Be Gentle, Be Plain: A History of Olney (review)

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES123 two Indians from Calcutta, with Portuguese names, suggesting that they were descendants of early Roman Catholic converts, presented themselves at the headquarters of London Yearly Meeting, and begged English Friends to send someone to help the "Hindu-Quaker" group that had grown up spontaneously, with the help of Barclay's Apology, in that city. They were finally allowed to attend the Yearly Meeting sessions, but not to speak. Three British Friends, including Henry Hipsley, whose name appears in several chapters of this book, then visited India, and stayed for no less than eighteen months, and two Australian Friends preceded them. But when, within a few years, a mission was established in India with the support of English Friends, it was far from Calcutta. The Calcutta group did not long survive. Ormerod Greenwood tells the fascinating story of Daniel Wheeler and other Friends' work in Russia in the early nineteenth century. The last section tells of the widespread foreign mission activity which came to its full flowering at the end of the nineteenth century under the influence of powerful evangelical forces connected with early "ecumenism." He sees this mission activity as bringing new vigor to the Society of Friends, but at some cost in depth. There are many sentences and paragraphs that demand quotation, but space is not available. In the opinion of this reviewer, Ormerod Greenwood has written a book full of original research that is fair to all sides in some of the controversial issues of the past, a book that will be read with delight and profit for many years to come. Swarthmore, PennsylvaniaHorace G. Alexander Be Gentle, Be Plain: A History of Olney. By William P. Taber, Jr., Barnesville , Ohio: The Olney Alumni Association, 1976. 233 pages. $7.00. William Taber has assembled a large array of Ohio Yearly Meeting Quaker lore for the reader and has masterfully woven the names and anecdotes into a readable composite. This is not a history as thesis and research might normally contain, but rather a rich and personal account of the people and personalities that shaped this little Quaker boarding school located in the hills of eastern Ohio. The occasion for this book is recognition of the centennial of Olney on her present location near Barnesville, Ohio. The school was originally founded in 1837 at Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, after the Hicksite-Orthodox separation which had rocked eastern Quakerdom. This separation was not without effect in Ohio. However, the 1854 disagreement of Gurneyites and Wilburites was to have far more significance in the future of the Yearly Meeting Boarding School at Mt. Pleasant. A lawsuit filed by the Gurneyites in 1868 eventually came before the Ohio Supreme Court in 1874 where in a 3-2 decision the Mount Pleasant Boarding School was decreed as belonging to the Gurneyite Yearly Meeting. Unfortunately the school burned down soon after the change of owners. Conservative Friends (Wilburites), however, opened their own new school at Barnesville, Ohio, in January of 1876. Many of the practices and customs of the old school carried over into the new. Many of the staff had been part 124QUAKER HISTORY of the school at Mt. Pleasant so this also contributed to the degree of similarity . The Olney Friends Boarding School as it is now called, has gone through her own times of testing. Not the least of these was the disastrous fire of 1910 that gutted the main building. In the rebuilding, provision was made to separate the student living areas from the classroom building. New dormitories were constructed facing each other across the front campus. At present the girls' dormitory has been replaced with a new one to the rear of the campus The old girls' dormitory is now in use as an infirmary and as overnight accommodations for guests. From the beginning, there were imDortant ties between this school and her precursor at Westtown. Eastern Friends gave liberally of their substance and in other ways encouraged the school beyond the Alleghenies. Many Olney students have gone on to Westtown for a further year of study and graduation. This is less true today than in the early 1900's. Over the years there have been...