Quaker Meetinghouse
The Sandwich meetinghouse on Spring Hill in East Sandwich is home of the oldest Quaker meeting in America and gathered here on April 13, 1657. Like most new faiths, its members ardently proselytized and the Plymouth Colony retaliated through fines and jail time. Settlers were persecuted for holding illegal meetings because meeting in a private home was illegal, an unauthorized church service. Around 1658, secret meetings were being held in Christopher's Hollow, a kettle hole about 1.5 miles south-southeast of the center of town, located in what is now the Quaker Hill development in the middle of the loop street named Christopher's Hollow (In the middle of the last century, there were still some large flat boulders that served as seats for the first Quaker meeting but these have disappeared). From that point on, the group decided that they were Quakers and they met as such. The period of persecution lasted only about four years, from about 1657 to 1661.
The original meetinghouse was built in 1670, a second one in 1702 and the third and final one in 1810. The building is a timber-framed meetinghouse and was prefabricated in a Quaker community on the Kennebec River in Maine, shipped by schooner to Cape Cod Bay, unloaded in the creek north of the site and reassembled according to numbers on the timbers. Friends meetings (Quaker worship services) are still held in this building. The meetinghouse still has the movable partitions, which separated the men’s and women’s meetings for business until 1891. Quaker women set up their own Women's Meetings to further the welfare of their gender and to take the lead in those things for which they had special sensitivity…care of the poor, instruction of children, discipline of the disorderly, clearness for marriage, and general spiritual oversight. Other structures on the site include parts of two carriage sheds on either side of the meetinghouse and two rare outhouses that were the only toilets until 1992 when the new community house was connected to the water supply.
The meeting house became the center of a Quaker village, which included a school and the seventeenth century homesteads of the Wing and Hoxie families. The Quaker community in Sandwich was notable for its high rate of literacy (about 80%) and its practice of female equality, a characteristic of all Friends from the beginning. You can get an idea of Quaker life at the time by visiting the Wing Fort House located on Spring Hill Road, a short distance northwest of the present meetinghouse (you can search for my geocache there). It’s open to the public from June 15 to September 15. Built in 1641 and occupied by one of the first families converted to Quakerism, many items of Quaker family life are on display.
Two ancient burial grounds are located behind the meetinghouse. Generations of Quakers, including some of the earliest inhabitants of Sandwich, are buried here. There are many unmarked burial mounds because the early Quakers kept their graves unmarked as “an expression of humility and equality as children of God.” Who is buried there and when they were laid to rest remains a mystery, as there are no records. The oldest known stone is Rose Jennings, dated 1720.
To log this geocache on opencaching.us, the password is Silence.
The original meetinghouse was built in 1670, a second one in 1702 and the third and final one in 1810. The building is a timber-framed meetinghouse and was prefabricated in a Quaker community on the Kennebec River in Maine, shipped by schooner to Cape Cod Bay, unloaded in the creek north of the site and reassembled according to numbers on the timbers. Friends meetings (Quaker worship services) are still held in this building. The meetinghouse still has the movable partitions, which separated the men’s and women’s meetings for business until 1891. Quaker women set up their own Women's Meetings to further the welfare of their gender and to take the lead in those things for which they had special sensitivity…care of the poor, instruction of children, discipline of the disorderly, clearness for marriage, and general spiritual oversight. Other structures on the site include parts of two carriage sheds on either side of the meetinghouse and two rare outhouses that were the only toilets until 1992 when the new community house was connected to the water supply.
The meeting house became the center of a Quaker village, which included a school and the seventeenth century homesteads of the Wing and Hoxie families. The Quaker community in Sandwich was notable for its high rate of literacy (about 80%) and its practice of female equality, a characteristic of all Friends from the beginning. You can get an idea of Quaker life at the time by visiting the Wing Fort House located on Spring Hill Road, a short distance northwest of the present meetinghouse (you can search for my geocache there). It’s open to the public from June 15 to September 15. Built in 1641 and occupied by one of the first families converted to Quakerism, many items of Quaker family life are on display.
Two ancient burial grounds are located behind the meetinghouse. Generations of Quakers, including some of the earliest inhabitants of Sandwich, are buried here. There are many unmarked burial mounds because the early Quakers kept their graves unmarked as “an expression of humility and equality as children of God.” Who is buried there and when they were laid to rest remains a mystery, as there are no records. The oldest known stone is Rose Jennings, dated 1720.
To log this geocache on opencaching.us, the password is Silence.