Appoquinimink Friends Meetinghouse
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Appoquinimink Friends Meetinghouse
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Meetinghouse in 1938
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| Location | 624 Main St., Odessa, Delaware |
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| Coordinates | 39°27′26″N 75°39′50″W / 39.45733°N 75.66380°WCoordinates: 39°27′26″N 75°39′50″W / 39.45733°N 75.66380°W |
| Area | less than one acre |
| Built | 1785 |
| NRHP Reference # | 72000288 |
| 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. 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.
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).
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 Methodist church was built on land sold to it by the Quakers. It is not much larger than the meetinghouse and is built in much the same style except for its Gothic windows.
David Wilson built the present meetinghouse in 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.
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