Quaker Mission Farm, New York: Frontier Collaborative with the Senecas

At the end of the 18th Century, the forests of New York had been overly hunted, leaving the western-most Native American tribe in that state, the Seneca people, in danger of starvation. Follow the adventures of three young single Quaker farmers whose compassion for the plight of that tribe motivated them to give up the comforts of hearth and home to begin an agricultural teaching mission on the lower reservation and grant-lands straddling the border with Pennsylvania, far from the nearest white settlement. This work of historic fiction continues the Appalachian Flood Towns series, and is based upon the actual journals of the missionaries themselves, as well as accounts of other Quakers who visited the model farm to witness for themselves the progress that had occurred over the first three decades of cooperation between the two races of people, in which linguistic and cultural barriers had to be overcome so that trust and lasting friendships could be forged. While the path was not always smooth in such a rugged environment, hard work, prayer, determination and a bit of Yankee ingenuity saw the Seneca people, the young peacemakers and those who followed in their footsteps through numerous challenges, and in spite of some losses common to frontier life, romance did manage to bloom.