Upcoming Open House Dates

July 30–”Farmington: Steps in Austin Steward’s Stride toward Freedom”

David Anderson, Chair, Rochester and Monroe County Freedom Trail Commission.

August 27– “Lucretia Mott, Quakers, and the   Early   Women’s Rights Movement.”

Carol Faulkner, History Department,  Syracuse University.

All Open Houses–with exhibits and tours–are held at Farmington Friends Meeting, 187 County Road 8, 12 a.m.-4:30 p.m., with talks at 2:00 p.m. and refreshments and conversation at 3:30. All talks are sponsored by the New York Council on the Humanities and are free and open to the public.

Historic energies are bubbling up again. Most wonderfully, this Meetinghouse is—at last—well on its way toward final stabilization and eventual preservation. With the help of one of the country’s premier historic preservation firms (John G. Waite Associates), Wolfe Brothers Building Movers stabilized and enclosed the building. They will move the Meetinghouse next summer to a site across the road, still within the Farmington Quaker Crossroads Historic District, to be donated by the current Farmington Friends Meeting.

We are grateful to the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Foundation for working so hard to save this building. This year, we also formed a new not-for-profit organization, the 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse, to work jointly with the Stanton Foundation.

We are delighted with this progress. We are also immensely grateful for the financial support that has made this possible—from the National Park Service’s Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, New York State’s Environmental Protection Fund, Preservation League of New York State, Rochester Area Community Foundation, Farmington Friends Meeting, Canandaigua National Bank, and so many of you. You have contributed so much—in money, time, and sustaining energy—from your hearts.

To finish stabilizing and moving this Meetinghouse, we have committed ourselves to raise $76,000 from private sources this year to match federal and state funds. All donations (including pledges and appreciated securities) are much appreciated. Donations may be sent to the 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse, P.O. Box 25053, Farmington, New York 14425 or donated on Visa or MasterCard through this website ».

Stay tuned!

With grateful hearts,
1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse Steering Committee

Judith Wellman, Director
Historical New York Research Associates
Professor Emerita, SUNY Oswego

2 Harris Hill Road
Fulton, New York 13069
315-598-4387
historicalnewyork@mac.com

We are so pleased—absolutely delighted—to announce that the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Foundation, through NYS’s Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, has received a grant of $330,000 from New York State’s Environmental Protection Fund for this project. Now, we need to match this!

View award letter (Adobe pdf 1 page 42Kb)

We are still working on the remaining $11,800 to match our grant of $47,000 from the National Park Service’s Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program. Profound thanks to the Rochester Area Community Foundation, Canandaigua National Bank, and many, many generous private individuals for their contribution toward this goal.

With this money, we hope to put out bids very soon for stabilizing this building in place this fall.

Stay tuned!

Alaine will send this to the IRS so that we may be officially recognized for tax purposes as a 501c3 organization. This will be retroactive to May 18, 2009, and will allow us to accept donations as a charitable organization.

Congratulations and many, many thanks for all this hard work by so many people! Thank you, Alaine!

Best, Judy

Provisional Charter of 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse Museum
( 5 pages 865Kb)

Minutes of NYS Board of Regents meeting granting Provisional Charter for 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse Museum.
( 2 pages 37Kb)

—–Original Message—–
From: Karen Andersen
Sent: Tuesday, June 02, 2009 12:30 PM
Subject: RE: 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse

At the May Regents Meeting, the Board of Regents voted to issue a Provisional Charter. The corporation should receive it in the mail in a few weeks. Congratulations!

Here is the agenda item:

1816 FARMINGTON QUAKER MEETINGHOUSE MUSEUM

Farmington, Ontario County

The board of trustees has petitioned the Board of Regents to form a corporation to establish and maintain the 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse as a historic house museum open to the public relating to and interpreting the national reform movements relating to women’s rights and women’s suffrage; relations between Quakers, Haudenosaunee and African Americans; abolition of slavery; and the Underground Railroad; to maintain and preserve the house and open it to the public on a regular schedule; to collect, own, hold, maintain, preserve and make available appropriate historical objects and artifacts; to arrange, create, maintain and promote appropriate historical exhibits and displays; to promote and support historical research and scholarship, issue publications in any format, and organize historical and cultural activities, programs and events for the public. The Office of Cultural Education recommends that a provisional charter be granted for a period of five years.

You can view the actual Regents meeting as a webcast on http://usny.nysed.gov/webcasts.html

Karen Andersen
Education Program Assistant I, Museum Chartering
NY State Museum
Office of Cultural Education
NY State Education Department
3097 Cultural Education Center
Albany NY 12230
Phone: 518-473-3131
Fax: 518-473-8724
email: kanderse@mail.nysed.gov
web site: www.nysm.nysed.gov/charter/

provisional_charter

board_of_regents_meeting

Hello Friends

Check out this excellent news from Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, through Fran and Gail Caracillo—$330,000 from our Environmental Protection Fund application from last year for the Meetinghouse!

• Award letter: from NY State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation (1 page 50Kb)

Take two days to dance and celebrate. Then we will get to work raising matching funds! Thanks so much to the EPF review board, to SHPO, and to all of you who have contributed so much to make this happen! After OPRHP makes its own formal announcement, we can tell others about this.

ecs_epf_award

The Journal was a Hicksite Quaker publication in the 1870s and 1880s, edited by Joseph Gibbons and his daughter Phebe E. Gibbons (from Lampeter, now Bird-in-Hand, Lancaster County, PA). The Gibbons were actively involved in anti-slavery and the Underground Railroad for several generations, and their publication contains some interesting recollections of the anti-slavery times, plus news of Friends., like Joseph Dugdale, who had been active in the anti-slavery movement.

The issue of 3 Mo. 22, 1876, has an column of “Friendly Items” containing news of Quaker doings, including:

The author of this was J.M.T. Jr. — almost certainly one of the Trumans of Philadelphia who were related to Jane Master Hunt and to the M’Clintocks — probably Joseph M. Truman Jr.

The “Friendly Items” column in the Journal 4 Mo. 5, 1876, included some corrections and additions:

I haven’t been able to find the fuller account of TM’s life that JMT Jr. promised.

Christopher Densmore, Curator Friends Historical Library
Swarthmore College
500 College Avenue
Swarthmore, Pennsylvania 19081-1929
Phone: 610-328-8499
Fax: 610-328-5728
cdensmo1@swarthmore.edu

http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/friends

Passers-by might not realize the importance of the 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse, which now looks like a barn hit by a hurricane.

But Judith Wellman, a historian who has spearheaded efforts to save this meetinghouse in north Farmington, Ontario County, says that the building played such an important role in struggles for equal rights that it must be saved.

“It doesn’t look so good now, but you will be proud when it is really restored,” said Wellman, who lives in Fulton,Oswego County, and is working with a small group of residents from the Farmington area on a fundraising plan.

Many crusaders for justice, including Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, gathered there during the 19th century.

“It is the most important building in the town of Farmington,” said Helen Kirker, a Farmington native who lives in the Ontario County town of Seneca and who has been involved in meetinghouse restoration efforts.

The preservation group, now being incorporated as the 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse committee, came together after a storm in February 2006 ripped off the east wall of this two-story historic meetinghouse.

Almost $150,000 of the estimated $1.1 million needed for restoration has been raised. The committee also established an advisory board, which includes some notable historians, and hopes that will give fundraising greater visibility.

Discussion at the Farmington Town Board has turned from demolishing the historic building to hoping restoration efforts succeed.

“They seem to be making progress. They have a number of irons in the fire for support,” said board member Tim Mickelsen, who recently heard Wellman give a status report to the town.

Located on the west side of County Road 8, north of the intersection with Sheldon Road, the meetinghouse was surviving on borrowed time after the storm of three ears ago prompted the town to issue a demolition order.

But the structure has been stabilized by cables attached to posts, and a mesh netting covering the two-story building prevents loose parts from being blown off the grounds.

Farmington has rescinded the demolition order, and the meetinghouse has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The original Quaker meetinghouse was built in 1796, on the northeast corner of Sheldon Road and County Road 8. Currently, the Farmington Friends Meeting is at this site and is where Kirker and some the other descendants of the early settlers of Farmington attend Sunday services.

In the early 19th century, members of this congregation — needing more space — switched over to the 1816 meetinghouse, built across the road.

A subsequent split among Quakers, in Farmington and elsewhere, sent the more orthodox members in Farmington back to the original site.

In the years that followed, the 1816 building became a hotbed of activism. Leaders of the movement to abolish slavery, such as Douglass, along with leaders for women’s rights, such as Anthony, spoke at the meetinghouse.

A meeting there in 1838, Kirker noted, resulted in a declaration that men and women have equal rights — a pronouncement a decade before the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls.

Gatherings were also held at the 1816 meetinghouse that helped members of the Seneca Nation keep some of their land.

In 1927, a local farmer bought the meetinghouse and moved it about 100 yards to the north, apparently to be closer to his potato and celery fields.

The meetinghouse is now owned by the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Foundation in Seneca Falls, but the title is soon expected to be handed over to the 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse committee.

Wellman said that the next step is to move the 1816 building to the nearby southeast corner of Sheldon Road and County Road 8.

“The new site is much more like the original site because of the fields surrounding it,” Wellman said.

JGOODMAN@DemocratandChronicle.com

TO LEARN MORE
For more information about the 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse restoration project, call (315) 529-7808 or go to www.farmingtonmeetinghouse.org.

Copyright © 2009 Rochester Democrat & Chronicle. All rights reserved.
Mailing Address: 55 Exchange Boulevard | Rochester, New York 14614
(585) 232-7100

View the original Democrat and Chronicle article