One is the sheriff's list of landowners in Dutchess County in 1740, on which is no name of any farmer then resident on Quaker Hill. The other list is that of those who claimed exemption from military duty in 1755; 38 are from Oblong and 21 from Beekman, many of them being Quakers resident on the Oblong. This list is as follows:
Joshua Shearman, Beekman Prec'nt, shoemaker; Moses Shearman, Beekman Prec'nt, laborer; Daniel Shearman, Beekman Prec'nt, laborer; Joseph Doty, Beekman Prec'nt, blacksmith; John Wing, Beekman Prec'nt, farmer; Zebulon Ferris (Oblong), Beekman Prec'nt, farmer; Joseph Smith, son of Rich'd, Beekman Prec'nt, laborer; Robert Whiteley, Beekman Prec'nt, farmer; Elijah Doty, Oblong House, carpenter; Philip Allen, Oblong, weaver; Richard Smith, Oblong, farmer; James Aiken, Oblong, blacksmith; Abrah'm Chase, son of Henry, Oblong, farmer; David Hoeg, Oblong, ——; John Hoeg, Oblong, farmer; Jonathan Hoeg, Oblong, blacksmith; Amos Hoeg, son of John, Oblong, laborer; William Hoeg, son of David, Oblong, farmer; John Hoeg, son of John, Oblong, farmer; Ezekiel Hoeg, Oblong, laborer; Judah Smith, Oblong, tailor; Matthew Wing, Oblong, ——; Timothy Dakin, Oblong, farmer; Jonathan Dakin, Oblong, laborer; Samuel Russell, Oblong, laborer; John Fish, Oblong, farmer; Reed Ferris, Oblong, shoemaker; Benjamin Ferris, Junr., Oblong, laborer; Joseph Akin, Oblong, blacksmith; Israel Howland, Oblong, farmer; Elisha Akin, Oblong, farmer; Isaac Haviland, Oblong, blacksmith; Nathan Soule, son of George, Oblong, farmer; James Birdsall, Oblong, laborer; Daniel Chase, Oblong, farmer; Silas Mossher, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; William Mosher, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; Silvester Richmond, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; Jesse Irish, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; David Irish, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; William Irish, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; Josiah Bull, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; Josiah Bull, Junr., Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; Allen Moore, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; Andrew Moore, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; William Gifford, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; Nathaniel Yeomans, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; Eliab Yeomans, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; William Parks, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer.
This list mentions six occupations: the farmer, blacksmith, tailor, shoemaker, carpenter and laborer. With these six a frontier community could live, for every man of them was a potential butcher, tanner, trader. There is record of others in later years, when the communal life had become differentiated. There were at various times in the Quaker century stores at four places on the Hill. The Merritt store, at Site 28, descended to the sons of Daniel Merritt, and finally to James Craft. There was a store in Deuell Hollow, kept by Benjamin and Silas Deuell for several years. There is extant one bill of merchandise purchased by them of Edward and William Laight, merchants of New York, the amount being £200 and the date Feb. 25, 1785. The Akin stores at Sites 47 and 46, were kept by Daniel and Albro Akin, and the store at Site 53, by John Toffey. These stores during the period of the Quaker community were in trade largely by barter, taking all the commodities the farmer had beyond his immediate use, and selling sugar, coffee, cloth and other commodities which after 1815, as will be shown later, rapidly increased in number and in quantity. The use of money increased at the same period. The phrase still lingers in Quaker Hill speech: "I am going to the store to do some trading," though the milk farmer has engaged in no barter for fifty years.
In the culminating period of the Quaker Community, which followed the Revolutionary War, the following were some of the occupations practiced on the Hill, the record or remembrance of which is preserved:[8]
Abram Thomas was a blacksmith, at Site 14,[9] and is said to have made the nails used in building the Meeting House. George Kirby, at Site 99½, had a blacksmith shop; there was another at Site x100, now abandoned on Burch Hill, kept by Joel Winter Church, where Washington's charger was shod, and the bill was paid at the close of the war.
But the most notable smithy was at Site 41, where now stands one of the oldest houses on the Hill. Here Davis Marsh wrought in iron, and the sound of his trip-hammer audible for miles smote its own remembered impression upon the ears of those ancient generations. Doubtless the favored location of Marsh's shop in the neighborhood most central, as is shown in Chapter III, Part III, gave it greater use. There was at one time a forge in the Glen at Site 66, to which magnetic ore was hauled from Brewster to be worked.
A "smith shop" is also noted on Erskine's map for Washington in 1778 at Site x111. The most important manufacturing business of the community, however, was the wagon-worker's shop at Site 45, kept by Hiram Sherman. Under the general title of wagon maker he manufactured all movables in wood and iron, from fancy wagons to coffins.
Other trades were of increasing variety as the century of isolation proceeded. Shoemakers went from house to house to make shoes for the family, of the leather from the backs of the farmer's own cattle, tanned on the farm or not far away. Reed Ferris was a shoemaker, in whose residence at Site 99 Washington was entertained in September, 1778, until he took up Headquarters at John Kane's. Stephen Riggs was a shoemaker. Three tanneries were maintained on the Hill in the bloom of the Quaker community by Ransom Aldrich about Site 13; Amos Asborn, at Site x21, who also made pottery there; and Isaac Ingersoll, at Site 134.
Albro Akin had a sawmill in the Glen, and a gristmill was also located there in an early period. William Taber had a gristmill and also a cloth mill, consisting of carding machine, fulling mill, and apparatus for pressing, coloring and dressing cloth. John Toffey, at Site 53, and Joseph Seeley, at Site 15, and some of the Arnolds, near Site 12, were hatters. Jephtha Sabin, at Site 74, and Joseph Hungerford were saddlers and harnessmakers.
Every farmer and indeed every householder raised hogs. Pork was salted, as it is to-day, for winter use, in barrels of brine. Hogs also were extensively raised and butchered for market, at a year and a half old, the meat being taken to Poughkeepsie by wagon, and thence to New York. Many who raised more pork than their own use demanded exchanged it at the stores. Fields of peas were raised to feed the hogs.
Sheep also were raised for their wool; their meat afforded an acceptable variety in farmer's fare and their hides had many uses. David Irish, Daniel and David Merritt, Jonathan A. Taber and George P. Taber were farmers whose product of wool was notably fine and abundant. Jonathan Akin Taber "kept about eleven hundred sheep, some merino and some saxony."
Butter and cheese making were an important part of the business and income of the farmer's family, the butter being packed and sent weekly to the Hudson River boats for New York markets, or to Bridgeport or New Haven—a two-days' journey in either case. The cheese was ripened, or cured, being rubbed and turned every day, and kept until the dealers came around to inspect and purchase. On every farm was kept a flock of geese, which were picked once in six weeks to keep up the supply of feather beds and to furnish the requisite number for the outfit of each daughter of the family.
In the year 1767, Oblong Meeting took action which resulted, after seven years of agitation, in the clear declaration by the Yearly Meeting of New York, earliest of such acts, in favor of the freeing of slaves. This was one hundred years before the Emancipation Proclamation.
Wilson's "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America" says that "Members of the Society of Friends took the lead in the opposition to slavery." There had been action taken in 1688 by a small body of Germantown Quakers, in the form of a petition to their Yearly Meeting against "buying, selling and holding men in slavery." But to this the Yearly Meeting, after eight years of delay, replied only that "the members should discourage the introduction of slavery, and be careful of the moral and intellectual training of such as they held in servitude."
Meantime the Quaker Meetings on Long Island, in New York and Philadelphia took action recognizing slavery, with only a gradual tendency to regard the institution of slavery with disfavor. Now the time had come for putting the denomination in array against the institution.
There was a preacher of the Quakers who traveled much from 1746 to 1767 through the colonies, proclaiming that "the practice of continuing slavery is not right;" and that "liberty is the natural right equally of all men." In the last year of his propaganda occurred the event notable in local history. This was thirteen years before the action of the State of Pennsylvania, which initiated the lawmaking for emancipation among the northern colonies. It was "twenty years before Wilberforce took the first step in England against the slave-trade." The record of this action is as follows:
"At a (Yearly) Meeting at the Meeting House at Flushing the 30th day of the 5th month, 1767, a Querie from the Quarterly Meeting of the Oblong in Relation to buying and Selling Negroes was Read in this meeting and it was concluded to be left for consideration on the minds of friends until the Next Yearly Meeting. The Query is as follows: It is not consistent with Christianity to buy and Sell our Fellowmen for Slaves during their Lives, & their Posterities after them, then whether it is consistent with a Christian Spirit to keep those in Slavery that we have already in possession by Purchase, Gift or any otherways."
The year after, not without due hesitation, a committee was appointed which "drew an Essay on that subject which was read and approved and is as follows: We are of the mind that it is not convenient (considering the circumstances of things amongst us) to give an Answer to this Querie, at least at this time, as the answering of it in direct terms manifestly tends to cause divisions and may Introduce heart burnings and Strife amongst us, which ought to be Avoided, and Charity exercised, and persuasive methods pursued and that which makes for peace. We are however fully of the mind that Negroes as Rational Creatures are by nature born free, and where the way opens liberty ought to be extended to them, and they not held in Bondage for Self ends. But to turn them out at large Indiscriminately—which seems to be the tendency of the Querie, will, we Apprehend, be attended with great Inconveniency, as some are too young and some too old to obtain a livelihood for themselves."
Here, then, is the first action in a legislative body in New York State, upon the freeing of slaves. The "Querie from Oblong" had secured a clear deliverance in favor of the essential right of the negro as a man, in favor of his being freed "where the way opened," and against the holding of man for the service of another. The only hesitation of the meeting was frankly stated; emancipation was not to be pushed to the point of division among Christians, and was not to be accomplished to the impoverishment of the negro.
Yet if this action seems to any one like "trimming," it was followed by other deliverances increasingly clear and emphatic. Three years later Friends were forbidden to sell their slaves, except under conditions controlled by the Meeting. Throughout the communities of Friends the agitation was being carried on, and the meetings were anxious to purge themselves of the evil.
Finally in 1775 came the clear utterance of the Yearly Meeting in favor of emancipation without conditions: "it being our solid judgment that all in profession with us who hold Negroes ought to restore to them their natural right to liberty as soon as they arrive at a suitable age for freedom." At this meeting the Oblong was represented by Joseph Irish, Abner Hoag and Paul Osborn.
It only remains to picture the rest of the process by which slavery was purged away on Quaker Hill. In 1775 the practice of buying and selling slaves had come to an end, and no public abuse was noted by the Meeting in the treatment accorded to slaves by their masters. The next year there was but one slave owned by a member of the Meeting; and the day he was freed in the fall of 1777 was counted by the Meeting so notable that the clerk was directed to make a minute of the event. The owner had been Samuel Field, and the slave was called Philips. Another manumission in 1779 is recorded, but it was doubtless in the case of a new resident of the Hill, for it is recorded without signs of the joy exhibited in the freedom of Philips.
In the years 1782-3 the final act in emancipating the local slaves was taken, in the investigation by a committee of the Meeting into the condition of the freed slaves, and the obligations of their old masters to them. It was not very cordially received at first, but in the third year of the life and labors of the committee it was reported by them that "the negroes appear to be satisfied without further settlement." So the first American community to free herself from slavery required but sixteen years of agitation fully to complete the process.