Constellation Similarity Assertions

Joel Bean (1825-1914) was a Quaker minister associated with the "Beanite" branch of Quakerism. Born in New Hampshire, he moved to West Branch, Iowa as a young man, where he met and married Hannah Elliot Shipley. Joel was appointed clerk of Iowa Yearly Meeting in 1867, and the couple went on a ministry tour of Europe from 1872-1873. When they returned from the trip to Europe the Beans could not approve of the direction the revival movement among Friends in Iowa had taken. The revivalists were bringing into their meetings such things as programmed worship and paid pastors, and were departing from such Quaker ideas as the universality of the Inner light and the need for spiritual discipline and gradual growth rather than instant perfection. Even though the Beans opposed this so-called 'holiness movement,' they would not join a group of Conservative Friends who left the Iowa Yearly Meeting to found a rival, "Conservative," yearly meeting in opposition to that movement. They disliked division and did not want to be part of it. After moving to San Jose, California for the sake of Joel’s health and meeting other Friends there who had been a part of the Iowa Yearly Meeting, they helped to establish the College Park Association of Friends, a loose organization of likeminded Quakers. In 1893 the Iowa Yearly Meeting deposed them as ministers and in 1898 disowned them altogether. The Beans had two daughters, Lydia Shipley Bean (Cox) and Catharine Elliot Bean (Cox), who married brothers Isaac and Charles Cox.

Hannah Elliot Shipley Bean (1830-1909) was the daughter of Thomas Shipley and Lydia Richards. A Philadelphia Quaker, she married Joel Bean and was involved in his activities in Iowa and California.

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