Ohio Yearly Meeting (Progressive) was one of the largest bodies of Progressive Friends in the nation, and it is the only Progressive body that seriously handicapped one of the Hicksite bodies.
The "progressive" movement began among Friends in Indiana YM Hicksite in 1842, when some Hicksites desiring a more public opposition to slavery organized a body with the name of Green Plains Yearly Meeting. No original Hicksite body recognized Green Plains YM, but “progressives” in other Hicksite bodies began to press for changes that spread their influence. William Schooley, a Hicksite minister at Somerset, visited Green Plains and was horrified at what was happening.
A major progressive force in Ohio YM Hicksite was James Barnaby Jr., editor of a Salem newspaper named the Anti-Slavery Bugle. Barnaby supported the Progressives at Green Plains and the reform movements of the day. He organized a “comeouter movement,” which called on progressive Hicksites to “come out” of their old meetings and organize Progressive meetings.
Comeouters held a “Conference of Friends of Progress and Reform” in the abandoned New Garden Hicksite Meeting House in 10/1849. New Garden MM began to disown those who attended the conference, and in early 1850 a division took place. Salem and New Garden QMs both divided and appealled to the Hicksite YM for recognition. At yearly meeting that year, Ohio Hicksites recognized the non-progressive QMs.
The first session of Ohio YM (Progressive) was held in the Hicksite yearly meeting house at Salem in 1852. Representatives came from the two QMs and from other meetings. The meeting apparently decided to discontinue all business meetings other than the YM, as no reference to other business meetings has been found. The YM retained a strong following in Columbiana County, with scattered meetings elsewhere in eastern Ohio. It placed notices of various meetings or presentations in the Anti-Slavery Bugle, with the last notice of a YM in 1860. It is unclear if the YM continued thereafter, but historians generally agree that it continued until 1862.
For other Quaker bodies covering eastern Ohio, see Ohio YM (Pre/Orthodox/Wilburite); Ohio YM (Hicksite); Ohio GM (Primitive); Ohio YM (Gurneyite); and Evangelical Friends Church - Eastern Region. |
