Side A: The comingling of faiths in an area settled predominantly by Quakers helps explain the origins of Jonah’s Run Baptist Church. Ministered to by a Baptist preacher, the children and neighbors of Daniel Collett (1752-1835), an Episcopalian and private in the Revolutionary War, and his wife Mary Haines Collett (1753-1826), a Quaker from Virginia, became Baptists and started the church in 1838. Levi Lukens (1767-1860), a Quaker from Pennsylvania by way of Virginia, purchased the land where the church stands in 1812 and sold it in 1839 to a founder of the congregation. Like local Quaker meetinghouses, the church had separate entrances for men and women and a partition between the two that divided the sanctuary. The congregation’s sons and daughters lived their faith. Howard McCune (1852-1923) was the Clinton Baptist Association’s moderator and president of the Ohio Baptist Convention’s state board. Anne Cossum (1894-1977) was a missionary in China from 1920-1927.
Side B: The District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005, preserves 280 acres of landscapes and buildings depicting rural life in Clinton County from about 1838 to 1955. The District encompasses the Amos-Elihu-Daniel Underwood (“west brick”) and Zephaniah Underwood (“east brick”) farms, the Zephaniah and Matilda Underwood house (the “Tower House,” c. 1884) and Jonah’s Run Baptist Church (side 1). The Underwoods were famous for their commercial apple orchards, although like other farmers raised a variety of crops and livestock. The Zephaniah and Matilda Underwood farm includes a c. 1900 brick fruit storage building, insulated by sawdust. The Underwoods were leaders in other areas. Matilda Downing Underwood (1851-1932) was a Quaker minister and active in the temperance and women’s suffrage movements. Matilda’s sister, Maria Downing Romine (1848-1922), was a medical doctor, a pioneering career for women of her time.
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