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 Union Meeting House Cemetery - Whiting Village, ME Posted by:  T0SHEA
N 44° 47.475 W 067° 10.527
19T E 644323 N 4961380
Better known recently as the Whiting Community Church, this old wood frame church has stood in Whiting village for 180 years, as of 2016.
Waymark Code: WMR0ZJ
Location: Maine, United States
Date Posted: 04/25/2016
Views: 1
It was 1833 when the members of the Methodist Episcopal Church and of
the Congregational society agreed to jointly build a church in Whiting Village at a projected cost of $1,000. The building was completed in 1836 to be used in a more or less equitable manner by the two congregations.
Much of the building is original, including the exterior windows. Built in the simple meeting house style, the church was built without a belfry or steeple, a situation which was rectified in 1904. In that year the interior was redecorated and the belfry and steeple added. The only previous changes had been a renovation of the interior in 1966, while more small renovations took place later, in 1969, 1971 and 1972.
At the rear of the church is the Whiting Village Cemetery, established in 1805 and still in use by the town. In the cemetery are the remains of Boston Tea Party activist, later Whiting resident, patriot Colonel John Crane, born in Braintree, Massachusetts on December 7, 1744. Crane was given a land grant at Whiting Village on which he settled. His is the earliest known burial in the cemetery, dated August 21, 1805. To date the cemetery has received about 560 burials.
Through the last few decades the congregation had slowly dwindled, eventually reaching a low of just two members. In 2012 the Community Church of Whiting, as it was then known, was gifted to the Town of
Whiting.
Not yet on the National Register of Historic Places list, the church was listed April 11, 2014.Union Meeting House
The town of Whiting was settled in 1785 as Plantation #12 and recorded its boundaries in the Washington County Registry of Deeds office. In 1816 the entire town taxed only twelve houses and eight "barns", with only four houses and four barns in the village itself. In 1817 a mail route from Machias to Lubec was established through Plantation #12, then called Orangetown, and not more than thirty families were residents. Assistance from the State of Massachusetts was requested as the residents could not afford to support a passable road for the mail. The town became known as Whiting and was incorporated in 1825. According to United States census records, between 1830 and 1840 the population of the town jumped from
309 to 462 residents, before hitting a high of 479 in 1860.
It is interesting to note that many of these rural religious buildings were built as Meeting Houses, or Union Churches - and were generally not dedicated to a specific denomination (although they were always Christian), or shared between two or more religious societies. In Whiting, the building was constructed in 1836 on land sold for fifty-five dollars by Isaac Crane to the Proprietors of the Union Meeting House. The lot was located next to District School #1,
on the main road between Machias and Lubec.
Although the History of the Town of Whiting, by Gladys Forslund, provides an account of the history of the church, there is no mention of any architect or any architectural plans for the building. It is recorded, however that the members of the Methodist Episcopal Church and of the Congregational society agreed in 1833 to erect a Union Meeting House to cost one thousand dollars - which sum was divided into shares of twenty-five dollars to be raised by subscription. The shareholders chose a building committee to determine the "size, finish, and locality of said house and at what time the same (should) be completed."7 (p.50).
The governance of the Meeting House was democratic- to a point. In addition to purchasing shares in the future building, the shareholders (or subscribers) agreed that conditions would be established to dictate exactly how the church was to be utilized by the two societies, or others. Subscribers received one vote per purchased share, and among the initial subscribers were several who owned 2, 4 or 6 shares- thus potentially stacking the deck for
one denomination over the other.
In 2012, after years of dwindling membership and deferred maintenance, the Federated Church of Whiting (aka the Whiting Community Church) gifted the building to the Town of Whiting. The Town is in the process of repairing the damaging to the building and restoring the interior. In the future the building will be used as an auditorium and gathering space for the adjacent school, and for weddings or other special services as needed.
From the NRHP Registration Form
Name of church or churchyard: Union Meeting House
Approximate Size: Large (100+)
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