Sadsbury Friends Meetinghouse (Quaker)
Gap, Lancaster County, PA
Built in 1747
Location: 1089 Simmontown Road (1/2 mile east of Rte 41), Gap, PA. Located near Christiana.
Above: The front facade is constructed of coursed stone. The other sides are of random rubble stone, with traces of the plaster and whitewash that once covered the surface.
History in Churches and Cemeteries
of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania:
Sadsbury Friends Meetinghouse
1723 - Indulged meeting established.
1725 - Log meetinghouse built.
1748 - Current stone meetinghouse built.
1828 - Orthodox - Hicksite division. Orthodox members met in Simmonstown and Christiana. Hicksite members met here.
1902 - Meetings moved to the meetinghouse in Christiana on Perry Street. [A Mennonite congregation met here in this Old Sadsbury building after the Friends moved to Christiana.]
1971 / 1972 - Friends meetings returned to this building. The Christiana meetinghouse was sold to a Mennonite congregation.
Source: Churches and Cemeteries of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, A. Hunter Rineer, 1993, page 382. LancasterHistory
Above: Remnants of plaster and whitewash survive on the rubble stone of three sides of the building. The front facade is unplastered coursed stone.
Description in Our Present Past (1985)
By the Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County:
“Old Sadsbury Friends Meeting, Simmontown Road, east side, south of Strasburg Road, c. 1760 [1747], two story, three bay stone Georgian church; hipped roof with corner chimneys; paneled shutters on first floor windows; central double door; it is generally believed that this is the oldest of all surviving Friends or Quaker meetinghouses extant today in Lancaster County; it is certainly one of the earliest of the meetinghouses of the Friends established in Pennsylvania west of Chester County.” Our Present Past, page 303, Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County.
The Local Bedrock and Building Stone:
Mine Ridge Gneiss:
Above: Image source: Bedrock Geologic Map of the Parkesburg Quadrangle…, Pennsylvania Geological Survey, 2006. (Meetinghouse icon added)
Above: Coursed stone of the front facade. Some of the stone has banding typical of gneiss, while other stone has an unbanded texture that resembles schist. PaGEODE describes this gneiss as felsic to mafic gneiss with banding that is poorly developed and massive.
The Upping Block:
Above: This horse block, “upping block”, was used for climbing onto horses or carriages. The top slab is a single block more than 10 feet in length.
1908: Marble Fence Posts
in Memory of Anti-Slavery Activists
Thomas and Martha Whitson:
Above: Marble fence posts flank the meetinghouse driveway in memory of abolitionists Thomas and Martha Whitson.
“1908 erected in memory of Thomas and Martha Whitson by their son Samuel.”
Thomas and Martha Whitson
Abolitionists of Sadsbury Meeting:
Above: Quaker anti-slavery activists Thomas Whitson and Martha Hobson Whitson. Image sources: Ancestry.com and FindaGrave.com
Thomas Whitson:
Fearless Nonviolent Resistance to Slavery
"…I am not afraid of thy shooting me,
so thee may as well put thy pistol down.”
Above: The Underground Railroad, by Marianna Gibbons Brubaker, Lancaster County Historical Society, 1911
Thomas Whitson’s 1864 Obituary
"The venerable Pennsylvania Quaker…”
Image source: The Liberator, December 16, 1864