Quaker Hill / A Sociological Study

by Warren H. Wilson

Personalities of the austere type, men and women of the devotional side of Quakerism, may be cited in the cases of [40]David Irish and [41]Richard T. Osborn. The former was the last minister of the Hicksite Society of Friends on the Hill. His preaching covered the years of its separate existence, for he was made a minister in 1831, three years after the Division, and he died in 1884, at the age of ninety-two. One year after his death the Meeting was formally "laid down," in Oblong Meeting House, and from a place of worship it became a house of memories.

David Irish was austere. Believing that slavery was wrong, "he made his protest against slavery by abstaining, so far as possible, from the use of slave-products ... made maple to take the place of cane sugar, and used nothing but linen and woolen clothing (largely home-spun). This abstaining he continued for himself and family until slavery was abolished." Yet "he never felt free," continues his daughter and biographer, "to join with anti-slavery societies outside his own, believing that by so doing he might compromise some of his testimonies." He welcomed in his home the fugitive slave fleeing from the South, and "there must never be any distinction made in the family on account of his color; he sat at the same table and was treated as an equal."

David Irish was equally opposed to war, and to capital punishment. He wrote, "testified" and "suffered" for these principles. "In the time of the Civil War he allowed his cattle to be sold by the tax-collector, not feeling free to pay the direct war-tax." His biographer enumerates further his hospitality, his fondness for books, his humor, and mentions with a pride characteristic of the Quaker that he "was often entrusted with the settlement of estates, showing the esteem in which his business capacity and integrity were held by the community."

Richard T. Osborn was the Elder of the Orthodox branch of the Friends during the same period, subsequent to the Division, as that covered by David Irish's life. Born in 1816, he was conversant as a child with the period of the Division. The seceding members of the Meeting met in his father's house and barn until the Orthodox Meeting House could be erected on the land upon which, at his marriage in 1842, he erected his house. Richard Osborn was "the head of his family." Strong of will, austere, convinced, he lived in the world of Robert Barclay and William Penn, and for years never hesitated to rebuke young or old Quakers or "world's people," whom he found violating "the principles of truth." A summer boarder who played a violin upon his premises was silenced, and the singing of a hymn in the Meeting House of which he was Clerk was once sternly "testified against."

But Richard Osborn was kindly. He had a gentle and appreciative humor; and about 1890 there come influences in the presence of neighbors to whom he was strongly drawn, as well as the constant presence in his house of boarders from New York; so that his later years were spent in a mellower interest in dogma, and an ever keener interest in the history of Quakerism and of the community in which he lived. His wife, Roby, was a Quakeress of rare sweetness and exquisite gentleness of character. Together this strong, dominating man and his gentle wife constituted an influence, while they lived, which held the community together, and disseminated their principles more successfully than if he had been eloquent, instead of terse, and she an evangelist instead of a meek and demure Quakeress.

These persons were conspicuous examples of the best social product of Quaker Hill. They were not famous, nor great. Their philosophy was one of self-repression and required them to reduce their lives and those of other men to mediocrity. Quaker Hill taught and practiced the prevention of pauperism—and the prevention of genius! The ideals of the place discouraged higher education. The leading personages distinctly opposed the offer of higher education to the young.

Therefore this community, which has been exceptionally wealthy for one hundred and fifty years, has done nothing for general education; and has not educated its own sons. As noted above, no person born on Quaker Hill ever completed the courses for a degree in college or university, and though the community has had for a century families with aesthetic and literary tastes, no member of the community has painted a picture, written a song, or published a book.

The personages briefly described above are named for another reason. Their deaths, with the deaths of certain others whom they represent, have brought to an end the period of Quaker Hill's history which I have called "The Mixed Community." The others who with them made up this group were Jedediah and Phoebe Irish Wanzer, Anne Hayes, Olive Toffey Worden, and six other persons still living, of whom four are past eighty years and two are very near one hundred years of age. This group of persons were the center of that Mixed Community. They possessed the actual authority which this population always has required in its leaders. The piety, the austerity, the forcefulness, the ownership of the land of greatest value, and even the available wealth of the community, were so largely possessed by this group that in the years 1890-1900, in which this group was still intact, its leadership was such as to unite the community and consolidate the whole population for whatever interests the leaders of this group approved. Of that period it was said: "Everybody on Quaker Hill goes to everything!"

With the death of those who have passed away in the latter part of the period under study the power of initiative has gone. New proposals are hushed. Variation is discouraged; the rut of custom and convention is preferred. And a subtle stifling air of the impossibility of all active purposes pervades social and religious and business activity on the Hill.

Religiously speaking, attendance upon public services have decreased by twenty per cent., while the Protestant population has only decreased five per cent.