Abner Hoag of Town of Dover, Dutchess Co., to M. M. of Oblong, 27 rods, adjoining the meeting house lot, "now called Branch Meeting." Consideration $7.50. Dated 5.21.1811. Not recorded.
List of Deeds belonging to Oblong M. M. 5th Mo., 1788.
VITA.
The author of this dissertation was born May 1, 1867. He received from Oberlin College the degree of A. B. in 1890, and that of A. M. in 1894. He graduated from Union Theological Seminary in 1894, and has since served as an active pastor at Quaker Hill and in Brooklyn, New York. While in the Seminary and also during the years 1903-1905 he was a graduate student in Columbia University, having especial interest in the lectures of Professor Franklin H. Giddings; to whom as to his associates on the Faculty of Political Science, he owes a debt of gratitude for a conception of the common life of men on the earth.
FOOTNOTES
[1] The oldest records of Oblong meeting are contained in the records of Purchase Meeting, the mother society, from the earliest date, about 1741, at which Oblong is mentioned, to 1744, when it became an independent monthly meeting. Most of the early settlers on the Oblong came through Purchase, married there and left their names on its pages. From the year 1744 Oblong Meeting was a meeting of record, but for thirteen years the minutes were written on loose sheets, which have been lost. They may indeed be in existence, for in 1760 the meeting directs Clerk Zebulon Ferriss to record the minutes for the time he has been clerk; and appoints two to record the previous minutes from the establishment of the meeting. If those two did as they were directed, there should be a book of the oldest records of the Hill in existence; and in any case there may be in some old leather bound trunk, leaves of records from 1744 to 1757, whose value is beyond calculation. The minutes of the Meeting from 1757 until the division, and from that date until the Hicksite Meeting was laid down in 1885, are in the possession of John Cox, Librarian of the Yearly Meeting (Hicksite). From 1828, the year of the division, until the present year, the minutes of the Orthodox Friends are in the possession of William H. Osborn. The minutes of the Women's Meeting previous to 1807 are missing; one volume, from 9th Mo., 14th, 1807, to 3rd Mo., 16th, 1835, is with John Cox. In the same place are three volumes of the record of Births, Marriages and Deaths: one from 1745 to 1774; then, after a gap, due to the absence of a volume, is the second, from 1786 to 1866; and a third volume of births and deaths alone from 1828 to 1893. Volumes lacking in this collection are the records of births and deaths previous to 1828: and of marriages from 1774 to 1786.
The records of the present Orthodox Meeting in full, as well as the following two volumes of the records of the Preparative Meeting of Ministers and Elders at Oblong, are in the possession of William H. Osborn on Quaker Hill; first from 10th month, 12th, 1783, to 1st month, 13th, 1878; and second from 1878 to present time. Last of all, the record of births and deaths of the meeting, from 1810 to the present day, following the line of the Orthodox society, is in the possession of the Post family on Quaker Hill.
[2] LOCAL HISTORY SERIES.
David Irish—A Memoir, by his daughter, Mrs. Phoebe T. Wanzer, of Quaker Hill, N. Y.