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The Klickitat County Agriculturist, Goldendale, WA., August 29, 1909, page 7

A KLICKITAT COLONY
Samuel Hill at Head of Plan to Establish a Quaker Colony at New Town of Maryhill, Near Columbus - Has Erected a Friends' Meeting House, Which Will be Opened Sunday, August 29th.

     As known to Klickitat people in this section, Samuel Hill has invested largely in real estate in the Columbus neighborhood, and has established a new town called Maryhill, a short distance from the old town of Columbus on the line of the North Bank Railroad, facing the Columbia river. Here Samuel Hill proposes to establish a colony of Friends, commonly known as Quakers. The first building erected which is a Friends' meeting house, which will be opened next Sunday August 29th. Friends in limited numbers from various parts of the country are expected to attend. John H. Dillingham, editor of the Friends' Review, the leading Friends' paper, published in Philadelphia, accompanied by his wife, will be present.
     Mr. Hill has bought 6,000 acres at Maryhill, which he is irrigating, equipping with good roads and preparing for a model orchard region. He will cut this into 1,200 tracts and sell. Mr. Hill declares that it is "the place where the rain and sunshine meet."
     His hope is to build up a large colony of Friends here there, he being a Friend himself.
     Some matters concerning the Friends may be interesting:
     The Friends, or Quakers, while good citizens, are opposed to their members holding public office. There were some notable exceptions to this rule; John Bright held public office and in this country, as a rule, those Friends holding public office sever their connection with the society.
     It is reported that James J. Hill was educated under care of Friends and that when the panic in Wall street in 1893 reached its height, with money at 139 percent premium, he turned to his companion and repeated one of the "Queries," "Are Friends careful to live within their income and not undertake ventures beyond their means or abilities to perform?" His companion replied in the stereotyped, phrase, "Some Friends are careful."
     The first meeting ever held in this country for the liberation of the slave was held at Deep River Meeting House, North Carolina, by Benjamin Lundy, who descendants now live at Kennewick, Wash. The record of that meeting show that Samuel Hill, Zimri Stuart and David Lindley presided over that meeting. The grandsons of these three men met in Seattle some four years ago and in memory of their fathers established a meeting and built a meeting house for this society on the Twentythird avenue and Spruce street.
     The Friends were the first society to take advanced view on the anti-slavery questions. Also the first to accord equal rights to women, and no business of importance is transacted that has not the approval of the Women's Meeting and the Men's Meeting. On all questions pertaining to the temperance and general good conduct they are foremost and instance has never been recorded where a Friend was a beggar. They are, as a rule, comfortable and well-to-do people. Formerly they were opposed to music in their meetings unless the individual members felt a call to sing. David Bispham, America's greatest baritone, was a member of the Society of Friends, and his uncles, Edward and David Scull, were very much opposed to his taking up a musical career.
     Friends believe in temperance in all things. A story is told by one now a resident in Seattle to the effect that when in college he was ill and the physician prescribed stimulants he rejected the glass offered by the matron, saying to her that he never use anything of the kind. And her reply was "Do not be intemperately temperate; drink it."
     The plain garb which, for many years, distinguished the Quakers as a protest against the worldliness of the time of Charles H., has, to a large extent, passed away. The principles for which they contended have been no universally adopted by other Christian denominations as to make them no longer an exclusive property of Friends. Their numbers have become lessened to the fact that they never proselytize and the younger generations in their denominations than in their own. Of late this has been changed and in Indiana especially considerable sums of money have been spent in the erection of new meeting houses in the last year.

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©  Jeffrey L. Elmer