Excerpt from Notes on the Early History of Ohio Yearly Meeting: Reprinted, With Additions and Corrections, From the Friend, 1918-19 Any attempt to sketch the early history of Ohio Yearly Meeting must begin at the Atlantic seaboard. There began the political organizations and the national life. There were the earliest settlements of Friends and there the members, for mutual strength and encouragement, began to draw together in "general meetings," which soon came to be called Yearly Meetings. John Burnyeat tells of a Yearly Meeting for New England, held at Newport, in 1671, "that all things might be kept sweet and clean." This seems to have been the earliest gathering of the kind in America. Next year, 1672, both John Burnyeat and George Fox were at a general meeting of Friends at West River, in Maryland, and counseled those present, in what proved to be the beginning of Baltimore Yearly Meeting. Some years later, 1681, at Burlington, N. J., a "general meeting" was held, which in time took the name of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, though for more than half a century it alternated between the two cities. Here then are three cardinal dates which it is well to bear in mind. There were Friends in other parts, but they organized as Yearly Meetings at somewhat later periods. Not until disastrous Indian wars had forced the tribes to reservations, or driven them toward the Mississippi, was there any pronounced movement of Friends to the west. Inasmuch as William Penn's original grant of land extended "five degrees" westward from the Delaware, and wars had been less continuous and devastating in Pennsylvania than in other colonies, the earliest Friendly migrations were to localities now included in the extreme western part of that State. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.