Quaker Hill: A Sociological StudyWilson, Warren H. (Warren Hugh)
Religion
Quaker Hill: A Sociological Study
Wilson, Warren H. (Warren Hugh)
Quaker Hill (N.Y.)
Quaker Hill has always been a community with great powers of
assimilation. The losses suffered by emigration have been repaired by
the genius of the community for socializing. Whoever comes becomes a
loyal learner of the Quaker Hill ways. I think this is a matter of
imitation. Personality has here made a solemn effort to perfect itself
for a century and a half; and the characters of Richard Osborn, James J.
Vanderburgh, Anne Hayes, David Irish and his daughter, Phoebe Irish
Wanzer, ripened into possession of at least amazing power of example. I
must be sparing of illustration here, where too rich a store is at hand.
I will offer only this striking fact, observed by all who know the Hill:
the Irish emigrant and his American-born children, of whom there are now
as many as remain of the original Quakers, have come to be as good
Quakers in character--though still loyal Catholics in dogma--as if they
said "thee and thou," and wore drab. They are peaceable, gentle folk,
sober and inoffensive; and the transforming influence of Quaker
character is seen in certain of them in a marked degree.
The same statement may be made of the pervasive example of the Quaker
character upon other areas of population; servants who come from the
city, summer guests, artistic people who love the Hill for its beauty
and suggestiveness, ministers and other public teachers who come hither.
The area to the southeast, called "Coburn," settled to a degree by those
who have worked on the Hill in times past as employees, is touched with
the same manner. Its meeting house, erected over sixty years ago, even
retains the Quaker way of seating the men and women apart.
The Quaker Hill Conference, now in its ninth year, is another
illustration of the charm and reach of the gentle influence of the
Quaker Hill ideal upon personal character.
Suggestion also explains much. In such a social whole, manners and
customs are fixed. The newcomer is often fresh, ingenuous, and sometimes
intrusive. Little by little he becomes socialized. Ways of action are
fixed for him, and a range of performance comes to be his. In harmony
with this range, suggestion is very fertile; but one learns after a time
that there is a limit to its force beyond which individuals will not go.
Suggestion, to be effective upon the many, must come from the sources
which embody the community's religious and economic ideal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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