Blue River Quarterly Meeting Celebrates 200 Years

Peter Lasersohn, Urbana-Champaign Friends Meeting

Did you know that Blue River Quarterly Meeting was not created as part of Illinois Yearly Meeting? In fact, it was the other way around: Blue River Quarterly was one of two previously existing quarterly meetings which jointly established Illinois Yearly Meeting in 1875.

The roots of Blue River Quarterly reach much further back. Friends began settling along the Blue River in southern Indiana about 1808, when this area was still on the western frontier. The settlement grew quickly, as large numbers of Quakers moved into the area from North Carolina, hoping to disentangle themselves from the slavery-based economy of the south and find better opportunities for themselves in the west. By 1814, the city of Salem was laid out and platted, and a regular meeting for worship was set up. The following year, Blue River Monthly Meeting was established, and a meetinghouse was built. Still standing—though only half its original size and no longer in regular use—the Blue River Meetinghouse is believed to be the oldest Friends meetinghouse in Indiana.

As Friends continued to settle in southern and western Indiana, more and more meetings were established, and it soon became practical to organize them into a new quarterly meeting. Blue River Quarterly Meeting was established as part of Ohio Yearly Meeting, and held its first session at the Blue River Meetinghouse, in First Month 1819.

The Quaker presence in Indiana continued to expand, and in 1821, the western portions of Ohio Yearly Meeting—including Blue River Monthly and Quarterly Meetings—were set off as Indiana Yearly Meeting.

Like other meetings all over North America, Blue River Quarterly Meeting and Indiana Yearly Meeting were divided in the “Hicksite/Orthodox” schism of 1827–1828. Our current Blue River Quarterly Meeting developed from the Hicksite branch of this split, which initially included just two monthly meetings: Blue River Monthly Meeting and Honey Creek Monthly Meeting, just south of Terre Haute. Hicksite sentiment was especially strong in Blue River Monthly Meeting due to the influence of their member Priscilla Hunt Cadwallader, who had prominently supported the Hicksite cause during a ministerial visit to Philadelphia just prior to the schism. The Orthodox branch of Blue River Quarterly Meeting was much larger, and survives today as the “Southern Area” of Western Yearly Meeting.

The Hicksite Blue River Quarterly began to expand in the 1840’s, as the frontier moved west and Quakers began to settle in Illinois. Blue River Quarterly was the westernmost quarterly meeting on the continent, and therefore the most appropriate one with which new western meetings could affiliate. The first of these new Illinois meetings was Clear Creek Meeting. Friends began to settle near what is now McNabb in the 1830’s, and formally affiliated with Blue River Quarterly Meeting and the Hicksite branch of Indiana Yearly Meeting (now known as Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting) in 1841. Several other meetings followed: in Fulton County near Ipava; in Whiteside County near Sterling; at Benjaminville (now known as Bentown) near Bloomington, where the meetinghouse still stands; and in Hoopeston, Vermilion County. By the 1870’s, Blue River Quarterly lay predominately in Illinois.

Attendance at yearly meeting was problematic for Friends in Illinois. Indiana Yearly Meeting was held alternately at Richmond, Indiana and Waynesville, Ohio, both far to the east in an era was transportation was not easy. The problem was even more severe for Friends in Iowa, where Prairie Grove Quarterly Meeting had been established in 1863 as part of Baltimore Yearly Meeting. The two quarterly meetings developed a plan to establish a new yearly meeting, to be held at Clear Creek and known as Illinois Yearly Meeting. Indiana and Baltimore Yearly Meetings minuted their concurrence with the plan in 1874, and Illinois Yearly Meeting held its first session in Ninth Month 1875.

Blue River Quarterly Meeting continued to expand in the first years after the establishment of ILYM. A major addition was Central Meeting in Chicago—a forerunner of Fifty–Seventh Street Meeting—which affiliated in 1879. But in the 1890’s, many of the old, rural meetings began to close, not just in Blue River Quarterly, but in other parts of the yearly meeting as well. This trend accelerated, and by the 1930’s, Blue River Quarterly Meeting and Illinois Yearly Meeting both consisted for practical purposes of just three meetings: Clear Creek, Fifty–Seventh Street, and Blue River Monthly Meeting.

The tide began to turn in 1942, when Oak Park and Peoria Meetings affiliated — the first new meetings in Blue River Quarterly since 1886. All through the 1940’s and 1950’s, new meetings were formed, and independent meetings affiliated. By 1952, Blue River Quarterly was large enough that it was decided to divide it into two quarterly meetings. The northern half became Fox Valley Quarterly Meeting (which was later folded into Metropolitan Chicago General Meeting), and the southern half continued as Blue River Quarterly Meeting.

There was some contraction in this period as well. Blue River Monthly Meeting—which had long since moved from the Old Blue River Meetinghouse to the Highland Creek Meetinghouse on the opposite side of town—was inactive by the late 1940’s. It last hosted the quarterly meeting sessions in 1947, leaving Blue River Quarterly with no meetings anywhere near the Blue River.

Over the course of the 20th century, many of the original business functions of quarterly meetings were eliminated or reassigned to the yearly meeting or the monthly meetings. In the 1960’s, it was felt that it was no longer necessary to meet four times a year, and that hosting the quarterly meeting had become burdensome for smaller meetings. Blue River Quarterly dropped to a three–times–a–year, then to a twice–a–year, schedule, but retained the word Quarterly in its name in the hope that it might eventually return to meeting more frequently—a hope which has not yet been realized.

Since 1991, Blue River Quarterly has held its sessions as weekend retreats at rustic camps or retreat centers, rather than at the meetinghouses of hosting meetings as previously. This has proven to be a popular format, and many Friends look forward to quarterly meeting sessions in part for their woodland settings and recreational opportunities.

Perhaps what Friends look forward to most, however, is simply to meet with other Friends: to connect or reconnect with Quakers from nearby meetings, and to build and maintain a sense of Quaker community larger than just the local meeting. For young Friends—especially those from smaller meetings, or meetings with few children—the chance to spend time with other Quaker kids can be invaluable in developing a sense of Quaker identity. For all of us, of any age, there is a real spiritual benefit from keeping up our ties to one another.

Quarterly meeting is the venue in which State of Society Reports are read aloud, with an opportunity for gathered Friends to respond out of the silence. This is a very different experience from simply reading the reports in the ILYM minutebook, and builds a stronger group sense of our collective condition.

The quarterly meeting also provides a valuable opportunity for business to be seasoned before it is brought to the yearly meeting. Experience has shown that careful advance consideration of a proposal by a quarterly meeting or other body helps to identify issues and potential snags, smoothing the approval process when the proposal is ultimately brought to the floor of the yearly meeting for business.

Blue River Quarterly also conducts its own internal business which is not forwarded to the yearly meeting, often in support of specific concerns. Recent examples include financial aid to a Kenyan Friend who was forced to leave his studies at the Earlham School of Religion after losing a scholarship from his home meeting over issues of sexual orientation; support for BRQ Friends engaged in various service projects; successful petitioning for the closure of the prison in Tamms, Illinois; and support for “green” funerary burial practices.

Over the course of two centuries, Blue River Quarterly Meeting has experienced many ups and downs, sometimes functioning as a large and robust organization, and sometimes struggling just to keep going. Through it all, Friends have found it worthwhile and fulfilling. We look forward to another 200 years.

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