Somerton Friends Meeting

Suffolk County · dedicated 2015 · US Rte. 58 near intersection with Lummis Road

George Fox, founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), visited this area in 1672 during a missionary journey to Virginia and North Carolina. His visit encouraged Friends who had settled nearby and led to the organization of Somerton Friends Meeting. Members conducted worship in private homes and later built a meetinghouse three miles southwest of here. The Somerton meetinghouse, along with a nearby school for African Americans, was burned in 1866. The congregation constructed its current building on the same site in 1869. Somerton is the oldest active Quaker meeting in Virginia.

John Carter Brown Library, Brown University

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under a mile from where William Gabby lived in the 1760s

what this marker records spans 1777 to 1789, overlapping William Gabby's years here

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Somerton Friends Meeting

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