Here's Where It Gets Interesting - North Carolina: How Quakers Shaped the State with Lee Ann Miller

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

In this episode, Lee Ann Miller joins Sharon to hear the connection between Edward R. Murrow, famous American Broadcast Journalist, and a North Carolina Quaker community that organized and ran a large portion of the Underground Railroad. Listen in as Sharon gives details about Quakers and the ways in which they shaped American history dating all the way back to the 1600s. By the 1850s, in Jamestown, North Carolina, Quakers were actively working for the abolition of slavery, which included building a false-bottom wagon to ferry enslaved Americans into free states. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello friends! So happy you're here today. Thank you for joining me. I am chatting with my friend Leanne Miller who is a cooking enthusiast and she does tons of cooking segments on TV and we are going to discuss a story that we both just loved so much. This is a story about the state of North Carolina and about an unusual connection between a 20th century hero and some important events in U.S. history. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Yay.

I'm so excited you're here, Leanne. Thank you so much for doing this. I'm so excited to be here, Sharon. Thank you for inviting me. Oh, it's my pleasure. It's delightful to see your face. Tell everybody what you do. Who are you, Leanne? What do you do with your life? What have you done with your life? Well, wow, that's a little question. My name is Leanne Miller. I live in Amish country in Ohio, and I do cooking segments for Fox affiliates here in Ohio. I've done that since 2005. I love it. I love live television, although

it can be, you know, frightening, but I love it. And yes, that's what I do. I'm a home person. I'm a hospitality person and I do live television. Do you love to cook at home? I do, Sharon. I, what I love, I feel like food is an exercise in a way you can love a person. So, so that is the way I show care. And I show love is through hospitality and food and, and we're an empty nest now. You know, people can find it difficult to go down to cooking for two people. I am having so much fun. Are you? I am. I am. I am. It is weird. Like when one of your kids leaves where you're like, I don't need to cook for two additional adult men now. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Yes, exactly. I don't have to worry about everyone's likes or dislikes. My husband is very, very accommodating and easy and, and raised Amish as you know. And yes, I would love to hear more about, so your husband was raised Amish. You're not Amish obviously, cause we're here on the interwebs and you work on the television. Yes. Yes. But I think people are very curious about what it's like to be raised Amish. And then like, what is it like to go back to visit his family? Are they okay with the fact that he's not Amish anymore? Like, first of all, how did you guys meet each other? Okay. We met each other because my husband graduated the eighth grade, like most Amish kids do.

Yeah. Right into a trade and he became a Mason, a brick Mason. So we met because he was building a fireplace at my mom and dad's house and we just extended the flame. I love that. So was he, was he like this Leanne girl? Was he, was he like this Leanne girl? I need to speak to her some more. How did, how did it develop? Oh, Sharon, my husband, I, I cannot wait for the day that you meet him in person because it is so curious because my husband is very quiet. It was more like Leanne saying that man is going to be my husband. That man is mine. And Daryl, um, Daryl, if you ask him, he was interested, but he thought that I had a child because I happened to be playing with a child the first night that we saw.

We never even had a conversation, Jaron. At the first day I saw him. And when he left the house, I said to my girlfriend, I think I'm going to marry that man. You didn't think to yourself, he's Amish and that will never work out. No, he was wearing his Amish britches though. I still have them. I ran across him the other day and I held him up and I was like, Oh, look how tiny these are. And I was like, wait, crap. I don't want him to lift mine up and say, look how tiny yours are. Um, but yeah, he was wearing his Amish pants and his homemade clothing. And I know I knew I had a feeling he was still in that rum spring, a window, which he was, he was 22, which is a little, a little older to not be out of that yet.

And then our first date, I said, just so you know, I'm just not into the party scene. I'm just not. And so if you still are, and that's a path you want to take fine, but otherwise I'm not into that scene. And he was like, okay. And that was it. I mean, and we've been married, it'll be 30 years on Christmas day. And yeah, we've had a wonderful marriage. He's a wonderful man. I knew he was great, but I can honestly say, I didn't really know how great until we were years in and he's just, you know, I married up. Oh, that's amazing.

How did his family feel about him marrying an English person? Well, you know, I tell people I got the best of both worlds. I got the red lipstick and the mashed potatoes and the gravy, but his, you know, really within the Amish community, it really potatoes and the gravy. You know, really within the Amish community, it really depends on the family. It depends on the church, the strictness of the church, but it also depends on the family. And my Amish family is absolutely fabulous. His father is a bishop. Of course, I had to marry the bishop's son, but his father is a bishop. His father has been very honest, but wonderful to us. But when we were dating, you know, we dated 28 days.

We met, dated and got married in 28 days. Oh my goodness. It was, yeah, very fast. And so in that little short window, his dad told him, as long as you date her, we won't be okay with it. But if you marry her, we will accept it. And so that was, to me, that was like, well, what are we waiting on? Like, let's get married. Let's just do this. And so that's

exactly what happened. Wow. And so he, how did he feel? I'm just curious. How did he feel sort of, because you can't convert to be Amish, right? Like there was no opportunity for you to become Amish. Oh, you could, you could, I could, you could come to being Amish. Yes. And I was so incredibly in love with him that I was like, we'll do that. I'll do this. If you would really want me to do this, I would, I'll do it. And he was like, yeah, he loved to drive. You know, he had a truck, he had, you know, the things that he really appreciated about the non-Amish world he wanted to be part of. And, you know, now all these years later, he will still say, if you ask him, the thing he misses most about being in the Amish community is their sense of community, the way they do life, the way they support each other

is absolutely incredible. But listen, I will tell you, I was on Carlos Whitaker's podcast, human hope and episode 19. I tell the entire story like over an hour long. So it tells the entire story of how we eloped because we eloped and you know, it's just a whole, it's just a whole thing. It's a whole thing. And it's a really unusual story. So people should go listen to that episode.

If they want to hear more about what your entire story of how you met an Amish man and got married in less than a month. Well, I have another religious group I wanted to talk to you about today, not the Amish. I want to start though, by asking you if you know who Edward R. Murrow is. No, I do not. Okay. Which is fine. You don't, you don't need to know anything. I'll tell you what you need to know. But Edward R. Murrow was an absolute world famous radio broadcaster who covered the news for CBS news and gained an incredible amount of world fame during World War II. It was his voice that you would hear on the radio that was like, this is London. And he would describe everything that he was seeing around him for the

listeners. He became the highest paid broadcaster. There are high schools named after him. There are journalism awards named after him. He like the fame of Edward R. Murrow during the 1940s and 50s was just off the charts. You know, if you think about famed broadcasters right now, like Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer, you know, like people of that kind of caliber, he was bigger than them because there was, there were fewer news options to choose from. Right. And this was such a pivotal time in world history and everyone gathered around the radio to hear what was happening. Everyone knew people who were fighting in the war. You probably had family over there. And so his voice just became like almost the voice, the radio voice of a generation. I want to play you

like a little teeny clip of the type of broadcasting that Edward R. Murrow was famous for. This is Trafalgar Square. The noise that you hear at the moment is the sound of the air raid siren. I'm standing here just on the steps of St. Martin's in the field. And his hallmark was always, this is London. This is Berlin. And that was his signal, his calling card, so to speak. And then he would paint this visual picture for you. And his goal was really just to take you to that to that place. Yes. All right. So put a pin in Edward Armour. Okay. Okay. And we're going to travel back in time quite a long ways to the 1600s and let let's visit somebody in England whose name was George Fox. Oh,

does he sound familiar? He sounds familiar, but I can't tell you how George Fox was the founder of Quakerism. Okay. And so just to give everybody some context, Quakerism plays an incredibly important role in the foundation of the United States. And it's not the same as being Amish. A lot of people assume Quakers and Amish and Shakers are all the same, and they're not at all the same. But George Fox in England began to have dissatisfaction with the Church of England, just like a lot of Puritans did. They wanted to purify the Church of England from the remnants of Catholicism. They felt like there was too much influence of Catholicism and the church needed to be distilled

down, purified down to its true teachings. So a lot of Puritans immigrated to the United States, set up colonies, particularly in like the Massachusetts Bay Colony, very famous for Puritanism. Another group that immigrated to the United States because of religious persecution in England were the Quakers. And the Quakers had a different set of beliefs than the Puritans. Puritans believed very much in this hierarchy where men went to university to study how to become a pastor, and then they would lead their congregations. Men were the spiritual and economic leaders of the household. Women were not allowed to do things like speak in church or anything along those lines. And Quakers had a very, very different belief. They believed that what they call the light of Christ embodies all humans and that all humans can hear from and speak directly to God.

And that there is not a hierarchy of leaders in between a human who has the light of Christ embodied within them and God. And they refer to themselves as children of light. By the way, the official title of the Quaker religion is that they are the religious society of friends. And Quakers was like a nickname that was given to them. And it was something that they eventually sort of adopted for themselves and called themselves Quaker as well. But the name was given to them by other Puritans and other religious groups because they embraced, Quakers embraced this idea, which is a passage in the Bible that says people should tremble at the word of the Lord. So they should quake. They should quake at the word of the Lord. Oh, so they should quake.

They should quake at the word of the Lord. And people assume that that means they should actually physically have some kind of quaking. And in reality, it's more of a metaphorical quaking. But they also were very persecuted by the Puritans. In fact, there was a massacre of Quakers in Boston during that timeframe because they had such a different belief set. They were pacifists to begin with, because they believe in the inherent sanctity of all human life. They did not believe that there is a place for things like violence and war or the death

penalty. They did not believe in a difference between genders. They believed in gender equality. It was not their belief that men were above women, that if we all embody the light of Christ, that it's not men more than women. And they also, because of these beliefs that all humans embody the light of Christ, vary against slavery. The Quakers were really sort of the least similar to many of the other groups, you know, Congregationalists, Puritans, Catholics, they had more similarities to one another than the Quakers, who were sort of a little bit of an outlier in the United States. They had beliefs that were very

different. This idea that there's no pastor, there's nobody that leads the church, that women can speak. In fact, the meetings usually involve sitting in a circle or in a square configuration, depending on the church and sitting quietly until somebody felt moved to say something. They felt that they heard something from God and wanted to share it with other people. And that person could be a man or a woman or a child. And sometimes nobody would have anything to say, and they would just all kind of sit in contemplative silence. So that is a very, very different religious structure than most other sects of Christianity, even today. Quakerism is still a thing today, by the way. It's not a defunct religion. There are still hundreds of thousands of members of the Religious Society of France.

So they really struggled for a while with what is the Quaker community did? What is the best way to coexist with our neighbors when so many of their neighbors had such diametrically opposed viewpoints to them? And this really came to a head during the time of the Revolutionary War. The Quakers very much believed that America should be independent from Britain, but they believed that that was true for different reasons than many other religious groups. And they also didn't believe that war was the answer. They didn't believe that the United States, what is now the United States, should use violence to separate themselves from England. And one of the interesting things about colonies like Pennsylvania, which was started as a Quaker colony, was some of the leaders to the Continental Congress from Pennsylvania really had to sort of

thread this needle of how do I make my pacifist constituents happy and also still support independence? Like how can we have both? Quakers today still are pacifists. And sometimes if you think about like the Vietnam war era, you hear about people who were conscientious objectors where they could not be drafted. Quakers would fall amongst that category of a conscientious objector for religious reasons. My father-in-law who's Amish was a conscientious objector. Yeah. So this is a mindset that is familiar to you. One of the areas that many Quakers came to settle was in the Carolinas. We always think about Pennsylvania being a Quaker colony and it was, but the earliest governors of the Carolina, specifically North Carolina, which is what I want to talk about today was a Quaker and Quakers were the first known religious group in North Carolina and European religious group

in North Carolina. And Quakers came to play an incredibly important role in the history of North Carolina and in the history of the United States. But one of the things that I found interesting is that George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, was imprisoned many times for his beliefs. That is how strongly he was opposed in the Church of England. He was in and out of prison over and over and over for attempting to witness to people based on his own religious beliefs. And that also demonstrates the kind of religious persecution that people in England were experiencing, where you would literally be imprisoned for having differing religious beliefs. would literally be imprisoned for having differing religious beliefs.

I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together, we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It is my girl in the studio. Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests.

And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. Yes. Quakers have been in North Carolina since 1671, which is remarkable.

And by the late 1600s, early 1700s, there began to be sort of this tension in North Carolina between Anglicans and Quakers, like who will have more political power. And because they had such differing beliefs about how government should work, what the role of government was, whether it was permissible to do things like have executions. I mean, the death penalty was one of the main methods of dealing with criminals during that timeframe. So this leads us all the way up to the middle of the 1700s and a man named James Mendenhall, who was a Quaker in North Carolina and at his property, sometimes referred to as a plantation, but it's not a plantation in the sense of many Southern plantations that we're thinking of where people

were enslaved. He frequently hosted many Quaker gatherings. He would have essentially like little conferences of different kinds of trades people where it'd be like, let's have all of the lumber mill operators. Let's get together and let's talk in my plantation. And while people were there, he would try to convert them to being abolitionists. He would try to convert them to opposing slavery. And so his farm, his plantation becomes very well-known. It's on the National Register of Historic Places. It's called the Mendenhall Home Place, and it's still a place you can go visit in North Carolina. So he was one of the people who really spearheaded this idea that the Quakers should be at the

forefront of working to abolish slavery. No idea. I had no idea. Isn't it? It's so interesting. And one of the things they struggled with is what is the best method to go about this? Of course, anyone who opposed slavery in the United States, that was the question of the age. How do we end the enslavement of human beings? Do we work to change the loss? Do we fight a war? Do we go to their homes and set them all free? What is the best method that we can use? And initially, the Quaker community felt like, well, we will work within the existing legal system. And the Quaker community of North Carolina in 1838 submitted a petition to the United States Senate about slavery. And in the petition, it said, we entreat you to legislate for the termination of slavery. So they were trying to work within the existing system,

trying to convince people that this was the right way to go. How'd that go for them, Sharon? How'd that go? Well, one of the things that's so interesting during this timeframe, during the 1830s, 1840s, slavery was such a hot button issue in the United States that Congress banned any introduction of bills or even discussing of bills related to slavery. They put a gag order on anything related to slavery because it was such a volatile topic that they just said, well, fine, we just won't talk about it. We just won't talk about it. So the Mendenhalls then, along with the rest of the North Carolina Society of Friends, realizes like this is not working. And as Quakers, they were very grieved by the enslavement of other humans. That was something that bothered them greatly. So they

began to try to think of how can we work outside the box because working inside the box is doing nothing. They're refusing to even bring up the issue in Congress. So what kind of creative solutions can we use? One of the things they decided to do was when a slave was freed, they would offer to pose as their quote unquote owner so that they could not be recaptured and returned anywhere. But then they would not actually enslave them. They were willing to on paper say, I am this man's owner or this woman's owner. But in reality, they were free. It was sort of like a little bit of a protection for them. So that was one way they worked outside the system. They then began to realize we need to help actually

move people from places like South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina to the North. We need to get them into West Virginia, which did not have slavery. Like, if we can get them across those borders, then we can really start making a difference for people. The Quakers of North Carolina began to be very active in the Underground Railroad, And they built a very unique wagon design that was a false bottomed wagon to hide people. To hide people. Yes. Behind the driver's seat was a little door that you could fold down. People would crawl inside and lay down and close the door, put the seat back on, put their regular cargo, hay, whatever it is they're transporting on top. And then they could move people along the Underground Railroad using this particular wagon design. And as one can imagine, it was probably not a very comfortable ride.

Oh, and so hot. So hot. It's not like North Carolina has a temper climate. It doesn't, especially in the summertime. So hot, so bumpy. It is interesting to me that someone who is pacifist, someone who is about peace is exposing themselves to such violence and such danger. So, I mean, imagine that being someone who lives out what you feel you're supposed to live out in regards to peace, and you are subjecting yourself to a huge crime and the possibility of violence against yourself. That's so wild to me. That's such an interesting point that you make Leanne, because pacifism doesn't mean that you ignore injustice, right? It doesn't mean that you just are like, well, I'm a pacifist. So I'm sorry that's happening. And you just sit back. You still work to improve things, even at risk to yourself. And in fact, many of them were

actively persecuted by the Confederate army for refusing to support the Confederate war effort. Many of them were imprisoned, killed, subjected to other types of violence for refusing to support the Confederacy. Meanwhile, they're just going along and just like, hey, I'm just a farmer. But in reality, they're transporting thousands of people along the Underground Railroad. Some of them were conductors on the Underground Railroad. And people think, first of all, clear it up. The Underground Railroad was a group of people, sometimes thousands of people, who helped enslaved Americans move from the South, where they were enslaved, secretly to the cause. And when somebody was a conductor of the Underground Railroad, what that meant is that they were one of the organizers. They were putting themselves at risk by communicating, being the intermediary between partners of like, we have

some people that will be arriving tomorrow. We're going to need food. We're going to need that wagon. We're going to need food. We're going to need that wagon. We're going to need to let somebody know in Ohio that we have 11 people coming. And they would also do things like secretly mark the ways that they would mark the route is by putting a nail in a tree. And if you came to a fork in the road and you didn't know which way you should go. And of course it wasn't like there were street signs or GPS. If you were supposed to go left, they would put a nail in a tree on the left-hand side of the tree or a nail in a tree on the right-hand side. And then if you followed the directions of the very secretly marked underground railroad, you would eventually arrive where somebody was waiting for you. The Quakers of North Carolina had secret rooms built in their houses.

They had secret enclosures in their barns where they would have a room full of beds above where they would keep their cows. And then they would get people in there and then they would cover it up with hay to make it just look like a haystack so that you couldn't see anything behind it. Or they would have a secret room that would be behind somebody else's bedroom in a house. that would be behind somebody else's bedroom in a house. And then they would let people in and then cover the entrance to that room with the regular beds that were supposed to be in that room.

So when somebody would come through the house, it would just look like, and this is the bedroom. Obviously a lot of furniture in here. I don't know what there is to look at, but it required a tremendous amount of risk and a tremendous amount of coordination. One of the things that I think is super interesting about this story is the fact that the false bottomed wagons were called Stanley Murrow false bottomed wagons and Edward R.

Murrow, the person we discussed at the beginning of this episode. Don't tell me. person we discussed at the beginning of this episode, his family were Quakers and helped design that wagon and helped conduct people along the underground railroad, which of course was not something he could just talk about on air in the 1940s, Right. Right. Right. Because America was still incredibly segregated during that time. Right. And he couldn't just be like, well, I'm the grandson of a Quaker. Right. My grandparents fought against the Confederacy. Right. Right. Right. Right. Do that. Um, but now of course, we can talk about it. We can talk about how he was the child or the descendant of Quakers. He was the descendant of people who actively moved people along the underground railroad and created these

specific types of false bottomed wagons that you can still visit in North Carolina. You know, it also speaks to why he would be so interested in what was happening in the world and what was happening around him because his family was, I mean, wow, that is okay. You know, there's so many things that you don't think about like false bottom wagons, like with the underground railroad. And then who was the person engineering that, you know, it was probably a farmer. I mean, absolutely. Yeah. Quaker farmers. Wow. Quaker sawmill owners, Quaker carpenters. You can go online and you can look up pictures of the Stanley Murrow false bottomed wagon. And from the side, it just looks like a normal wagon, but you can see where the little door pulls down in the front behind the driver's seat,

where people could crawl in. It makes me want to go to Jamestown now. Isn't that interesting? Yes. So interesting. Yes. And we have had two Quaker presidents of the United States. Herbert Hoover was a Quaker. Okay. And so was Richard Nixon. Get out of here. I had no idea. Well, that is the connection between Edward R. Murrow, that voice of America, descendant of Quakers who were surreptitiously, secretly moving thousands of people along the Underground Railroad in North Carolina. Amazing. That is an amazing story. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, it's my pleasure. Tell everybody where they can find you and where they can watch your delightful cooking segments. The easiest way to find me is probably Instagram. And that's just at Leanne Miller, L double E a double N Miller.

Yep. On Instagram. And I do have a website, leannemiller.net where I put some of my recipes and, and honestly, if you Google Leanne Miller Fox, you know, recipes will pop up. Things will happen on, on the Google, on the Google machine. Yes. What is your favorite type of dish to cook? Oh, you know, Sharon, I told myself that maybe this podcast would be about butter, bacon drippings, or carbohydrates, because those are my three, probably my three main food groups, but I do, I do love homemade bread, like warm homemade bread. I just, I don't know if you can beat a warm hearty soup of any kind, you know, cheeseburger soup is, is a popular one that I make for our family or a hearty thick, wonderful potato soup with bacon and sour cream on the top with a warm piece of homemade bread.

Those are, those are my favorite type meals or the comfort meals. Yes. I absolutely love that. I love soup and I love homemade bread. Yes. Our sons would say the mini cheddar meatloaves are one of their favorite things. And they would also say that they love this chocolate cake, but the chocolate cake has, you know, chocolate milk in it. And it's just really yummy. Do you make any Amish recipes? Oh, probably most of the recipes I make are inspired by the Amish community and, and being in Amish country, you know, where we're very much about bread, butter, cheese, meat, potatoes, farm food, right? Yeah, absolutely. So I probably roast more vegetables than your typical Amish family would, but, you know, definitely my food is inspired by my community for sure. Yes. Are all Amish vegetables just like cooked in butter? Yes. Or bacon drippings?

Yes. Yes. Yes. There's like steamed broccoli with a squirt of lemon. No, no, no butter. No, there is no, there are no Evo olive oil, like sprayers. No, no, no, no. It's, it's butter. And, and, you know, what's lovely about, about the Amish community is so much of it is still so very simple. I mean, they're making butter. They have incredible gardens.

And I also love the Amish focus of taking care of the others in your community, that everyone in this community is responsible for everyone else. I love that. Absolutely. It's under our noses. We see it so plainly. We had a tornado go through our neighborhood probably five years ago and our neighbors that ripped off their barn, they were Amish. It ripped off their barn roof and a tree went through their house. And I told Daryl, this is the perfect example of community within 20 minutes, there were probably 30 bikes there. There were people already coming to help them. I never, I was like, wow, that is so incredible. So yes, they do community like nothing i've ever seen they have it figured out in many ways yes i will keep the electricity yes i will admire the gardens and the butter

and the sense of community yes yes and i do want a little bit of the makeup too and the concealer oh thank you so much leah this is fantastic it's been so fun Oh, thank you so much, Leah. This is fantastic. It's been so fun, Sharon. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review, or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. I cannot wait to have another mind blown moment with you next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast.