Center Quaker Burial Ground

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General Horatio Gates served with George Washington in the Revolutionary War and for his service received 12,500 acres of land in the Virginia Military District in what is now southwest Ohio. This land was sold to settlers, many of whom were Quakers from Pennsylvania and North Carolina looking for new farmland in a territory free of slavery. Thirteen acres of his land were donated to the Quakers for a meetinghouse, burial ground, and school. Quaker settler Nathan Linton eventually served as surveyor and land agent for the Gates land, assisting many Quaker settlers from NC, VA and PA to locate here.

The Center Meeting was established in 1805, set off from Miami Meeting in Waynesville, as the first Friends Meeting in what is now Clinton County Ohio. Many other Meetings were set off from Center. The Center Quarterly Meeting was established in 1816. The large Meeting House pictured below was built in 1826. Center Meeting was laid down in 1921, and the building burned in 1936.

The 1826 Meeting House was located where a residence has been built, across Center Road from the cemetery. The school was located nearby. Center was an important early Meeting in the establishment of many other Meetings in the area, and was the location of a large Quarterly Meeting. But as the town of Wilmington grew, its membership shrank, and it was laid down in 1921, after more than 100 years.