At 09:01 AM 8/13/01 -0400, you wrote: >or what such settlements existed in Miami County around that >time? Quakers came to Ohio from North & South Carolina and Georgia to rid themselves of the slave culture. They refused to sell their land to their neighbors because they would not take money earned from slavery. Instead the simply abandoned their land and came to Ohio. (The slave neighbors got the land just the same.) Many settled along the Little Miami River in Warren County and then about Wilmington. But, among them were those who moved on and settled in the northern part of Montgomery County and the southern part of Miami County. The towns of Phillipsburg, Union, West Milton, Tipp City, Pleasant Hill, Ludlow Falls and Laura were centers of Quaker settlement and Friends Churches exist there to this day. Among those families were John Hoover and his wife Sarah Byrket whose descent produced President Hoover. (John and Sarah were among the founders of West Branch Monthly Meeting whose replica building I bicycle past regularly, and the Quakers took that name with them to Iowa. President Hoover was born in West Branch, Iowa.) My sons descend from Rachel Wells and John Wright. I have information on them published on the following web page. The Quakers avered equality of the sexes from their founding in the mid.seventeenth century and had women leaders from the very beginning. Rachel Wells was listed as one of these leaders. (Although sometimes called a "minister," the Quakers had no ministers as such. She was however, a leader of monthly meetings.) There is a Quaker History Center in West Milton, Miami Co, Ohio that has much documentation of the remarkable history of these Quakers, their work in the Underground Railroad and the settlement of escaped slaves near West Milton. Interestingly, I went my entire elementary and high school days in West Milton and never learned of this villages important heritage until many years later. (Maybe I slept thru that class?) LEE http://home.earthlink.net/~lkreider/