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