John M. Hussey was born in New Vienna, Ohio, February 6, 1838, the son of Stephen and Rachel B. (Thornburg) Hussey.  He was a great-great-grandson of Thomas Beals (1719-1801), the first Quaker minister to settle north of the Ohio River, and the Hussey Papers include an early draft of Gershom Perdue’s biography of Beals, with notes on the Beals family by Rachel Hussey.  In 1863, he was married in Wabash County, Indiana, to Anna R. Fall, daughter of John and Anna (Leedy) Fall, who was born Oct. 2, 1843. After their marriage, the Husseys lived in New Vienna.  There he coedited, with his brother-in-law Daniel Hill, three Quaker periodicals: the Christian Worker, a general Quaker periodical which in the 1870s became the print vehicle of the revival movement among Gurneyite Friends; the Olive Leaf, a Sunday school weekly; and the Messenger of Peace, the organ of the Peace Association of Friends in America.  Anna Hussey was active in charitable and Quaker missionary work.  Much of the correspondence in this collection relates to her extended visits to Quaker missions in Mexico in 1895 and 1900. Both of the Hussey children, Mary I. and Homer, were graduates of Earlham College, and in 1891 John and Anna moved to Richmond, Indiana.  After 1914, they made their home with their daughter Mary in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and son Homer in New York and New Jersey.  John M. Hussey died in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, April 13, 1920.  Anna Fall Hussey died in New York City, October 26, 1933.

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