#publicuniversalfriend | yatescountyhistorycenter (2024)

By Jonathan Monfiletto

In March 1793, when Henry Barnes was 4 years old, he moved with his parents – Samuel Barnes and Abigail Dains, devoted followers of the Public Universal Friend – and two of his siblings from his birthplace in Connecticut to the Friend’s Settlement in the Genesee Country. Eighty-one years later, when Henry died at age 85 on June 7, 1874, he was the last living adherent of the Society of Universal Friends.

And Barnes wasn’t just the last survivor among the followers of the Friend, who became the first permanent, non-native settlers of what we now know as Yates County when they arrived in the late 1780s and early 1790s. Because of his longevity and memory, he was able to share his knowledge of the Friend and their Society to inform the people around him and record it for local history. Indeed, Stafford Cleveland – in his History and Directory of Yates County, published in 1873 – often cites Barnes as he relates the history of the Public Universal Friend and their followers. In the preface of his history, Cleveland calls Barnes “the most serviceable among living witnesses … who as a member of the Friend’s Society from his boyhood had an acquaintance with facts which it was important to understand fully and correctly.”

According to Cleveland, it was from Barnes’ memory that Cleveland’s wife, Obedience, drew illustrations for History and Directory of Yates County of the Society’s log meetinghouse in the Friend’s Settlement – about a mile inland of Seneca Lake in what is now the town of Torrey – and the Friend’s first home in the New Jerusalem, in the modern-day town of Jerusalem, a log home with a frame addition. Barnes apparently approved of both illustrations, calling them faithful reproductions.

In Cleveland’s history, Barnes’ name is included on a list of second-generation followers of the Friend – “the comparatively few of the second generation united with the Society” – and Cleveland notes the list of names contains only those who joined the Society of their own accord and who remained devoted throughout their lives. “Some of these never came to the New Jerusalem (when the Friend themself moved from Torrey to Jerusalem), but the most of them belonged to the pioneer families, and they were, as a body, people of the highest moral and personal worth,” Cleveland states. At the time Cleveland wrote, Barnes, Rachel Ingraham, and Experience Ingraham Barnes – Barnes’ sister-in-law – were the only living members of the Society; Rachel and Experience died that year.

Barnes was the youngest of five children – all sons – born to Samuel Barnes, a Connecticut farmer, and Abigail Dains, the sister of Jonathan, Castle, and Ephraim Dains, also followers of the Friend. Parmalee, the eldest son, followed the Society of Universal Friends to the New Jerusalem in 1789, and Elizur, the second son, came in 1791. Their parents and their three youngest brothers – Julius, Samuel, and Henry – traveled there in 1793. Though he was only 4 years old at the time, Barnes remembered the 16-day journey with a sleigh from Connecticut through Albany and the Mohawk Valley and then from Geneva to the Friend’s Settlement. Shortly after their arrival, his parents took him for a visit to the Friend’s home. “… and the attention bestowed upon him by that personage, made a vivid and lasting impression on his mind,” reads Barnes’ obituary in the Yates County Chronicle (the newspaper that Cleveland served as editor) of June 11, 1874. “No one was ever reared in more faithful compliance with the oracles of the Friend’s doctrine than was Henry Barnes. With the earnestness and credence of a child he imbibed it from his earliest years, and with the simplicity and integrity of a child he maintained it until the latest period of his life.”

Indeed, Abigail was included in Cleveland’s history on a list of women – similar to but apart from the Faithful Sisterhood, a group of women who abandoned their husbands and children to follow the Friend to the New Jerusalem – “who, as wives and mothers, and true exponents of the highest morality and social virtue, illustrated the pioneer life with examples worthy to be held in honored remembrance, and gave the Friend’s Society a name for virtue, industry and matronly worth, of which no pen can speak in adequate praise.” Cleveland called this group “a noble array of devoted women not of this select band (the Faithful Sisterhood),” and in a footnote he referred to Abigail as “a much beloved member of the Society.”

The Barnes family purchased land near Himrod from Charles Williamson and cleared 22 acres, remaining there until 1800 when they sold it and moved to Jerusalem. There, they cleared a little space within a dense wilderness and later moved to a homestead of 21 acres. Samuel died in 1809 at age 66, and Abigail died in 1842 at age 92. Barnes was “born and reared in the midst of the Friend’s Society,” according to Cleveland, and “has led a religious life in conformity to the doctrine and precepts of the Friend.” Barnes’ obituary states he was a member of the Friend’s household for many years, during “a considerable period of his minority … and also for several years thereafter,” regarding the Friend’s home as his home. In fact, the Friend’s mansion in Jerusalem, their third home, was Barnes’ home, “until the breaking up of the Society by the infusion of elements which seemed to him contradictory to the Friend’s teaching,” the obituary states.

In his early adulthood, Barnes worked as a farmer and a cooper, producing 1,600 flour barrels for Abraham Dox in 1814. Even though he completed a total of just 15 weeks of common school education – including 11 weeks under Dennis Dean, one of the earliest and best teachers of his time – Barnes began teaching school in 1823. He taught 30 terms of school in Jerusalem, Milo, Potter, Benton, and Italy, the last one in Italy at age 76. Barnes also served as Inspector of Schools in Jerusalem for 12 years and as Town Superintendent in Wheeler, Steuben County, where he lived for 12 years. Barnes is also included on a list of Overseers of Highways in 1819 in Cleveland’s history. He married for the first time at age 46 to Sarah Whitney, and when she died he married Elizabeth Mills, who died “several years ago,” Cleveland wrote. Barnes had no children of his own, dying at the home of his nephew-in-law and niece, Andrew and Rosetta Fingar, in the town of Benton in the present-day vicinity of Briggs Road and State Route 364.

Throughout Cleveland’s history, as well as supplying certain facts about the Public Universal Friend, Barnes provided some of his personal anecdotes to color the Friend’s story. For example, in helping draw the Friend’s first home in Jerusalem, Barnes recalled tapping in one day – using an axe and a gouge – 636 of the 2,000 maple trees within a half-mile-square space on the property. Followers of the Friend – both those who lived in their household and those who lived elsewhere, took care of the chores around the farm on the Friend’s property, and Barnes would accompany the Friend as they rode from field to field overseeing the operations. Once, in the spring of 1816, Barnes and Rachel Ingraham – “almost unassisted,” Cleveland noted – made more than 1,500 pounds of sugar in the Friend’s sugar camp.

In helping draw the Society’s meetinghouse in Torrey, Barnes told about the last service there in 1799. It was a warm summer day, according to Barnes, and a heavy thunderstorm arose, with rain pouring down and leaking through the roof. “Some of the women held a blanket or shawl over the Friend for protection, while she continued her discourse, which was one of the most impressive and eloquent of her life, and was listened to with profound attention by a large congregation, who crowded very compactly into the leaky structure,” Cleveland wrote. Barnes also remembered the white oak stump – hollowed out in the middle and used as a pestle to grind wheat and corn before the Society established a gristmill – that continued to stand near the Friend’s home in Torrey long after they left that area. Though Barnes didn’t help draw the Friend’s third home – referred to as their mansion – he did mention the tall fir trees he planted in front of the property.

There was also a section of Cleveland’s history titled “The Friend’s Doctrine as Stated by Henry Barnes.” Clearly, Barnes had both personal memories of the Public Universal Friend and institutional knowledge of the Society of Universal Friends.