Miami White Brick Meetinghouse

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Quakers arrived here by the thousands, beginning in 1799 from North and South Carolina and Virginia, leaving behind the slave economy and society. Friends also came from Pennsylvania and Virginia. Miami Meeting was founded in 1803, a log meetinghouse was built, a burial ground was established, and this white brick Meeting House was built in 1811. It would accommodate the large Meeting and the larger Quarterly Meeting which included several local Meetings that had been “set off” from Miami Meeting in the early 1800s.

The Meeting House has two doors and two equal sides, separated by a partition which could be lowered by rope pulleys during business meeting so that there would be two equal rooms, one for Men’s Meeting and one for Women’s Meeting. Elders and Overseers sat on the Facing Benches. Now just one side is used for Meeting for Worship, and the other is for First Day School and other activities. The building was remodeled in 1870, reduced in height and its windows enlarged.

This building is the oldest continuously used religious building west of the Alleghenies.