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A PROFILE OF HICKSITE QUAKERISM IN MICHIGAN, 1830-1860 By Carlisle G. Davidson* During the 1830's a phenomenon known as "Michigan fever" spread through New York and New England. Thousands of families joined the westward movement in search of richer farm lands. Many New York Quakers were among the emigrants to Michigan prior to 1837. In 1827 the separation between the two groups within the Society of Friends had taken place. In western New York there were both "Orthodox" Friends who placed great emphasis upon the doctrine of the atonement and "Hicksite" Friends who tended to emphasize the primacy of the Inward Light as the source of personal salvation. Both Farmington and Scipio Quarterly Meetings in New York experienced doctrinal dissension and later formal separations. In 1834 the Hicksite Friends in these areas withdrew from New York Yearly Meeting and, joining with like-minded Canadian Friends, organized Genesee Yearly Meeting. This separation affected the newly arrived Quaker settlers in Michigan. Both Orthodox and Hicksite Friends corresponded with Michigan Quakers and encouraged the organization of monthly and quarterly meetings. In the frontier areas, however, doctrinal matters were often subordinated to an overriding concern among all Friends for the abolition of slavery. The active work in carrying through this unifying concern from 1830 to 1860 forms the record of the golden age of Quakerism in the state during the nineteenth century. The sacrificial and often heroic efforts of Laura Smith Haviland, Elizabeth Comstock, and Charles Osborn—all Orthodox Quakers— in the cause of abolition are well recorded in numerous biographies and historical accounts. However, the work of some of the Hicksite Friends in Michigan, as well as the activities of their small scattered meetings, is largely unknown. In 1833, a committee of Friends in Farmington and Scipio Quarters was formed to have oversight of the numerous families that * Detroit Friends Church, Detroit, Michigan. 106 HICKSITE QUAKERISM IN MICHIGAN107 had removed to Michigan. After visitation and exchange of letters with Quakers of Hicksite persuasion in Wayne County, the committee arranged for the organization of Nankin Monthly Meeting, First Month, 1834. Nankin Meeting in Wayne County, about twenty miles distant from Detroit, was among the first constituent bodies within Genesee Yearly Meeting. Nankin Township for which the meeting was named was subdivided in 1835. Since most Friends lived in adjacent Plymouth Township or in the newly created Livonia Township, the name of the meeting was changed in Seventh Month, 1835. It was subsequently known as Livonia Meeting although records often refer to the group as Plymouth Meeting. Its membership embraced all Hicksites in Michigan.1 Late in 1834 it was decided that Quakers in western Michigan would separate from Nankin Meeting and organize themselves into Milton Preparative Meeting in Calhoun County. In 1836, Milton Meeting was renamed Battle Creek Monthly Meeting with subordinate meetings for worship in Battle Creek, Parma, and Sherwood. The gathering in Sherwood was organized in 1840 by Reynold Cornell but by 1847 the meeting was discontinued. The meeting at "Quakertown" near the village of Parma in Jackson County flourished. The first meeting was held near Parma by John Mott, Fourth Month 11, 1838. John Mott was born in South Hempstead, Long Island, in 1783, and was recorded a minister at age 32. After conducting a private academy at Rennselaerville, New York, for many years, he and his wife moved to Hickory Grove near Parma in 1837. Both he and Joseph Merritt of Battle Creek were valued travelling ministers in the midwest. His death in 1848 was a great loss for the Society of Friends in Michigan.2 In 1840, the meeting near Parma was given monthly meeting status and a simple frame meetinghouse was erected. The name of the group was changed to Hickory Grove in 1844. Parma Friends were active abolitionists and were agents of the underground railroad which ran through the village. By 1880, the meeting had dwindled away and the meetinghouse was abandoned. A small burial ground remains. Shortly after Nankin, or Livonia, Meeting was established, Hicksite Friends in Lenawee County requested recognition as a preparative 1 Michigan History Magazine, XXIX (1945), 515-519. ' Bulletin ofFriends Historical Association, XLVI (Autumn, 1957), 102-103. 108QUAKER HISTORY meeting...

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