HARMONIAL VEGETARIAN SOCIETY




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.

          

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