Amesbury Friends Meeting

Background on Amesbury Friends Meeting

A Friends’ meeting on the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border, the Amesbury Monthly meeting has met in three closely-linked coastal communities since the turn of the eighteenth century. Friends were already a presence near Hampton, New Hampshire, before 1701, when Thomas Chase donated a parcel of land and Quakers from the surrounding towns raised the funds for construction of a meetinghouse there.

In the nearby town of Amesbury, Mass., Quakers were recorded as early as 1705, when locals began to meet under the care of Hampton Monthly Meeting. Between 1710, when a meetinghouse was completed in Amesbury, and 1768, monthly meeting alternated between the two towns. To complicate matters further the Hampton Monthly Meeting changed name to Seabrook Monthly in 1792, and in 1883 or 1884, the meeting adopted its current name, Amesbury Friends Meeting. They are known as the home of John Greenleaf Whittier, the most celebrated Quaker poet of the nineteenth century. As clerk of the Amesbury Building Committee in 1851, Whittier oversaw construction of the meetinghouse that is still in use today.

Part of the New England Yearly Meeting from its founding, Amesbury-Hampton have been part of Salem Quarterly Meeting since quarterly meetings were first established in 1705. As an early meeting in the region, Amesbury has given risen to a number of offshoots. Weare Monthly Meeting was set off in 1795, and Amesbury-Hampton have nurtured a number of worship groups and preparative meetings, including: