Dover Friends Meeting

Background on Dover Friends Meeting

The Friends Meeting at Dover, New Hampshire, is one of the oldest in British North America, visited by two of the “Boston Martyrs,” William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson in 1659. The first Quaker worship in Dover probably dates to 1662, when three Quaker women missionaries (Mary Tompkin, Ann Coleman, and Alice Ambrose) arrived on Dover Neck. Originally called Piscataqua, the meeting emerged as Dover Monthly Meeting by the latter decades of the seventeenth century and became the hub of a thriving Quaker community and the font from which several other New Hampshire meetings derived. In addition to overseeing a number of worship groups and preparatory meetings, Dover became the mother of monthlies and Berwick and Sandwich, which were set off in 1802, and Gonic in 1981.

Population growth at Dover itself required construction of a second, larger meetinghouse in 1712 with a third following in 1768. This last structure remains in use today and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is considered the only surviving eighteenth century Quaker meetinghouse in the state. Reaching a peak in the early nineteenth century, however, the Quaker community in Dover began a slow decline, leading to a cessation of regular worship between 1912 and 1955. Dover remained active administratively overseeing meetings for worship at Gonic and Meaderboro.

Within New England Yearly Meeting, Dover was part of Salem Quarterly for more than a century (1705-1815) until Dover Quarterly was established. The long list of worship groups and preparatory meetings under its care have included :