| Abstract: |
John Otis Wattles was a radical Hicksite Quaker and an ardent abolitionist. With his brother Augustus, John founded the Prairie
Home Community in Logan County, Ohio; the Clermont/Excelsior, Ohio, utopian community; and, later, the town of Moneka, Kansas.
John married Esther Whinery, an elementary school teacher, in 1844. The Wattles brothers and Esther actively defended John
Brown. They continued to promote abolitionism and utopian communal living until John Wattles' death in 1859. Esther and her
three daughters then returned from Kansas to Oberlin, Ohio, where the girls attended Oberlin College. Esther died in Coconut
Grove, Florida, in 1908. The collection consists of articles of incorporation, autobiographies, by-laws, correspondence,
essays, genealogical charts, journals, ledger books, lists, magazine and newspaper clippings, memoirs, minutes, notes, obituaries,
poems, a scrapbook, speech texts, and wills.
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