LEFT: Dr. James E. Spencer, in Uniform CENTER: Dr. James E. Spencer, Portrait RIGHT: John S. Spencer and Mary Ann S. Spencer
BELOW: Crops of the 1860 census records for Beatie Township, Benton County, Arkansas, (pages 72 and 73), listing 39 resident members of the Harmonial Vegetarian Society as of July 29, 1860. Note that the community had its own physician, theocrat, ministers, teachers, printer, carpenter, mason, and farmers. Among the residents are three of my direct ancestors: Henry Enoch Dewey, Carpenter; Sarah Jane Tenney, his wife; and Abijah D. Tenney, Physician, her father. The Harmonial Vegetarian Society was founded by Dr. James E. Spencer (shown above), whose wife, Martha Tryphena Dewey, was the sister of Henry Enoch Dewey (my great-great-grandfather), both of Fovant, Wiltshire, England.
For a transcription of a handwritten account of the Harmonial Vegetarian Society, written from memory by my great-grandmother, May Dewey Phillips, daughter of Henry Enoch Dewey and Sarah Jane Tenney, go to next page. BELOW: 1878 map of Linn County, Kansas, showing where Henry Enoch Dewey and his wife, Sarah Jane Tenney, settled after being escorted to safety from Benton County, Arkansas by United States troops. Absent from the map is Moneka, Kansas, described in May Dewey's memoirs as "a newly abandoned town." When the Missouri River, Fort Scott & Gulf Railroad was built, "all business moved to Mound City where there was good waterpower on Little Sugar Creek." Moneka had been a temporary residence of John Brown, the abolitionist, prior to the Civil War, and it was from this town that the Moneka Woman's Rights Association took its name. Three of Henry and Sarah's children (May, Ralph and Pearl) were born in Moneka. The youngest, Ernest K. Dewey, was born in Farlinville (shown on the map, in the center of the county), where Sarah Jane Tenney died on 5 January 1883.
