The Woods of Mt. Kisco

The Woods of Mt. Kisco Hugh Barbour* The five generations of the Wood family of Mt. Kisco, New York are a model of the "transformations" of eastern American Quakerism.1 The keystone figure was James Wood, said to be "the best-known Friend in the United States"2 at the time of the Richmond Conference of 1887 and the resulting formation of the Five Years Meeting, over both of which he presided. Little discussed in the history of Friends until Quaker Crosscurrents , Wood had a personality and range of interests as big as those of his friend Teddy Roosevelt. His three children were Ellen Wood, trained as a trainer of nurses; Carolena Wood, a pioneer in the Quaker feeding program in Germany after World War I; and L. Hollingsworth Wood, a founder of the National Urban League, AFSC, and Civil Liberties Union. James' grandfather, also named James Wood, moved his blacksmith's shop in 1 809 to the Town of Bedford in northern Westchester County, NY, where his son Stephen Wood in 1848 persuaded the village to name their railroad station and post office Mt.Kisco. The Woods were Orthodox Friends. When their Croton Valley Preparative Meeting split in 1828, the more numerous Hicksites kept the Meeting House, but the Orthodox kept the minute books, "thanks totheplacementofStephen Wood's boots during the tug-of-war . . . over the books."3 Stephen Wood sold or gave sections of the family farm to three of his four sons, who added neighboring tracts to form what they called the "Woodpile." Rendei Harris called them the "Kiscousins."4 Stephen's oldest son, Henry Wood, shared his father's conviction that tobacco was wicked, but with his next two brothers (who married non-Friends and left Meeting) he ran a whiskey distillery linked to their dairy in Brooklyn. Returning early to Mt.Kisco, Henry became a key leader among New York Orthodox Friends. His scripts and Bible texts for ministry in Meeting survive. He did not forgive Whittier for regretting the 1828 separation.5 Henry in 1875 was a member of the Committee on Business that brought to Ministers and Elders of the Yearly Meeting eight questions from a Conference of Ministers and Elders, which may have included Luke Woodard, David Douglas, Nathan & Esther Frame, and Rufus King, all of whom had attended the 1873 Yearly Meeting sessions. The 1875 Yearly Meeting session, deeply divided, referred the (by then) nine Questions to NYYM's Representative Meeting, from which Henry Hugh Barbour taught Religion at Earlham for 38 years, including Quaker and Church History jointly with Earlham School of Religion; from 1991-95 he and Sirkka were Resident Friends for Friends Meeting at Cambridge, and are now retired to Arlington MA. He is the author or a co-editor of The Quakers in Puritan England, Early Quaker Writings, William Penn on Religion and Ethics, The Quakers, and Quaker Crosscurrents. Quaker History James, Emily, and Carolena Wood, on the terrace at Braewold The Woods of Mt. Kisco Wood brought their approval to the 1876 session. They were then pasted into the 1876 NYYM Discipline, for all ministers and elders to reaffirm annually:6 1.Dost thou believe in one only wise, omnipotent, and eternal God, the Creator and Upholder of all things? 2.Dost thou believe in the fall of man through disobedience to God by yielding to the temptations of Satan; in the depravity of the human heart resulting therefrom; and that in consequence all men have sinned and come under condemnation? 3.Dost thou believe in the Deity and Manhood of the Lord Jesus Christ; that His willing sacrifice on the cross at Calvary was a satisfactory offering to God for the sins of the whole world, that He arose from the dead and ascended into heaven, and now sitteth at the right hand of the Father; . . . that man is made acceptable to God through faith in the atoning blood and the mediation ofthe Lord Jesus Christ; that this salvation is the free gift of God; that it is offered to all, and that all have power to accept or reject it? 4.Dost thou believe in the Holy Spirit, the promise of the Father, whom...