Following its early success in the early 1800s, Mount Pleasant was slowly bypassed as railroads, canals, and the National Road steered traffic away from the village, leaving many buildings from its early history unchanged. The oldest surviving structure is the log-built Harris-Bone Store, linked to Harris, one of the first anti-slavery Quakers to arrive from North Carolina. Across the street stands the Benjamin Lundy House, which hosted many visiting Quakers during yearly meeting sessions and was one of three locations of the Free Labor Store, a market that refused to sell slave-made goods. Mount Pleasant also includes homes such as the Hogg Mansion, which served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Founded by Quakers fleeing the slave laws of North Carolina, Mount Pleasant became home to early abolition leaders, hosted anti-slavery events, employed freed African Americans, and provided a safe haven for fugitive slaves. Quakers originated with George Fox, a young wool trader in seventeenth-century England whose dissatisfaction with authoritarian religions led him by 1648 to organize the Religious Society of Friends. Quakers believed, and still believe, that God exists as an Inner Light within all people, and they worship together in silence while seeking a direct experience with God without clergy or elaborate services. These unconventional practices were treated as heresy by the English ruling class, and Quaker meetings were outlawed while many followers were imprisoned. Large numbers of Quakers sought refuge in America to escape persecution. Although Quakers have no established creed, they follow guiding principles known as the testimonies, including equality, peace, simplicity, and integrity, which remain influential in modern Quaker politics, architecture, and social activism. In America as in England, early Quakers also faced persecution; Mary Dyer and other Quakers were exiled from Massachusetts for their beliefs, and after banishment from Connecticut, Dyer returned to Massachusetts in 1660, where she was hung.
