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 Friends Meeting House - Odessa, DE Posted by:  vhasler
N 39° 27.443 W 075° 39.828
18S E 442892 N 4367745
Small Quaker meeting house served as an Underground Railroad stop.
Waymark Code: WMCGP7
Location: Delaware, United States
Date Posted: 09/06/2011
Views: 2
The Friends Meeting House (closed), south side of Main Street, west of US 13, is a plain brick structure about 20 ft. square with a pitched roof and pent eaves across the gable end. The windows are shuttered tight with white shutters in which the boards run diagonally. The little meeting house was built in 1783 when the Duck Creek Meeting removed to Cantwell's Bridge as a more convienent place of worship. All went well until 1828, when the division occurred separating the congregation into Hicksites, followers of rebellious Elias Hicks, and the Orthodox Quakers. The local meeting fell into the hands of the Hicksites, whereupon the conservative members quit the meeting house. It never prospered again as a place of worship, though for years one lone Hicksite, John Alton, would walk stiffly up the street every First Day, enter the meeting house, sit for a time in meditation, then walk stiffly down the street again. After his death about 1880, the doors permanently closed.
The Quakers in Delaware early caught the Abolition fever from the Pennsylvania Quakers, and in Odessa the Hicksites made their meeting house a station of the Underground Railroad. Braving the rage of the slaveholding countryside they hid runaway slaves from Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia in the loft of the little building, bringing them food until it seemed safe to send them on their way north, well fed and well clothed.
--- Delaware: A Guide to the First State, 1938
Good news is that this meeting house continues to be perserved, with an infrequently scheduled service. Come enjoy walking around the grounds.
Book: Delaware
Page Number(s) of Excerpt: 344
Year Originally Published: 1938
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