Hockessin Friends Meetinghouse

Hockessin Friends Meetinghouse is a historic Quaker meeting house and national historic district located at 1501 Old Wilmington Road in Hockessin, New Castle County, in the U.S. state of Delaware. The district encompasses three contributing buildings and one contributing site. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.[1]

Hockessin Friends Meetinghouse
View from the northwest in 2014
Hockessin Friends Meetinghouse is located in Delaware
Hockessin Friends Meetinghouse
Hockessin Friends Meetinghouse is located in the United States
Hockessin Friends Meetinghouse
Location1501 Old Wilmington Rd., Hockessin, Delaware
Coordinates39.792837°N 75.691009°W / 39.792837; -75.691009
Area5 acres (2.0 ha)
Built1738
NRHP reference No.73000510[1]
Added to NRHPMarch 20, 1973

History

The first meeting in the area was held at the home of William Cox, in Mill Creek Hundred, New Castle County in about 1730, but not regularly established until 1737. Some of the first members were Cox, John Baldwin and Henry and John Dixon. The name Hockessin was given from an Indian village formerly in the area.[2]

While unsupported by documentation it is believed that the meetinghouse operated as the only school in the area from the late 1700s to the early 1800s. The meetinghouse was also the site of a British troop campsite on September 9, 1777 while troops under the command of Lord Cornwallis headed towards the Battle of the Brandywine.[3]

Structure

The meeting house was built in 1738 and enlarged in 1745.[4] In 1973 it was a one-story, white plastered stone building with a gable roof.[5] Photographs taken in 2014 show the plaster has been removed from the stone. It has a gable roof with projecting cornice and a crown moulding at the roof line. The other contributing buildings are a stable and a frame storehouse and a stone house dated to 1817. The contributing site is the cemetery.[5]

  • 1738 datestone
    1738 datestone
  • View from the south, 2014
    View from the south, 2014

References
  1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
  2. Myers, Albert Cook (1969). Immigration of the Irish Quakers Into Pennsylvania, 1682–1750. California: Genealogical Publishing Company. p. 121. ISBN 9780806302522.
  3. "Hockessin Friends Meetinghouse". Delaware Public Archives – State of Delaware. Retrieved April 21, 2022.
  4. US Army Corps of Engineers (1962). Delaware River Basin, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. US Government Printing Office. pp. 9–22.
  5. Graydon Wood and Rosemary Troy (June 1972). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination: Hockessin Friends Meetinghouse". National Park Service. and accompanying three photos
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