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Archiver > QUAKER-ROOTS > 1998-08 > 0904168974


From: "Seth and/or BJ Hinshaw" <>
Subject: Re: Progressive Friends
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1998 18:02:54 -0400


Some subscribers have asked me for more information on Ohio
Yearly Meeting of the Friends of Human Progress. Here is a quick
summary of what I have:

James Barnaby, editor of the Anti-Slavery Bugle, was the earliest
leader of the Ohio Progressives. (By "Ohio" I mean only people
involved in Ohio YM, so that Green Plains is not included.)

Barnaby as editor pushed the faction called the "Comeouters"
among the Hicksites. They organized a Conference of Friends of
Progress and Reform, which met at New Garden in Tenth Month 1849.
When the Hicksite overseers began to visit their members who
attended, a division at New Garden QM resulted.

Both New Garden QMs sent representatives to Ohio YM, but the
Progressive representatives were not recognized. The YM
encouraged the local meetings to deal with the Progressives.

Local divisions ensued. The most important Progressive meetings
were Grove, Sandy Spring, and New Lisbon. There was also a small
Progressive meeting near Stillwater.

As a result of their disassociation from Ohio YM / Hicksite, the
Progressives called a YM of their own to be held at the YM House
at Salem in 1852. They met at least until 1858 as a Yearly
Meeting; that year they held their YM at Fairmount Baptist MH in
Salem.

In 1866, Ohio YM (Hicksite) sent a letter to the Hicksite
meetings encouraging them to welcome back the disowned
Progressives, "as the Society which they formed is believed to be
extinct within the limits of this yearly Meeting."

There was a meeting in Salem which was closely identified with
the Progressives which existed 1863-1874, but I haven't found any
evidence that they were part of Ohio YM of FHP.

Sources of information:

The most important secondary source for Ohio YM of FHP is James
H. Norton's PhD dissertation, "Quakers West of the Alleghanies
and in Ohio to 1861," (Western Reserve, 1965), pp. 206-217.

Some minutes of Ohio YM of FHP were recorded in the Anti-Slavery
Bugle. For example, one can read the minutes of the 1853 YM at
the Salem Historical Society, where the Anti-Slavery Bugle of
10-8-1853 is framed on the wall. Lot Holmes served as Clerk that
year and Ann Pearson as Assistant Clerk for the YM.

Seth

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