Arney's Mount Friends Meetinghouse and Burial Ground

About this property

Arney's Mount Friends Meetinghouse and Burial Ground is a historic Quaker meeting house located at the intersection of Mount Holly-Juliustown and Pemberton-Arney's Mount Roads in Arney's Mount, Burlington County, New Jersey, United States. In 1743, Friends living near Shreve's Mount (later called Arney's Mount for an early settler, Arney Lippincott) asked the Burlington Monthly Meeting for permission to worship on the first day of each week, during the winter season, at the meeting house near Caleb Shreve's Mount. Some years later a meeting house was erected. The builder was Samuel Smith, whose name appears on the stone above the front doorway. As years passed the area changed and attendance at Arney's Mount Meeting declined. The Preparative Meeting, established in 1776, was laid down in 1871. The meeting house continued to be used at times for worship and Firstday school. Since 1941 meeting for worship usually has been held twice monthly. The building is an unusual example of early stone masonry construction in a Friends Meeting House. Built of local bog iron stone quarried from the mount on which it stands, Arney's Mount is unusual in South Jersey as most meeting houses are constructed of brick. The pillars supporting the gallery are turned from solid wood, the beaches are held together with hand forged bolts and the interior woodwork is in its natural aged hue. The windows are placed in an irregular line to afford the maximum amount of light to the interior, which has an upper gallery on three sides which can be opened or closed by hand-hewn panels which rise into the attic area. No paint has ever been used in the interior, and no electricity, formal heating or plumbing has ever been installed. The original cedar roof is now asphalt shingle. A chunk stove replaces the original "pot-bellied" stove which was stolen several years ago, but it serves to warm the house when winter meetings are held. Horse sheds stood near the south boundary wall, which still holds the iron hitching rings. According to oral tradition, Samuel Smith was the builder. Inscribed in a stone of the meeting house is "S. Smith." It was not uncommon within mainstream culture for the builder to carve his initials upon the structure. Such practices were generally frowned upon by Quakers. It was viewed as vain, and ran contrary to the communal nature of the design and building process. More common among Friends was the practice of carving initials merely as a form of graffiti on the interior benches, and sometimes on the facades of meeting houses, although rarely are they so prominently placed. Members of the Smith family attended Arney's Mount meeting and acted as trustees for the meeting, and therefore could have played an important role in the construction of the meeting house. On the opposite side of the meeting house is the name "I. Coate." This suggests that Smith was not solely responsible for the construction of the meeting house. Perhaps one's role was largely financial while the other served as builder.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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