SALEM — A program titled, “The Fighting Quakers” will be presented at the Salem Federation of Women’s Clubs – Smucker House tea at 271 S. Broadway, on Nov. 16 at 11 a.m. Tickets are $25 and reservations must be made by calling 330-207-6031 or emailing ccaldwell663@icloud.com

The high tea will be prepared by Cordon DE Blu Chef Sara Baer and American Culinary Institute of New York Chef, Ashley Foster from Due Dorelle Food Imports.

The program will be presented by Melissa Carchedi, a 2003 West Branch graduate. Her interest in Edwin Coppoc, (Coppock) all started over a family Easter dinner when Edwin’s name was brought up by Melissa’s brother. Her interest piqued; she interviewed several people associated with Edwin’s history. She traveled to Iowa to visit the site where the brothers joined with John Brown’s Army.

Edwin and Barclay Coppoc (Coppock) were born in Winona, the sons of Samuel Coppock and Anna Lynch. When their father passed away, their mother arranged for the boys to live with other Quaker families. Barclay went to live with John Stanley and Edwin to live with John Butler, who was a benevolent Quaker. Edwin lived with John Butler for nine years. Butler met with President Lincoln on three occasions to exempt Quakers from fighting in the Civil War. He also went to Pa Pa Island, Mississippi, to bring back orphan slave children who stayed at his house until he found suitable families for them. Butler, being a dedicated Quaker and Salem, being the home of the Anti-Slavery newspaper “The Anti-Slavery Bugle,” provided a strong foundation for the brothers to be against slavery.

Living in Damascus until their teen age years, the bothers left their foster homes when their mother remarried and moved to Springdale, Iowa, where she was living. It was here that they met John Brown as he passed through in early 1859, transporting people who had been enslaved in Missouri to freedom. That summer, the two boys bade their mother goodbye, despite her fears of the violence they would encounter, and traveled to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, to meet Brown’s growing army.

Edwin was captured at Harper’s Ferry was tried and convicted of treason, murder, and fomenting a slave insurrection, and was hanged with John Brown in Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia) on Dec. 16, 1859. His body was laid out three nights, with armed guard; the guard was to prevent anti-abolitionists from stealing the body to prevent the funeral. Attendance was described as “immense;” hundreds came for the funeral and to hear the “eulogistic speeches.” The body was moved to City Hall. His remains were first buried in the Friends Burying Ground, New Garden, Ohio. Attendance at the burial was estimated to have been from two to three thousand.

By 1888 he had been reburied in Hope Cemetery, about 10 miles away in Salem, his grave marked by a plain brownstone monument some 12 feet in height, marked only with his name and his birth and death dates. This monument was erected through the liberality of Daniel Howell Hise, who lived on Franklin Avenue, and was a prominent abolitionist.