Building the Meetinghouse / Abolition

Building the Meetinghouse, also, Abolition. . , Building the Meetinghouse , Construction of the meetinghouse began in 1814. Jacob Ong served as both architect and builder, basing the Mount Pleasant structure on other Quaker meetinghouses in the United States., This plain structure was massive, holding 2000 people. It is a model of robust construction, featuring 24" brick walls that thicken to 28" at the base. Each column was carved from a single log. The materials used were all collected and fabricated from the surrounding countryside., The interior was designed to support the business of the yearly meeting. Men and women entered through separate doors and sat in two equally sized galleries. A long balcony was built for children in attendance. At the front of the meetinghouse, elders faced members of the meeting on an elevated three-tiered gallery., [Sidebar:] , Restoring the Meetinghouse , The most notable of the historic Mount Pleasant structures is the Ohio Yearly Meetinghouse. Home to the first yearly meeting west of the Allegheny Mountains, it was used regularly until 1909. The meetinghouse was deeded to the state of Ohio in 1950 and restored by the Ohio Historical Society. It opened to the public in 1963., [Caption:] , It took four men to raise and lower the large, moving partition that separated men and women during certain portions of the meeting. They used an intricate hand made mechanical device to fold the hinged poplar panel around an axle in the attic., Abolition , Although it may appear as a quiet village, Mount Pleasant was at the forefront of the heated abolitionist movement. Ohio was part of the first free territory established in the United States. Blacks were paid to work throughout the area and possibly built many of the brick structures in Mount Pleasant., Charles Osborn, a Quaker minister who organized a Tennessee abolitionist society, spoke here at the 1815 Yearly Meeting. He went on to move his family to Mount Pleasant where he published the United States’ first anti-slavery gazette, The Philanthropist., Quakers attempted to protest slavery through the use of the free market. Recognizing the hypocrisy between anti-slave sentiment and purchasing slave-made goods, the Ohio Yearly Meeting formed the Free Labor Store in 1848. Selling only items produced without slave labor, the store had limited success. Scarcity of free labor products eventually forced the store to close., [Sidebar:] , Although slavery was illegal in Ohio, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 permitted slave owners to reclaim runaway slaves even if they were in free states. Many Ohioans assisted escaped slaves as they continued north to Canada in search of African American communities., For some Mount Pleasant was a destination rather than a stop on the Underground Railroad. Fugitive slaves were welcome to live and work here., [Captions:] , A school teacher named George Jenkins was one of many villagers who aided escaped slaves. When necessary, fugitives slipped through a hatch disguised as a dresser and hid on the third floor. At one point slave owners offered a price for Jenkin's arrest., The Free Labor Store operated in three different locations from 1848-1857. A trip to Puerto Rico by Philadelphia Quakers revealed that many of the workers supplying sugar to the store were slaves, emphasizing the difficulty of providing free-labor products., The Ohio River was the recognized border between slave and free states.