Quakers Plan Annual Meeting

PAWLING, N.Y. — The Annual Quaker Meeting for Worship at the Oblong Meeting House on Quaker Hill, Pawling, N.Y., will take place at 3 pm on Sunday, July 8.

Each year, friends, Quaker Hill neighbors, and visitors join in worship in this large, two story meeting house built in 1764.

The meeting house was the center of the community during the American Revolution. Neutral Quakers settled in the territory of “The Oblong,” a geographic area which was part of a border dispute between the states of New York and Connecticut, and there they established a thriving community. The members of the oblong meeting abolished the owning of slaves in 1776 and later cared for wounded soldiers from both sides of the conflict during the Revolutionary War, in this building.

This historic Quaker Meeting was discontinued as a meeting in 1885 and is now owned and maintained by the Historical Society of Pawling and Quaker Hill.