The Expanding World of Ohio Wilburites in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century

THE EXPANDING WORLD OF OHIO WILBURITES IN THE LATTER PART OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY By William P. Taber, Jr.* During the second part of the nineteenth century, while most Quaker groups were undergoing great change and embarking on bold new projects, a substantial group of Wilburite Friends in Ohio seemed to be standing still—or even going backward and declining. They were regarded by many Quakers—with some justification—as obstructors of progress and strainers after gnats who had become needlessly excited about certain details of Joseph John Gurney's writings, and who had become rude, troublesome, contentious, and quite lacking in charity when attacking many gifted English and American ministers. For about thirty years after the separation of 1854, these Ohio Friends were contained and isolated from official contact with any other yearly meeting, and their internal troubles were often severe. Yet, by 1880 they had begun to emerge from that period of intense and introspective withdrawal, and the remaining years of the century saw them participate in a modest flowering of their form of Quaker religious culture, which spanned the North American Continent and included small groups in Canada and England. After reviewing the background of Wilburite separation and withdrawal, I shall describe their expanding world and some of the ministry which flourished in it and gave it a peculiar flavor. The tensions which resulted in Ohio's Gurneyite-Wilburite separation had been growing for thirty years before it occurred in 1854. They were clearly evident during the 1830's when Ohio and Philadelphia Yearly Meetings took positions which would eventually isolate each of them in different ways from the rest of nineteenthcentury Quakerism. After 1845 both yearly meetings endured increasing internal and external pressures because they stood alone in * When William P. Taber read this paper before Friends Historical Association at its Spring Meeting at Exeter Meetinghouse in 1966, he was a T. Wistar Brown Fellow at Haverford College. He is now working with Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) as a "released Friend." 18 The Expanding World of Ohio Wilburites19 officially favoring the New England Wilburite Yearly Meeting. For a time it had looked as if North Carolina Yearly Meeting also would choose the Wilburite side; but according to Allan Jay, one unexpected and dramatic sermon turned the tide there, effectively isolating Philadelphia and Ohio.1 After the tensions in Ohio finally caused the separation in 1854, only Philadelphia was willing to recognize the Ohio Wilburites, although early comments in the (London) Friend had given a flicker of hope that London would accept the Ohio Wilburite body as the constitutionally legitimate yearly meeting.2 After 1857, when Philadelphia, in order to avoid its own separation, ceased to correspond with Ohio or anyone else, Ohio Wilburites were completely isolated as a yearly meeting, for they were unable to agree to correspond with the Wilburite groups in New England, New York, or Baltimore. Thus the 1954 Ohio Wilburites lost not only the more activist of Ohio Yearly Meeting's leaders, but also the usual channels by which co-operation, new life, and new ideas have always flowed from one Quaker group to another. Even the traditional concern for the Indians was shelved for many years because the minutes of the Indian Committee and the reports of the inter-yearly-meeting Indian work remained, significantly, in Gurneyite hands. Most of the annual appropriation which had been raised for Indian work in 1854 was finally consigned to the Mount Pleasant Boarding School because it seemed inconceivable to send the money to Gurneyite Indiana Yearly Meeting, which had been administering Indian work for Ohio and Baltimore Yearly Meetings. Although many English ministers and American Gurneyite ministers would still have been quite acceptable to Ohio Wilburites after 1854, the same logic which had stifled the Indian concern kept these Friends apart. Thus officially, at least, Ohio Friends faced the Civil War alone, and were not able to join officially with other Friends when they rose to the challenge of aiding the freedmen during and after the Civil War. They continued to remain aloof after the Civil War from most of the increasingly cooperative Quaker work on behalf of the Indians. They were also largely...