Appoquinimink Friends Meetinghouse | |
![]() Meetinghouse in 1938 | |
Location | 624 Main St., Odessa, Delaware |
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Coordinates | 39°27′26″N75°39′50″W / 39.45733°N 75.66380°W |
Area | less than one acre |
Built | 1785 |
Part of | Odessa Historic District (1984 boundary increase) (ID84000846) |
NRHP reference No. | 72000288 [1] |
Added to NRHP | December 04, 1972 |
Appoquinimink Friends Meetinghouse, also known as the Odessa Friends Meetinghouse, is a very small but historic Quaker meetinghouse on Main Street in Odessa, Delaware. It was built in 1785 by David Wilson and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Members of the meeting, including John Hunn and his cousin John Alston, were active in the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman may have hid in the meetinghouse. [2] [3] [4] Measuring about 20 feet (6.1 m) by 22 feet (6.7 m), it may be the smallest brick house of worship in the United States. [3] [5]
Quakers were some of the earliest settlers in the Odessa area, but the first meetinghouse was not established until 1763 when Friends in Georges Creek applied to the Kennett Monthly Meeting to form a preparative (subsidiary) meeting. They later affiliated with the Duck Creek Monthly Meeting in Smyrna, Delaware and in 1781 applied to move the meeting place to Appoquinimink Bridge (also called Cantwell's Bridge and now called Odessa). [3]
A Quaker school, however, was established in Appoquinimink in 1735 and continued until the late 1800s. The school building was later used as a parsonage by the Zoar Methodist Episcopal Church and then demolished. The adjacent Methodist church was built in 1885 on land sold to it by the Quakers.
David Wilson built the present meetinghouse about 1785, but the building and grounds were not deeded to the Meeting until 1800. Wilson and his wife, Mary Corbit, were not married at a Quaker meeting, but rather by a minister, so they were temporarily banned or "read out of the meeting." In 1828 the Orthodox-Hicksite schism greatly reduced the membership of the Appoquinimink Meeting. The locally prominent Corbit family and several other members began attending the Orthodox meetinghouse in Wilmington, but the Duck Creek Monthly Meeting became Hicksite and owned the property.
The Alston family, including John Hunn, continued to support the Appoquinimink Meeting. The Meeting became a station on the Underground Railroad and Hunn, along with Thomas Garrett was arrested, then severely fined, for helping fugitive slaves. The meetinghouse's basement and second story, which has a removable panel under the eaves, may have been used to hide escaping slaves.
In the early 1870s John Alston was the only active member of the meeting. After he died in 1874, the meetinghouse deteriorated. Some of the rancor from the Orthodox-Hicksite schism may have survived however. The graves of Corbit family members were removed from the Hicksite property in 1900 and reburied in a private plot separated by a brick wall from the burial ground of the meetinghouse. This plot was given to the Wilmington Monthly Meeting in 1970.
The building was restored in 1938, opened for worship in 1939, and in 1948 an Appoquinimink congregation was formed and given title to the property, which had devolved to the State of Delaware. The meeting continues to operate on a regular basis, meeting twice a month (first and third Sundays), as a preparative meeting under the care of the Wilmington Monthly Meeting.
The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, or simply the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, or PYM, is the central organizing body for Quaker meetings in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States area, including parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey.
Thomas Garrett was an American abolitionist and leader in the Underground Railroad movement before the American Civil War. He helped more than 2,500 African Americans escape slavery.
John Hunn was an American businessman and politician from Camden, Delaware. The first governor elected after a reform of Delaware's state constitution and a compromise candidate, Hunn served from 1901 until 1905 and became the first of a multi-decade string of elected Republican Delaware governors.
John Hunn was an American farmer and abolitionist who was a "station master" of the Underground Railroad in Delaware, the southernmost stationmaster and responsible for slaves escaping up the Delmarva Peninsula.
A Friends meeting house is a meeting house of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), where meeting for worship is usually held.
The Corbit–Sharp House is a historic house museum located at 118 Main Street in Odessa, Delaware. Built in 1772–74, it is one of the finest examples of a brick Georgian house in the Mid-Atlantic states. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1967, and is included in the Odessa Historic District. It has been a museum, under different ownerships, since 1940.
Odessa Historic District is a national historic district located at Odessa, New Castle County, Delaware. It encompasses 82 contributing buildings in the central business district and surrounding residential areas in the shipping and trading center of Odessa. It includes a mix of commercial and residential buildings primarily dating to the 18th and 19th century. The oldest building is the Collins-Sharp House. Other notable buildings include the Judge Lore House, Brick Hotel (1822), the Davis Store (1824), Cyrus Polk House (1853), Zoar ME Church (1881), Wilson-Warner House, Academy building (1844), Red Men Lodge (1894), and Old St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal parsonage. Also located in the district and separately listed are the Appoquinimink Friends Meetinghouse, Corbit-Sharp House, and Old St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church.
Beekman Meeting House and Friends' Cemetery is located on Emans Road in LaGrangeville, New York, United States. The meeting house is a wooden building from the early 19th century that has been unused and vacant for decades. As a result, it is in an advanced state of decay, and mostly collapsed. The cemetery, better preserved, is located a short distance away.
Clinton Corners Friends Church is a historic Society of Friends meeting house on Salt Point Turnpike/Main Street in Clinton Corners, Dutchess County, New York, United States. It is located directly across the street from the Creek Meeting House and Friends' Cemetery. The congregation originated during the Quaker schism of 1828 when Creek Friends Meeting split into Hicksite and Orthodox meetings.
Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is a historic African Methodist Episcopal Church in Springtown, New Jersey, United States. The church was part of two free negro communities, Othello and Springtown, established by local Quaker families, like the Van Leer Family. The congregation was established in 1810 in Greenwich Township as the African Methodist Society and joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1817. A previous church building was burned down in the 1830s in an arson incident and the current structure was built between 1838 and 1841.
Old Kennett Meetinghouse is a historic meeting house of the Religious Society of Friends or "Quakers" in Kennett Township near Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.
The Birmingham Orthodox Friends Meeting, also known as the Birmingham Orthodox Meeting House, is an historic, American Quaker meetinghouse that is located in Birmingham Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania.
Chichester Friends Meetinghouse is a historic Quaker meeting house at 611 Meetinghouse Road near Boothwyn, in Upper Chichester Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. This area, near Chester, was one of the earliest areas settled by Quakers in Pennsylvania. The meetinghouse, first built in 1688, then rebuilt after a fire in 1769, reflects this early Quaker heritage. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
The Green Plain Monthly Meetinghouse is a historic former Quaker house of worship near South Charleston in Clark County, Ohio, United States. Built in 1843, it was used by a part of a monthly meeting that was established in the area in 1822. The original Green Plain Monthly Meeting lasted for only a short while, splitting into Orthodox and Hicksite branches just four years after it was founded: the Orthodox members settled in the community of Selma, while the Hicksites kept the original property. In turn, the Hicksites split in 1843 over the issue of slavery; the liberal party kept the original church, while the conservatives moved to South Charleston-Clifton Road and built the present building.
Camden Friends Meetinghouse is a historic Quaker meeting house located on Delaware Route 10 in Camden, Kent County, Delaware. It was built in 1805, and was still in operation as a Quaker meeting house when it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. A modern Camden Friends Meeting and Social Hall has been built behind the historic building, which now serves the meeting, and was designed to be energy-efficient and architecturally respectful of the historic building.
Friends Meetinghouse is a historic Quaker meeting house at 4th and West Streets in Wilmington, Delaware in the Quaker Hill neighborhood. The meeting is still active with a membership of about 400 and is part of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. It was built in 1815–1817 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
The Roaring Creek Friends Meeting House is a historic place of worship for members of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, in rural Columbia County, Pennsylvania, near Numidia on Quaker Meeting House Road.
William Brinkley was a conductor on the Underground Railroad who helped more than 100 people achieve freedom by traveling from Camden, Delaware, past the "notoriously dangerous" towns of Dover and Smyrna north to Blackbird and sometimes as far as Wilmington, which was also very dangerous for runaway enslaved people. Some of his key rescues include the Tilly Escape of 1856, the Dover Eight in the spring of 1857, and the rescue of 28 people, more than half of which were children, from Dorchester County, Maryland. He had a number of pathways that he would take to various destinations, aided by his brother Nathaniel and Abraham Gibbs, other conductors on the railroad.