Quaker Hill / A Sociological Study

by Warren H. Wilson

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."