East Tennessee Quakers:
Tennessee’s Forgotten Heritage
by
David N. Goff, Pastor
Lost Creek Friends
“There are no Quakers in Tennessee! They all died out because they wouldn’t marry and have
children.” These words were spoken to a Quaker young person at
Jefferson Middle School by one of her teachers a few years ago. Just a few
years prior to that, when first asked if I would be willing to preach at
Lost Creek Friends Church, my immediate response was, “Oh, are there Quakers in
Tennessee?”
If by the term “Quaker” you have in mind the image of the man with the
long white beard on the Quaker Oats cereal box, you are correct. There are none
of those Quakers here. If you are thinking of the Amish or
the Shakers, two independent groups with whom Quakers are often confused, the
Shakers have indeed died out as indicated by the mistaken comment about Quakers
by the school teacher mentioned earlier. Despite sharing with
the Amish and other Anabaptist groups a deep concern for peace and a historic
emphasis on simplicity, Quakers are a unique body of Christians, formally called
the Society of Friends, who draw their name from Jesus statement in John
14:14-15:
"You
are my friends, if you do what I command you. No longer do I
call you slaves; for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I
have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from my Father, I have
made known to you."
Friends do not withdraw from
the world into private celibate communities, as did the Shakers to the point of
extinction. Nor do Quakers isolate themselves from the modern world, indicating
their uniqueness by the wearing of unusual clothing and by rejecting technology
as do the Amish. Instead, Quakers are a diverse group of Christian believers who
seek to maintain a personal relationship with God while remaining active
participants in the world around them. Historically Friends have played a
leading role in feminine suffrage movements, prison reform, enlightened
treatment of the mentally ill, manumission movements, temperance movements, and
numerous other social justice reforms that have resulted from a personal
application of their faith to their daily lives. Believing that every member is
a minister, and that there is “that of God in all people,” Friends have
faithfully blended evangelistic ministry with social concerns throughout their
entire history.
Despite the fact that many are unaware both of the
existence and the importance of Quakers in Tennessee, The Society of Friends has had a powerful historical
impact on Jefferson County and on East Tennessee. This ignorance is indicated by the omission of any
significant mention of Quakers in the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and
Culture. Yet, despite this silence, the Quakers were one of the most powerful
religious groups in Tennessee from the 1780’s until the War Between the States
began in 1860. In 1795 Nolichucky
(later called New Hope), whose meetinghouse still stands near Jonesboro, became
the first Quaker meeting established west of the Appalachians; Lost Creek met
the qualifications for recognition as a meeting a year later, and was officially
recognized by North Caroline Yearly Meeting in 1797. Thus Lost Creek Monthly
Meeting, the second Friends Meeting established in Tennessee and the oldest
still in existence, has been a significant center of faith and worship and a
powerful voice for freedom through over 200 years of East Tennessee history.
Likewise, a sister meeting, founded as “Newberry” in 1808 and now known as
“Friendsville” became the third major center of Quaker influence in
Tennessee. Of the eighteen Quaker “meetings” (churches) in
Tennessee today (eight of which are in East Tennessee), Lost Creek and
Friendsville are the only surviving remnants of the pioneer Quaker settlements
that had such a profound influence on East Tennessee history and culture during
the antebellum years.
Before examining the significance of Quakers in
East
Tennessee, it would be in order
to briefly examine the beginning of the Society of Friends. The movement began
in England with a young man named George Fox who was ardently
seeking for a deeper spiritual experience than he was finding in the established
churches of his day. His family urged him to settle down and marry and find
solace in a wife. He sought counsel from a variety of different ministers who
were of no help to the young seeker. One minister suggested that he “take
tobacco and sing psalms,” while another Fox described as being “like an empty,
hollow cask.” A third got angry at him for accidentally
stepping in a flower bed, while another wanted him to take a physic (a
purgative) and then to be bled. Finding no help from the established ministers,
Fox left his home at the age of nineteen and began a quest for spiritual truth.
As he traveled, he gathered a group of other seekers who were disenchanted with
the established church. In 1647, at the age of 23, Fox began the ministry which
came to be known as the Society of Friends. As was the case
of such other reformers as Martin Luther and John Wesley, George Fox did not
intend to start another church. His desire was to form a religious society that
would work for reform and restoration of the founding principles of the
primitive Christian church.
The
theology of George Fox was a very Biblical Christianity with a radical
twist. Fox rejected all ceremony and ritual, stressing the
essential need for a vital living relationship with Christ. He rejected the
concept of a professional clergy, teaching that all believers were ministers of
God. He also rejected the idea of a church building as a sacred place or as a
“house of God.” They strongly emphasized the New Testament
concept that the church is not a building but a group of believers.
Members of the Society of Friends met first in homes and later in
buildings that they distinctly referred to as “meetinghouses” to clearly
distinguish them from the church buildings and cathedrals of other groups which
were mockingly referred to as “steeplehouses.” The Quaker
movement, despite ardent persecution from other churches, grew explosively in
England, reaching an estimated 50-60,000 in
England before Fox’s death in 1691. By that time there were
also strong Quaker Meetings in Ireland, in the Americas, and elsewhere.
The
story of Lost Creek Friends Meeting begins with the movement of settlers from
North
Carolina into what
is now East
Tennessee. Large numbers of
those settlers were members of the Society of Friends. Some of these early
Friends settled near Jonesboro and started a meeting called “Nolichucky” that later came to be known as
New
Hope. Others settled
near what is now called New Market, Tennessee along Lost Creek and in what they called
Quaker Valley (now known as Rocky Valley). John Mills, a Quaker from Guilford
County North Carolina, brought his family to Lost Creek where they built a log
cabin. Mills began meeting with other Quaker families that were settling in the
area such as the Beals, the Haworths, the Thornburgs and the
Swains. By 1787 the local Friends were having what was referred to as a
“Voluntary” meeting. They had not yet been formally recognized by the North
Carolina Yearly Meeting, but were meeting regularly for worship. In 1793 Lost
Creek was recognized as a worshipping group of Quakers, and in 1795 became a
Worship and Preparative Meeting. By this time they were functioning in all
respects as a fully organized Friends Meeting except for one formality. They had
not yet been recognized as a Monthly Meeting by the North Carolina Yearly
Meeting.
The
reason for the delay in recognition was one that is of great historic
significance to the Quakers. There has been from the beginning of the movement a
strong emphasis on social justice. During the westward expansion in
America, the Friends refused to recognize any meeting that
could not formally prove that they had legitimately purchased their land from
the Native Americans. On May 25th, 1796, John Mills deeded the present property, approximately
three acres of the land which he had purchased from the Native Americans, to the
Friends of Lost Creek. As this was the date that the Lost Creek Friends met the
conditions for formal recognition, this has been traditionally considered to be
the founding date of the Meeting. It was almost a year later, however, before
official sanction was granted by the North Carolina Yearly Meeting. Thus, by
some accounts, the Meeting was not established until May 10,
1797 at which time the Lost
Creek Friends Monthly Meeting held its first formally
recognized monthly meeting. For Lost Creek Friends, however, the stubborn
pioneer spirit which led to their departure from
North
Carolina, caused
them to assert that they were established May 25th,
1796, one month before
Tennessee became a state. Henry Hull, a traveling Quaker
minister, made the following mention of Lost Creek in his Memoir of the Life
and Religious Labor of Henry Hull .
…next
day were at the Monthly Meeting at Lost-creek (sic), where we met a considerable
number of Friends, who made a commendable appearance, but evinced much rawness
in the management of the discipline (115-16).
Lost
Creek was a thriving center of Quaker life and worship in
East
Tennessee. It became an
evangelistic center as new monthly meetings were started throughout the region
under the supervision of Lost Creek Quarterly Meeting. Hundreds of members
attended regularly the meetings for worship and business. Women and men were
recognized as equals before God and had their own separate meetings for
business. They had separate doors and sat on separate sides of the building with
a divider down the middle. Early meetings were unprogrammed, as the members sat in silence waiting for the
Holy Spirit to move one of their number to
speak. It was not until the early 1800’s that Quakers,
influenced by the evangelical events of the Second Great Awakening, began to
recognize a need for pastoral leadership and for instructive preaching as an
important element of their worship. Some Friends meetings, Lost Creek among
them, embraced this evangelicalism and became “programmed”
meetings.
Quakers, however, remained an active part of their local
community, a serious social issue of the early 1800’s
began to challenge the local Friends to make a stand. Friends
had begun to recognize the evils of slave ownership, largely due to the
influence of John Woolman. By the time of his death in
1772, it was considered unacceptable for North American Quakers to be slaveowners and by 1787 all Quakers are believed to have
freed their slaves. Manumission, the freeing of slaves, became an important
social concern to Friends and in January 1815 the Tennessee Manumission Society
was organized at Lost Creek Church under the leadership of Elihu
Swain, one of the members. Another Friend, Elihu Embree of Jonesboro, began publication of the Emancipator, which was the
first newspaper in the United
States
dedicated specifically to the cause of manumission. This was, of course, a
controversial position, and many Friends chose to leave
Tennessee, migrating North to Ohio and west to Indiana. It is estimated that Lost Creek lost 400-500 members
between 1803 and 1832 due to this migration. Many other friends, however, chose
to remain and stand firm for their convictions. According to oral tradition,
Lost Creek Meeting became a station on the Underground Railroad. Members are
said to have hidden escaping slaves in a nearby cave until they could be
smuggled north to freedom. The location of this cave is no longer known, but
some of the older members have said that it was under the current location of
route 11-E. The Friendsville Meeting also acted as a station on the Underground
Railroad and Friends there can identify the location of the cave where their
ancestors hid and cared for runaway slaves before
sending them on their way to freedom.
During the Civil War, the building was burned by
Confederate soldiers. The current wooden building was rebuilt on the original
foundation, using many of the logs of the original building as part of the
structure. Later additions of classroom space, restrooms, and a
kitchen/fellowship hall followed as the church recognized needs for such
facilities.
In
the late 1800’s The two Quarterly Meetings of Friends in Tennessee, Lost Creek
and Friendsville, sought permission to establish their own Yearly Meeting, the
highest level of direct accountability in a Friends organization.
North Carolina Yearly Meeting apparently were
initially favorable to this idea, but later decided against it. In a bizarre
series of events, contention broke out among East Tennessee Friends, Lost Creek
Quarterly Meeting was dissolved and its meeting placed under the care of
Quarterly Meetings in North
Carolina. Those meetings then petitioned to
unite with Friendsville Quarterly Meeting, which was approved by North Carolina
Yearly Meeting. Shortly thereafter, the Friendsville Quarterly Meeting and its
subordinate Meetings in Tennessee left the North Carolina Yearly
Meeting and joined with the Wilmington Yearly Meeting in
Ohio. Lost Creek and Friendsville today remain as members of
Friendsville Quarterly meeting and Wilmington Yearly Meeting of Friends.
Of
the many Quaker Meetings that once met in East Tennessee, only these two if the original meetings remain. The
vibrant spiritual fervor and social activism that characterized the early
Friends continues as a powerful legacy for modern day Friends. Though school
teachers in Jefferson County, which was once a powerful center of Quaker life,
may now confuse the Quakers with the Amish or the Shakers, and though many
people in the local area could not give a visitor directions to the
meetinghouse, the Quaker light still burns brightly at Lost Creek. Though
relatively small in number, the Friends at Lost Creek continue to maintain the
commitment to a personal walk with Christ and an active involvement with the
community that has characterized their existence for over 200 years. It is to be
hoped that they will remain true to those principles and continue to testify to
the light for another 200 years.
Works Cited
Hull, Henry. Memoir of the Life and Religious Labor of Henry
Hull. Philadelphia,
1864.
