Rev. Abner Hixon Longley
 

Abner Hixon Longley was born in Mason county, Kentucky, near the town of Maysville, on a farm. His father was a New Yorker, and his mother a Jersey woman, of average English education. The name Longley was then, and remained for half a century, almost unknown in the western states. It was brought over from England by three brothers, who settled in Massachusetts soon after the landing of the "Mayflower." Of these three brothers the history of but one is known; and that is on record that he and all his family except one son were massacred by the Indians. That son was rescued, and from him have sprung the now somewhat large number of families bearing his name. The father of Abner removed with his large family to Butler county, Ohio, within three miles of Oxford, where he died February 23, 1818, aged seventy-two. The mother, whose maiden name was Martha Hixon, survived him until 1844; kept the family together, and so trained young Abner that he cultivated a literary turn of mind which shaped his future course in life. She lived to be eighty years old and died in Lebanon, Indiana. Of five sons, John became a New Light preacher, and besides raising a family of twenty-five children - or rather becoming the father of that number, for the larger portion of them died in childhood, as might be expected - he pursued his ministerial calling in Indiana most of the time until he was eighty-six years old, when he died in LaFayette. Abner H. Longley learned the trade of a cabinet maker, and pursued it faithfully for a number of years, at the same time that he was pursuing the higher studies of a liberal education in the then young Miami University in Oxford. The distinguished scholar and author, William H. McGuffey, was then just beginning his famous career as an educator, and the subject of our sketch was one of his most promising pupils. Among his classmates were such afterward prominent men as Gen. Charles Anderson, Gen. Robert C. Schenck, Hon. Samuel Galloway, and others. Before finishing his education he began preaching the same reformatory Christian doctrines that were promulgated by his older brother. But it so happened that that pioneer Universalist preacher, Jonathan Kidwell, had just located in Oxford, and began publishing his first periodical in advocacy of his new doctrines, and Mr. Longley's attention was attracted to them. The result was that he espoused them, began preaching the then heretical doctrines about the year 1820. His field of itinerancy was wherever he was called, and he preached the gospel as he understood it , to few or many, and generally without money or price. He also devoted much time writing for the periodicals devoted to Universalism throughout his long life. He always spoke and wrote in clear, forcible, argumentative style and was listened to and read with interest. His earlier preaching was in Butler, Preble and Warren counties, Ohio; but after moving to Lebanon, Boone county, Indiana, where he arrived in August, 1832, and was the first settler and built the first house in the town, he improved every opportunity to disseminate the faith of future universal salvation from sin and consequent misery. In 1836 he was elected to the Indiana Legislature by the Democrats of the counties of Boone and Hamilton, but in 1854 he became a Republican. In 1839 Mr. Longley lost his first wife, whose maiden name was Mary Stephenson, and whom he married in Lebanon, Ohio. In less than a year he married again, this time Mrs. Sophronia Snow Bassett, of Cincinnati, and he removed his family of five boys and two daughters to that city. One object he cherished in his mind in removing to Cincinnati was to give his children a better education than could be obtained in the then unimproved county of Boone. In this he partially, if not wholly to his satisfaction, succeeded. He also was enabled to devote more of his time to preaching, though he never became a settled pastor over any considerable congregation. For several years he preached regularly, once or twice a month, to organized churches in Delhi and Mt. Healthy, near Cincinnati, Goshen, Clermont county, Williamsburg, and elsewhere in the same county. He also, on quite a number of occasions, preached in both the Universalist churches in Cincinnati. In 1844 Mr. Longley's mind was directed to an examination of the doctrines of Charles Fourier, the French socialist, who wrote and published a very elaborate scheme for benefiting the human race by a more equitable distribution of the rewards of labor and money. A society was formed, consisting of intelligent and well-meaning men, to solve the problem of associated labor and consolidated or a unitary household. It was a joint stock enterprise, and not a community of property, in which every member, from the child of twelve years up, was to be rewarded according to the time and skill given to productive industry. The organization purchased a few hundred acres of excellent land on the Ohio river, forty miles above Cincinnati. They chartered a steamboat and took along all their members, goods, livestock and also the lumber to build board shanties for temporary residence until they made brick and built substantial houses. They had bought the land on three payments, paying the first in cash and expecting to meet the others by the sale of wood from their forest to the passing steamboats for fuel, but the second payment was missing and upon the third becoming due without payment, a foreclosure forfeited their right to remain any longer and they were required to leave the place and so their organization was dissolved and most of them returned separately to Cincinnati. Later a smaller organization bought a small part of the land and occupied the building on it. It was a community with common property, but their fate was soon sealed; this time by their houses being destroyed by a large flood of the Ohio river. Although Mr. Longley gave up his interest in social reform in consequence of the failure of this attempt, yet one of his younger sons then took up the work and has continued his efforts in it up to this time, so that now, in his eighty-second year, he is yet in a community at Sulphur Springs, Missouri, and is publisher of a monthly paper. He was brought with Mr. Longley's family to Lebanon when he was only five months old, being its first baby. In 1850 Mr. Longley's second wife died, and during a visit to his brother, John, in LaFayette, he was introduced by his brother to an amiable widow whom he thought would be a comfort to him in his affliction and a good mother to his children. The result was in due time he married Mrs. Amorette Lawrence, of that city, and soon afterward moved the younger portion of his family back to Lebanon, where he continued to live and to preach as he had a call, and to work at his trade, more or less, until 1866, when he removed to Paola, Kansas.

Of the children of Abner H. Longley, of whom he had thirteen, seven boys and six girls, something may be said, as he was more successful with them than was his brother John, though there were fewer of them. He lived to see all of them but three, who died in childhood, grown to manhood and womanhood, married and respectably situated in society, and with fair educations, two or three of the sons receiving partial collegiate courses in "Old Woodward College," Cincinnati. The elder, Elias, was designed by his father for a minister, at least his education was directed in that line, and while in college his reading and literary exercises were all directed toward theological topics and religious exercises. He was a brave advocate and defender of the faith of his father, in many a discussion with his schoolmates and in the debates in the hall of the literary society. And the good father was for a short time gratified by the efforts of his son in the same pulpits he himself had been occupying. But Elias was not himself satisfied with those three or four attempts at preaching, and he abandoned the idea of becoming a minister. He was then engaged in printing the Star in the west, Rev. John A. Gurley's paper, and was then, and continued to be, a frequent writer for its columns. He was afterwards quite prominently known as a writer for and publisher of phonetic and phonographic books, and from the breaking out of the war in 1861, as a shorthand reporter and city editor upon the Cincinnati daily papers. The other sons, Servetus, Septimius, Cyrenius, Alcander, Albert and Abner, all followed the footsteps of their elder brother, and became printers, and two of the daughters, Salome and Mary A., married printers and editors, and furthermore most of the children of all of the family are now either printers, publishers, or in some way engaged in such pursuits. One of the sons, Albert, is now a lawyer in Cincinnati. Abner is dead, and Alexander, the youngest son of Mr. Longley's first wife, has continued his interest up to the present time in the phonetic and community idea by the publication of a monthly paper. Mr. Longley always took a lively interest in politics, but was not regarded as a politician; still, in 1836, perhaps it was he was elected to the Indiana Legislature by the Democrats of the counties of Boone and Hamilton. He was also county surveyor for a time. In 1854 he abandoned the Democratic party because of the position of that party on the repeal of the "Missouri Compromise."

The following, from a Paola, Kansas, paper, will fittingly close the sketch of this worthy brother:

"In the death of Rev. A. H. Longley, whose life went out on the morning of the 9th of May, 1879, the 'Reaper' gleaned one of the richest harvests ever taken from our circles. He was born in Kentucky, in December, 1796, and lived to the ripe old age of eighty-two. His life was so well preserved, having been strongly temperate in all things, that he had the appearance of being not over sixty-five. He was endowed with remarkable mental powers, a sensible thinker, and up to the time of his death was greatly interested in governmental matters. For a number of years he was a resident of Cincinnati, Ohio, and from there moved to Lebanon, Indiana, where he built the first house in that city, and continued to reside there until he came to Paola, twelve years ago. "In religious belief he was a Universalist, and for more than fifty years preached the gospel as he understood it. A man of strong conviction, conscientious to an eminent degree, he was honored wherever he was known for his many Christian virtues. There never was a better husband, never a better father, never a better man. During his sickness, when conversing about dying, he was asked, 'But you are not afraid to die, are you, father?' His response was: 'O, no, no, no! why should I be? Why should I be when I know there is a bright immortality in waiting?' "He leaves ten children, six of whom live in Cincinnati. The oldest son came to his bedside in answer to a telegram, remained two days, and carried the body home with him for interment in Spring Grove cemetery, one of the most beautiful places of earth. "The stricken wife, children and friends have the sincerest sympathy of all, and their earnest prayers to comfort them in their sorrow. The world is better that he lived. He leaves none but beautiful memories behind him. That heaven is sweeter which receives his saintly soul."

Submitted by: Amy K. Davis
Source: "History of Boone County, Indiana," by Hon. L. M. Crist, 1914.