Lenawee County history: Quaker village remains mostly a mystery to historians

There are some settlements in Lenawee County that may forever be a mystery.

The settlement of Quaker, for me, has been one of those.

Quaker was established by a knot of Rollin Township families of the Quaker faith, in the early years of Lenawee County history. Little is found on Quaker-established entities, compared to other community settlements of the time.

The Beal and Hawkins families, both of whom I have had long-standing connections, lived on farms surrounding Quaker. John Hawkins, in 1999, drafted a basic map of Quaker from memory and stories passed down through his family. He counted 19 buildings made up the small community along today’s Quaker Road and on both sides of Bean Creek.

Hawkins, members of the Beal family and the late Kevin Bolenbaugh all sought information on Quaker, and as each researcher’s life came to an end, their findings remained scant. I have not pursued much in the line of research, because those who have gone before me spent years looking for scraps of information and largely came up empty.

To date, I have only seen photos of two buildings that stood in Quaker: the old mill, which was in dilapidated shape by the time it was photographed, and the old Quaker school, which was the residence of Bolenbaugh for several years.

What happened to Quaker?

There is a belief among some historians that a community’s survival into the 20th century depended on whether the railroad ran through it. When the east-west rails were being expanded through Lenawee County, the nearby community of Rollin lobbied to have the railroad run through there. Instead, it was put through Addison to the north. Rollin had a north-south line, which kept it on the map through the 1950s.

Quaker, which received no rail service line, quickly dried up, its placement on a rural gravel road probably a contributing factor to its demise. The post office, which opened in 1886, closed for good in 1906. In 40 years of research, I have never seen a postmark from Quaker.

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Quaker by name appeared on the 1893 plat maps, but by 1916, only the school was noted and the settlement’s name dropped.

Without fanfare or a single recorded reason, the settlement simply went away.

I was reminded of the mystery of Quaker when I encountered a rare purchasing opportunity online for a photo of collapsed bridge, identified as the Quaker bridge and originating in 1908. I took to the old Telegrams and found very little on the collapse. On May 15, 1908, the Telegram’s Townley column, named for another nearby settlement to the north, reported that “the bridge over the Bean (Creek) at Quaker is now impassable by the washing out under the abutments.” On May 20, a note under the Quaker news heading stated the “concrete abutments supporting the big iron bridge which spans Bean creek at this place gave way and toppled over into the water, causing that end of the bridge to drop several feet, making travel with teams impossible there. It is now being repaired.”

That was that. With two abbreviated entries, this seemingly major news for the tiny town became an obscure footnote. The photo shows no buildings in the background but becomes a vital image in an area of Lenawee County where it seems few photographers visited.

— Dan Cherry is a Lenawee County historian.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Dan Cherry: Mystery of Quaker village in Lenawee County