VI. The 1840's

Then, in 1839, they caused their husbands to put two Quaker-Style front doors in their new Jonah’s Run Baptist Church. It was built on land purchased that year by Revolutionary Daniel and Mary Haines Collett’s son, Daniel, from the first Quaker to come from northern Virginia in 1802, Levi Lukens; and adjacent on the SE of land formerly owned by the first Quaker to come to SW Ohio in 1797, South Carolina Quaker, Abijah O’Neall (Quaker Elihu Underwood’s, where Daniel and his siblings, Mom and her siblings, Robert, and I were born), and, on the NE, perhaps (I need to check this at the court house.) NY Quaker, Perseverd Dakin or his descendant, (Quaker Zephaniah Underwood’s, where PA Quaker Matilda’s klds were born).

While Collett bought an acre+ for the church and cemetery on January 22, 1839, his descendants didn’t sell it to the church trustees until March 4, 1907, long after the cemetery was full and the church had been remodeled. ???

Oh, I have a beaver hat that belonged to Zephaniah/Matilda’s daughter, Ruth Anna Underwood Tomlinson. You may remember that Matilda was a temperance leader and got the saloons closed in Clinton County. Mom, also a temperance leader, told me Matilda sent her daughter to an eastern Quaker boarding school to get her away from a Collett, because some of them drank alcohol. I wonder if this is the reason JR cemetery wasn’t expanded after it became full in the early seventies. Maybe Matilda just refused to sell anything to Colletts.

I need to add here how Colletts hired Wilhelmina Hahn, a German Lutheran from Blanchester, for their teacher, how Cotchum Collett, later the long-time national treasurer of Sigma Chi Fraternity, jumped out the school window and headed home only to be caught by Miss Hahn, how she came to a box social at JR with three Collett sisters. How Catherine, Aunt Kittie, Underwood who wanted to be a Baptist missionary, brought her brother, Daniel, to the box social, how Daniel bought Wilhelmina’s box, and they were soon married, etc. And, how Mom and Aunt Sara created their family welfare program as they paid Aunt Kittie to teach us all piano lessons, and she put all her money in the JR collection, and I learned to count by helping Dad count the money, some of which Mom traded for pennies to pay Aunt Kittie, also, our SS teacher.

Howard