The name: Quakers founded the town in the early 1900s and established the Friends Church and the Greenleaf Academy. Originally called Mountain View, locals voted in 1909 to change the name to Greenleaf in honor of Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier.

History: Although small, the town of Greenleaf, established in 1904 and incorporated as a city in 1973, has made its mark on the community and the world.

Proof of that can be found in the Greenleaf Friends Academy and Preschool, whose origins date back to 1909, when the first academy building was constructed. Through the academy’s doors have walked students who have gone on to make profound differences in the areas of teaching, medicine, religion and beyond.

Here are just a few:

• Earl Antrim, a respected businessman and philatelist. As a stamp collector and expert, he has been recognized by the queen of England has written a book about Civil War prison stamps.
• Emmett Gulley, who for six years was president of Pacific College, a Western Quaker college now known as George Fox College.
• Class of 1958 member Elmore Jackson, a former consultant for the Rockefeller Foundation in New York and Quaker program director for the United Nations.
• Dr. Corwin Hinshaw, a renowned authority on tuberculosis and lung cancer.
• Ralph Choate and his wife, Esther Chilson, who served more than 40 years as missionaries in Africa.

Trivia fact: At one time, the Greenleaf Friends Church was the largest Quaker church in the United States.