Farmer’s Institute Academy 1978
Opened in 1851, this was the first school of higher learning in rural Tippecanoe County, built by Society of Friends (Quakers) of this neighborhood.  Enrollment included local, non-local and youth of other states.  Primary through collegiate preparatory courses were offered.  The library was large and of exceptional quality.  Some foremost educators of that day taught here.  Non-local youths lived in a large boarding house for $1.00 per week.  Successful operation ceased in 1874, when the building became the Meeting House.  In 1882 a subscription academy was opened on the second floor, became a township school, and continued until 1888.  Today it remains as the local Meeting House.  --- Location: Union Township on county road 660 S, Tippecanoe County

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Samuel Pleasants Parsons House SA62
Completed in 1819, 601 Spring Street was the home of Sameul Pleasants Parsons (1783-1842). Parson, a Quaker, was an early reform-minded superintendent (1816-1822, 1824-1932) of the Virginia State Penitentiary, formerly located across Belvidere Street. The Parsons family was part of a network of important Richmond Quaker families that were collectively involved in a series of abolition and prision reform activities. Parsons later served as a superintendent for the James River and Kanawha Company and was a founder of the Mechanicsville Turnpike. The house is part of the Oregon Hill Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

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Camden DE8
Founded 1783 on the tract “Brecknock” by Daniel Mifflin and settled largely by Quakers. Once called Piccadilly and Mifflins Cross Roads. Incorporated 1852, it was a center of anti-slavery sentiment. Several homes were by tradition stops on the Underground Railroad.

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Shawnee Friends Mission KS135
In 1825 the Federal government began moving Eastern Indians to new lands west of the Mississippi . This sign is on a 2,500 square mile tract assigned to the Shawnees.

With this tribe came Methodist, Baptist and Quaker missionaries. One mile east and a little north the Quakers erected buildings in 1836 and opened a school the following year. Indian students, who lived at the mission, received elementary schooling, religious instruction and training in agriculture and domestic arts. Highest recorded enrollment was 76. In later years the school was attended mainly by Indian orphans.

The mission operated almost continuously until 1869. A marker designates the site of the main building, which was torn down in 1917.

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Shapley Line NH54
Shapley Line

Based on the 1640 southern boundary of Bachiler's farm, it was surveyed by Capt. Nicholas Shapley in 1657, dividing the Province of New Hampshire from the Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1689-1741. In 1662 three Quaker women, being banished from the territory, were freed south of here by Constable Walter Barefoot. Edward Gove, imprisoned in the Tower of London for leading the rebellion against Lt. Gov. Cranfield in 1683 lived nearby.

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Dutchess County NY1
Dutchess County, extending from the Hudson River to the Taconic Mountains, stretched originally from Westchester to Albany County. It was formed in 1683 and named for the wife of the Duke of York. Principally a rolling upland, cut by streams and deep valleys, it was divided into large land grants. Dutch settled along the river banks before 1690. In the 18th century the interior was occupied by French Huguenots, German Palatines, and Quakers from Connecticut and Long Island.

Ore deposits in the Taconics, led to small iron works in the 18th century. Shipbuilding flourished in river communities. In the 1830's and '40s, whalers from Poughkeepsie ventured to distant seas. Abundant water power contributed to the growth of textile factories. Twentieth century industries include publishing and manufacture of dairy appliances and business machines. The interior is still a prosperous agricultural area, specializing in fruit, livestock and dairy products.

Poughkeepsie was settled in 1687 and is the county seat. The State Legislature met there several times between 1777 and the 1790's. Vassar College was founded there in 1861. Large estates of wealthy and prominent families, such as those of the Roosevelts, Vanderbilts, and Ogden Mills, have occupied prospects along the Hudson.

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Cecil and Frances Brown House TX259

Designed by Houston architect Henry A. Stubee and built in 1938, this was the home of local civic, church, and business leader Cecil Brown and his wife Frances. Both were from pioneer Quaker families. Mr. Brown was prominent in the Gulf Coast fig industry (1920s-1950s) and is credited with much of Friendswood's development. For many years after its construction, this French eclectic style house was the first and only brick residence in the Friendswood area.

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Crosby County Courthouses TX1115

Crosby County, created in 1876 and organized 1886, had its first county seat at Estacado (founded 1879 by a colony of Quakers). It was on a mail and stage road, in the northeast corner of the county. Freight hauling of materials was slow. County offices were in dugouts, shacks and wagons for two years, until the first courthouse could be completed in 1888.

The second county seat was established in 1890 at Emma (named for the fiancee of R.L. Stringfellow, one of the town's promoters), nine miles west of here. The courthouse at Estacado was taken down, moved and rebuilt at cost of $3,000. It served 20 years. When the Crosbyton-South Plains Railroad was built in 1910, Emma was four miles off its route. Crosbyton won an election as the new county seat, and Julian Bassett (one of the founders of Crosbyton) donated a site for the courthouse. The county court met in the schoolhouse until the building of the present courthouse and jail in 1914. County Judge at that time was Pink Parrish. Commissioners were John K. Fullingim, W.E. McLaughlin, J.A. Noble and R.M. Wheeler. This commemoration is by the 1965 Commissioners Court. County Judge, Cecil Berry; Commissioners: Leilan Caddell, Curt Hendrick, Jack Henry, W.C. Odom.

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Estacado Cemetery TX1504

In 1878 Paris Cox (1846-1888), an Indiana Quaker, visited this area with a group of buffalo hunters. Attracted by the abundance of cheap farm land, he returned to Indiana and began advertising his plans for a Quaker colony here. Although the first colonists who arrived in 1879 were discouraged by a severe winter, other settlers, including those of various religious beliefs, soon moved to the area. The settlement was first called Maryetta in honor of Cox's wife, but in 1886 it was renamed Estacado, part of the Spanish term for the Staked Plains, Llano Estacado. When Crosby County was formally organized in 1886, Estacado was chosen as the first county seat. A courthouse was built two years later. The center of a vast agricultural area, Estacado continued to prosper until the 1890s when the county seat was moved to Emma and many of the early colonists began migrating to other areas. An important reminder of Estacado's pioneers is this community cemetery, the burial site of many early settlers and area leaders, including Paris Cox. Now part of Lubbock County, it serves as a historic record of the individuals who opened the Texas Plains and led in the region's agricultural development.

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Fig Industry in Friendswood TX7437

Friendswood was established as a Quaker colony by Frank J. Brown and Thomas H. Lewis in 1895. Among the colony's early settlers was former Kansas farmer Nereus Stout. Stout became a highly acclaimed horticulturist and is believed to be the first farmer to grow figs commercially in Galveston County.

J.C. Carpenter established Galveston County's first fig preserving plant in Friendswood about 1910. His main supplier was the Stout farm, but in time his inventory of fig suppliers expanded as figs became a popular and reliable cash crop. By the early 1920s Galveston County accounted for half of all the figs grown in a 7-county area along Texas' Gulf Coast. In 1930 one-third of the county's leading figs producers were from Friendswood, a community of fewer than 300 residents. Friendswood's two fig preserving plants supported a network of nurserymen and orchardists, and provided employment for many of Friendswood's residents, including the years during the 1930s Great Depression.

Fig production along the Texas Gulf Coast declined after World War II; Friendswood's fig orchards began disappearing in the 1950s. A commercial fig preserving plant in Friendswood, the last of its kind still in operation on the Texas Gulf Coast, closed in 1968.

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