Background
Jay was born on October 11, 1831, in Mill Creek, Ohio, the son of Isaac and Rhoda (Cooper) Jay. He came of a long and distinguished line of colonial Quaker ancestors from Nantucket, North and South Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
Jay was born on October 11, 1831, in Mill Creek, Ohio, the son of Isaac and Rhoda (Cooper) Jay. He came of a long and distinguished line of colonial Quaker ancestors from Nantucket, North and South Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
Jay's education began in a log schoolhouse in Western Ohio, and was continued by the training and discipline of a pioneer Quaker school. To this was added a short period in an Ohio academy, one year in Friends Boarding School, Richmond, Indiana, and three months in Antioch College.
Jay was recorded a minister of the Society of Friends in Greenfield Meeting, Indiana, in 1864. From that time until his death he was one of the most widely known and best loved of all Quaker ministers in America. He traveled extensively on preaching tours, visiting more than once all sections of the Society of Friends in America and in Europe. In 1868 he was made superintendent of the Baltimore Association, an organization formed after the Civil War, under the leadership of Francis T. King of Baltimore, for the educational and spiritual reconstruction of the Quaker sections in North Carolina. The Association expended over $138, 000 and did a notable work, especially along educational lines, for which Jay showed peculiar gifts. During these years in North Carolina, from 1868 to 1874, he discovered his two chief interests, educational leadership and public ministry. After spending more than a year on an important preaching tour in England, Ireland, Scotland, and on the Continent of Europe, Jay became in 1877 treasurer of what is now Moses Brown School, Providence, Rhode Island, and the organizer and director of its religious life. In 1881 he was called to similar work in Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana. He developed unusual gifts for soliciting educational funds and endowments and was responsible not only for large additions to the financial assets of Earlham College, but as well to those of most of the Quaker colleges of the Western states and of Guilford College in North Carolina. He also brought inspiration and creative leadership to Quaker education throughout America, and had an important part in the reawakening of Quakerism in America in the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth century. He was an important influence in the extension of Bible schools and foreign-mission work and was one of the founders of the American Friends Peace Association and of the Five Years Meeting. His life came to an end at Richmond, Indiana, on May 8, 1910.
Jay possessed an alert and virile mind, which continued to develop and to accumulate knowledge for the whole period of his life.
On September 20, 1854, Jay married Martha Sleeper. They both taught in pioneer schools in Indiana. His first wife died April 27, 1899, and on November 25, 1900, he married Naomi W. Harrison.
