INDIANA-L Archives

From:
Subject: Society of Friends (or Quakers).
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 19:56:35 EST

Society of Friends (or Quakers). —The pioneer of this society in Rush County
was Dayton Holloway, who cut out the road from some point east of
Knightstown down the east side of Big Blue River to the vicinity of where Carthage now
is; he moved there in 1821. Thomas Hill, and Tamar Hill, his wife, came six
weeks later, a short time after the establishment of “Indiana Yearly Meeting,”
at Richmond, the head organization of this society. Nathan Hill and Robert
White came early in 1822, and then Jonathan Hill. The first “Friends’ Meeting
” was held in the summer of 1822, at the house of Nathan Hill, attended by
the “heads” of four families, with three or four children. The next year
Benjamin Cox, Jonathan Jessup, John Hill, and perhaps Pearson Lacy came; in 1826,
Jesse Hill came. Dayton Holloway was disowned by the society because he
accepted the office of Justice of the Peace. Milton Hill, son of Thomas and Tamar
Hill, was the first child born, viz., 1822. About 1823, a small log meeting
house was built south of the present Walnut Ridge Meeting House, in which
meetings for worship and business were regularly held. Benjamin Hill, from
Richmond, Ind., built a sawmill at the point on Big Blue River, where Carthage
mills now are, in 1826, and a flouring gristmill in 1828, his father, Robert
Hill, was the owner. This grist mill, known as Hill’s Mills, supplied by the
never failing waters of Big Blue River, ground the corn and wheat for a large
territory in pioneer times. Henry Henley came in 1828, and John Clark about
1832. They laid off and platted the town of Carthage in northeast corner of
northwest quarter of Section 19, Town 13, Range 8, 18th August, 1834, and John
Clark for some years owned Hill’s Mills. Walnut Ridge Monthly Meeting was
established the 16th of January, 1836, from Duck Creek Monthly, and White Water
Quarterly Meeting. The number of members then was 447, including children, sixty
of this number then lived at Little Blue River, some ten miles south. In
March, 1836, a meeting was granted at the latter place, and a preparation
meeting January, 1842, and a monthly meeting in 1866 under the name of Carthage,
and so continued until 1884, when Little Blue River Monthly Meeting was
established. Statistics of 1887 show 170 members. Franklin Barnard taught the first
school at the meetinghouse. John Kinley, from Wayne County, preached the
first sermon. The first settlers were: Moses Coffin, Thomas Macy, Thomas Swain,
William Worth, Zaccheus Stanton, Asa Barnard. Soon after, in 1835, William
Barnard and Hezekiah Clark came, and then John Barnard, Reuben Macy and George
Swain.

History Of Rush County Indiana,
Brant & Fuller
1888
Typed By Lora Radiches

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