Richland Friends Meeting House / Richland Friends Meeting House

Side A: Congregations of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), called “meetings”, worshiped in plain meeting houses. On this site stood the last Richland Friends Meeting House, built in 1872. Ninety-four Friends established the meeting in 1826 and it endured for 147 years. The cemetery is where many generations of members of this meeting are buried. The faith, based on pacifism and simplicity, blossomed in the region during the first half of the 19th century. (Continued on other side) Side B: (Continued from other side) Quaker families, mostly from southern states, came to this area in the early 1800s to live in a land free from slavery. In 1809, the Friends established the Leatherwood Meeting, which was reorganized in 1826 as the Richland Meeting. The meeting split in an ideological dispute. The “Hicksites”–followers of Elias Hicks–occupied the meeting house at Quaker City, so Orthodox Friends established their meeting here in 1828. By the early 1970s most members had moved away or died. The meeting was “laid down” (closed) in 1973 and the building was razed in 1989. The Stillwater Monthly Meeting of Friends in Barnesville maintains the grounds.