The Yearly Meetinghouse of Mount Pleasant, Ohio

Mount Pleasant Yearly Meetinghouse as it appeared before restoration was started. The attic, showing part of the unusual mechanism, all made of wood, used to lift the great dividing partition. THE YEARLY MEETINGHOUSE OF MOUNT PLEASANT, OHIO By Ellen Starr Brinton* OLD meetinghouses have been a favorite topic for both writers and photographers in England and the United States over many years. Most of them have overlooked the story of a meetinghouse famous not only for its extraordinary size but for its picturesque beginning and the many controversies which have centered around it. This is the Yearly Meetinghouse at Mount Pleasant, Jefferson County, Ohio. Built during the second decade of the nineteenth century, it was first used in 1815, when Quaker emigration from East and South was in full tide. The village of Mount Pleasant was situated directly in the path of the thousands of Quaker families moving westward. It became the center not only of their religious life but of many activities associated with the social, moral, and political issues of the day. Still further westward movements of Friends to areas beyond the Mississippi, together with differences of theology, greatly weakened the Society as a whole. The last official gathering of Friends in the Mount Pleasant Yearly Meetinghouse was in 1917. Although local residents tried to preserve the building for sentimental reasons, the task was beyond their means. Decay set in and it was fast going to ruin when the State of Ohio took over the place as an historic monument. Now that restoration is under way and there is prospect of the great building's again being available for public gatherings, it seems only proper to gather here a few of the available bits of history about it. The little that can be found of Mount Pleasant and the great migration of Friends over the mountains must be culled from the terse minutes of the different Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Meetings and a few letters and journals that have survived two and three generations. * Ellen Starr Brinton was for many years Curator of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. 93 94Bulletin of Friends Historical Association Apparently there is no definite date for the first crossing of the Alleghenies by members of the Society of Friends. Some were settled at Uniontown, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, as early as 1769. In 1776 Hopewell Monthly Meeting, Virginia, reported to its Quarterly Meeting that eighteen families had removed to the Northwest Territory. By 1780 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting had a report from "a committee to visit families west of the mountains," telling of 150 members scattered in various communities. On the eastern seaboard the urge that infected Quaker young people was the lure of cheap land in a new free country; in the South there was added the intense desire to move away from the debilitating influence of slavery. In New England and the mid-Atlantic states Friends went by groups of two and three families In the South migration became an organized movement, led by individuals strong in mind and body, guided and directed by Quarterly Meetings, and involving hundreds of families. They sold their lands and surplus personal effects. They settled meeting business in an orderly fashion, sent all local and Monthly Meeting records to the proper Quarterly Meetings, and finally closed the meetinghouses , many of which never opened again. The continued migration of Friends caused prolonged correspondence and great discussion in Philadelphia and Baltimore Yearly Meetings all through the latter part of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. There was much confusion over formalities as to the laying-down and setting-up of meetings to keep pace with the great movement. A whole group of meetings grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania, and these seem to have been delegated to care for the migrants and to keep their records, Westland, Providence, Redland meetings being the most important. All of these have since disappeared until often not even a trace of building or burial ground can be found. But the records were preserved and from these we can follow today the step-by-step methods by which Friends were advised and assisted in the great trek to new settlements in the territory northwest of...