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A History of Unprogrammed Friends in Kansas: 1833-2003

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A History of Unprogrammed Friends in Kansas: 1833-2003 A HISTORY OF UNPROGRAMMED FRIENDS IN KANSAS: 1833-2003 James R. Lynch From colonial times in America, Quakers have felt a special concern for Native Americans, and concern for Native Americans led the first Friends to move to Kansas. Friends of Baltimore Yearly Meeting had begun a relationship with the Shawnee at Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1804, and in 1815 were asked to establish a presence with the Shawnee living near Wapakaoneta, Ohio. Friends built a grist mill, saw mill, school and dwellings at that location. Then in the 1830s the United States government forced the Shawnee in Ohio to accept a treaty taking their lands and moving them to a new reservation in Northeast Kansas. Their new reservation in Kansas was to be shared with other Shawnee from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, previously moved by government order. In 1832 the Shawnee asked Friends to follow them to their new homes in Kansas. In 1833 three Friends journeyed to Kansas, surveyed the situation and made an offer to the Shawnee to provide buildings and establish a school. Their offer was accepted and in 1835 the Indian Committee of Baltimore, Ohio, and Indiana Yearly Meetings of Friends completed plans for the mission. In 1836 a boarding school, meetinghouse, stables, and other buildings were erected. In the spring of 1837, Moses Pearson and his wife, with Mary H. Stanton and Elias Newby, came out in a covered wagon to take charge. The buildings were furnished and equipped and the farm opened. Fifty acres of ground was broken, crops put in, fences built, and meeting for worship begun on first and fifth days. From the 1840s through the early 1850s forty to fifty children attended the school each year, mostly Shawnee, but a few Delaware, Stockbridge, and Ottawa. In addition to a literary education, the school taught farming skills to boys and knitting and dressmaking to girls. In 1844 when the Kaw River flooded Indian cabins and crops, the Friends appealed to Eastern Friends for relief funds. Friends in London, Philadelphia, Ohio, Indiana and Iowa came to the rescue. In 1854 with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, a flood of land-hungry settlers, and open conflict between pro-slavery and free-state factions, the attendance at the school dropped to 15. In 1855 the school was temporarily closed during a cholera epidemic. In August of 1856 the school was closed following an attack by pro-slavery raiders. It was reopened in the Spring of 1857 but continued to be plagued by pro-slavery "border ruffians". As late as 1860 neighboring Quaker farmers frequently took shelter in the school buildings from the marauders. By this time the government had begun pressuring the Shawnee to sell their land in Kansas and move to Oklahoma. In 1862 the school was closed during the Civil War. When it reopened after the war, it continued to be operated by Friends but was financed by Shawnee tribal education funds and served primarily Shawnee orphans. It was finally closed at the request of the Shawnee in 1869 and by the following year the last of the Shawnee had moved to Oklahoma. In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise which would have made Kansas a free state, opened the area to settlement and left the question of slavery to be settled by -2- vote of the people when the states of Kansas and Nebraska should enter the union. Both pro-slavery and antislavery immigrants settled and the conflicts between them gave the emerging state a reputation as "Bleeding Kansas." Among the antislavery immigrants from New England and other northern states came the Quakers. In 1854 a group of Quakers arrived and settled at Dragoon Creek in what is now Waubaunsee County, a second group settled west of Stranger Creek some eighteen miles from Leavenworth at Springdale, a third came to the Cottonwood River near Emporia, and a fourth settled a few miles southwest of Osawatomie at Spring Grove. In 1856 Friends meetings for worship began at the Springdale, Cottonwood, and Spring Grove settlements. In spite of hardships, cold winters, and pro- slavery raiders by 1858 these three meetings had 200 members. Border ruffians from Missouri raided the antislavery settlements attempting to frighten them and discourage further migrations to Kansas by Friends and their antislavery neighbors. Yet additional Quaker settlers joined these earliest ones, settling in addition in Cherokee county in southeastern Kansas. By 1872 when Indiana Yearly Meeting set off the meetings in Kansas to function as the Kansas Yearly Meeting of Friends, there were 2,620 Friends in 25 monthly meetings and four quarterly meetings. An additional 400 "isolated" Friends were estimated to be living in other parts of Kansas not within the areas served by these 25 meetings. Their charter from the State of Kansas states that the Yearly Meeting was organized to promote the fellowship and the religious education of the Religious Society of Friends in Kansas among those called Quakers that do not hire pastors or sing hymns. (italics added). In the early and middle Nineteenth Century, Friends believed that the inner light or inward Christ was, in the words of Thomas Arnett, a still small voice in the "soul of every man . for the purpose of teaching him how he may pass his time in this world to obtain God's favor and blessing." The goal of religious life was to allow this seed of Christ to lead followers gradually into salvation. All sins would be forgiven as Friends followed their inward witness. This inner light made all pastors, sacraments and rituals unnecessary. Friends had rejected water baptism as one of the Old Testament ceremonies that the coming of Christ had superseded. They saw baptism as a special visitation of God inwardly experienced to help with growth into holiness. Righteousness could only conquer the heart inwardly, not through outward ordinances or rituals. Friends valued meditation and solitude as part of the spiritual life. In worship Friends waited upon the Lord in silence seeking guidance and direction. Friends ministers sought to strengthen and teach the Quaker community. They seldom preached conversion to the world outside the Society. These Friends sought to build a community of primitive Christianity revived that could be an example to the rest of the world. Friends were active humanitarians opposing slavery, promoting literacy, advocating prison reform, and opposing participation in war. In the 1870s the holiness revival movement which had begun in the Wesleyan camp meetings of the previous generation spread into a broader movement within all evangelical denominations. Some Friends ministers found a new religious experience which emphasized instantaneous conversion, a second later sanctification experience, and a much more authoritative view of ministry than was traditional among Friends. Revival meetings had begun in Kansas as early as 1869 and by 1873 traveling evangelists were regularly visiting most of the western meetings holding revivals for several evenings in a row, preaching the need for an instantaneous conversion and asking people to -3- come forward and kneel at the altar. According to Cyrus Harvey, a young minister from Spring River Meeting, as 1877 began four of Kansas Yearly Meeting's around 45 recorded ministers were revival enthusiasts. Yet 35 holiness ministers participated in the Yearly Meeting sessions that year. These included visitors from England, Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio. After controlling the devotional sessions during Yearly Meeting, these "fast" Friends spread out to member monthly meetings "to break up the old way of worship and ministry." By 1879, according to Cyrus Harvey, they had succeeded. In the 1870s these holiness ministers preached the need for instantaneous conversionrather than the gradual path toward salvation guided by the inner light, shifted power in meetings from the elders to the ministers, held public revival meetings bringing to Friends meetings hundreds of new members from evangelical churches, instituted a new marriage ceremony in which the bride and groom said their vows before a minister instead of during the silent meeting for worship, began to eliminate silence in worship and to diminish Friends witness against war. Their revivals involved extended or protracted evangelistic meetings with highly emotional preaching, mourners benches where those "under conviction" could be prayed for by the assembly, special sanctification altars where the already converted could confirm their second experience, and consecration rituals. In 1879 five meetings in Kansas (Dragoon near Harveyville, Cottonwood near Emporia, Elk River near Independence, Spring River near Galena, and Walnut Creek near Burr Oak) and one in Missouri (Flat Creek at Flat Creek) withdrew from Kansas Yearly Meeting to form Kansas Yearly Meeting (Conservative). [Among Quakers Conservative Friends seek to continue Friends historic ways of worship, ministry, and decision-making and to preserve the older belief and value systems against innovations from the evangelical and holiness movements. Belying their name, Conservative Friends have continued to be politically liberal and to support humanitarian causes, peace and social change.] In 1879 the orthodox Kansas Yearly Meeting reported 4,095 members in 39 meetings. The new Conservative yearly meeting embarked on a vigorous course with around 700 members and activity in peace, temperance, education while maintaining traditional Friends beliefs and ways. They cooperated actively with the older Conservative or "Wilburite" yearly meetings. In 1885 the Damorris Monthly Meeting near Dwight, Kansas was begun and joined the conservative yearly meeting. By the mid-1890s, however, the conservative meetings in Kansas began to decline. In Kansas Yearly Meeting the trends begun by the holiness revivalists progressed. In 1886 the first pastor in the yearly meeting was hired and by 1900 the pastoral system was generally adopted. Although the older practice of recording ministers who would remain members of their local meetings to exercise their gifts also remained in place.
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