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1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse
Farmington, NY


The meetinghouse (currently under renovation) is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its significance
to nineteenth century reform movements (African American rights, women’s rights, and Native American rights).

Additional photos and history can be found here.

Note: The Wolfe sign is advertising the company that moved the building to it's current location.

For those who would like more information, I copied the following from the Farmington Meetinghouse Restoration website:

The 1816 Farmington Quaker Meeting is nationally important for its association
with major reform movements before the Civil War, including the woman’s rights movement, Native
American rights, and the Underground Railroad. Famous Americans associated with this meetinghouse
include Lucretia Mott, Austin Steward, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony.

As an 1816 building, this meetinghouse is perhaps the largest pre-canal building in central and
western New York. It is also the second earliest known Quaker meetinghouse still standing west of
the colonial settlement area in the U.S. Twenty-five Quaker meetings from all over western New York,
Ontario, and Michigan originated from Farmington meeting.

The 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse was a center for debates about woman’s rights. In 1838,
Genesee Yearly Meeting of Friends at Farmington stated that “men’s and women’s meetings for
discipline stand on equal footing of common interest and common right.” In 1848, Quakers at
Farmington formed the Yearly Meeting of Congregational Friends, in which men and women, blacks and
whites met together on a basis of complete equality, joined not by creeds but by “practical
righteousness.” At least one-quarter of the signers of the Declaration of Sentiments at the first
woman’s rights convention at Seneca Falls in July 1848 came from Farmington Quarterly meeting.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton spoke in this meetinghouse in October 1848, and Susan B. Anthony spoke here
in 1873 at the time of her trial for voting.

The 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse represents the historic relationship of mutual respect
between Quakers and Native Americans. In 1838, after the loss of all Seneca lands in the Treaty of
Buffalo Creek, Seneca chiefs and clan mothers appealed here for Quaker assistance. With Quaker help,
Seneca people negotiated a compromise treaty in 1842, retaining homelands at Allegany and
Cattaraugus. “We pulled the strings and the world’s people danced,” said one Quaker.

The 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse was a nationally important Underground Railroad center. As
early as 1815, freedom seeker Austin Steward stayed with the Otis Comstock family in Farmington and
most likely helped build this meetinghouse. From the 1830s through the 1860s, Farmington families
worked closely with an Underground Railroad network associated with Frederick Douglass and Amy Post
in Rochester and William Chaplin in Washington, D.C. Freedom seekers William Wells Brown and Sarah
and Emily Edmonson lived for a time in Farmington.