Arney's Mount Friends Meetinghouse and Burial Ground - Columbus, NJ
N 40° 00.575 W 074° 41.804
18T E 525883 N 4428864
This is a beautiful example of mid 18th century Quaker architecture. The building is simplistic and efficient. The rural centered meetinghouse also has a cemetery to the rear and is rumored to be haunted.
Waymark Code: WM7NE0
Location: New Jersey, United States
Date Posted: 11/13/2009
Views: 7
Built of native sandstone quarried from the mount on which it stands, Arney's Mount Meetinghouse has stood since 1775 at the intersection of the road from Mount Holly to Juliustown and the Pemberton-Jobstown Road. A wall of native sandstone was built around the burying ground in 1860. The meetinghouse is at the s.w. corner of the intersection of Juliustown and Arney's Mt. Roads.
From the New Jersey Historic Trust web site: Arney’s Mount Friends Meeting house was constructed c. 1775-76 of local sandstone in a vernacular design. It is the oldest meeting house without interior partitions in the region that is still in use. The meeting house is remarkably preserved from its 1811 appearance when portions of the building were reconstructed after a fire. The building was vacant from 1871 until the meeting was revived in 1941. The original cedar roof is now asphalt shingle. The surrounding burial ground retains its integrity.
An earlier grant helped to fund the preparation of a preservation plan for the building. A more recent grant helped fund a detailed structural assessment and preparation of construction documents that will help the meeting stabilize the structure for future generations of use.
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The New Jersey Churchscape website has this to say: The solid stone building still houses an occasional meeting of Quakers in the area. It was built in 1775 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The application for Register status lists Samuel Smith as builder.
There is no village nearby, but several early meetinghouses were built at a convenient crossroads, more-or-less equidistant from all members. There is a large burial grounds to the side of this building.
Woodward & Hageman's History of Burlington County (1883) notes that early meetings in the area were held in a shoolhouse at Caleb's Corner. It was not until 1776, however, that a Preparative Meeting was established here. In 1783 there were four Preparative Meetings that composed the Upper Springfield Monthly Meeting—in Mansfield, Arneytown, Upper Freehold, and Upper Springfield. Each of these had a membership of nearly two hundred fifty. Arney's Mount Meeting had already been in existence for some years, as there are records indicating that Friends belonging to the upper part of the Mount Holly meeting applied for a weekly meeting by 1743.
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