Hopewell Friends Meetinghouse
About this property
Hopewell Friends Meeting House is an 18th-century Quaker meeting house located the northern Frederick County, Virginia one mile west of the community of Clear Brook at 604 Hopewell Road (formerly State Route 672). Clear Brook, VA 22624. This community was the home of Thomas William "Tom" Fox (1951–2006), a Quaker peace activist, affiliated with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) murdered in 2006 in Iraq. Hopewell Friends Meeting was named "Opeckan", after nearby Opequon Creek, when it was set off from the Concord (Pennsylvania) Quarterly Meeting in 1734. It is the oldest Quaker meeting in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. Some of the original group of settlers came from the Monocacy valley in Frederick County, Maryland, but most came from Chester County, Pennsylvania. "Alexander Ross hath proposed to this meeting on behalf of (f)friends (a)at Opeckon that a meeting for worship may be settled among'st them which is under y'e consideration & care of this meeting until(l) a suitable time to give them a visit." This excerpt was taken from the Nottingham Monthly Meeting Minutes from the meeting of May 18, 1734. Initially, this meeting was a member of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. At that time, the settlement included about seventy families. Initially, a log meeting house was built on lands originally granted by Lt. Gov. William Gooch of Virginia to two Ulster Scots with roots in Northern Ireland, a Quaker named Alexander Ross (in 1730) and Morgan Bryan (a 1732 grant to this Presbyterian). Prominent London Quaker John Fothergill (1712-1780) visited this meeting in 1736. In 1757, the 1734 meeting house burned. In addition to losing its place of worship, the congregation also almost lost all its early records in a 1759 house fire. The interior of the meeting house consists of a large open space with a tiered gallery on the south and west walls. The balcony retains early benches with scrolled ends. Enclosed stairs, side by side, ascend from the center of the south wall. Large posts, some squared, some turned, support the gallery at various points. The main floor has early benches with open backs and some later, standard church-type benches. A platform with additional benches is against the north wall facing the congregation area. As might be expected the effect of the interior is exceedingly plain; the walls and ceiling are plastered and the openings are devoid of ornamental trim. Following the Great Separation of 1827, local Hicksite Quakers use one half of the meeting house and their Orthodox brethren the other. Both were buried in the nearby meeting house cemetery. In 1870, W. D. Lee built a limestone wall around the cemetery. Both sides contributed to repairing the structure in 1910 and this led to a healing of the schism. It is thought that the current roof lines date from this renovation.
Location
Categories
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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Questions about this property
When was Hopewell Friends Meetinghouse listed on the National Register?
Hopewell Friends Meetinghouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 27, 1980.
What type of historic resource is Hopewell Friends Meetinghouse?
Hopewell Friends Meetinghouse is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.
What is the period of significance for Hopewell Friends Meetinghouse?
The period of significance for Hopewell Friends Meetinghouse is recorded as the industrial era.
Can I research the history near Hopewell Friends Meetinghouse?
Yes. Aubrey Research reports search National Register listings, battlefield records, land patents, and other primary historical sources within any radius of a US address. A report for an address near Hopewell Friends Meetinghouse will include this listing and all other historical records in the area.
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