The Spring Grove Friends Church, located seven miles southwest of Osawatomie on the Lane Road, was established in the early days of the history of Kansas, 117 years before the Bicentenary Year of 1976 (1859).

The attention of the people called "Quakers," the Society of Friends, was first turned to Kansas in connection with Indian Missionary activity. From the time of their arrival in America, Quakers had given evidence of a special interest in the Indians. George Fox had a special concern for their salvation. He came to America and traveled among them, enduring great hardships.

The history of Friends begins in the England of the seventeenth century, which was characterized by religious and political strife. Their founder, George Fox, described his experience: "When all my hopes in ... men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could I tell what to do; then, Oh! then I heard a voice which said, 'There is One, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition,' and when I heard it, my heart did leap for joy." With this joy in his heart Fox entered his ministry in 1647, commissioned to bring back to the church the truth that all men may know salvation. He called men from "forms and shadows" to the "life, light, and power of Christ in their own hearts." Fox made his first visit to America in 1672, traveling extensively, encouraging the groups, winning new converts, and preaching to the Indians.