The Society of Friends (Quakers) began in England in the 1650s, when they broke away from the Puritans. Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn, as a safe place for Friends to live and practice their faith.
30 of ye 1th month, 1754
Friends at Deep River requested a meeting for worship at the house of Benjamin Beeson which this meeting grants until further orders. Except when it is at Mordecai Mendenhalls.
Ye 31st of ye 1st mo., 1756,
Friends having had in consideration for some time the settling of a meeting for worship at Deep River, it is accordingly concluded the same should be laid before the Quarterly Meeting for their concurence.
The minutes of the Eastern Quarterly Meeting read:
At the old neck in the county of Perquimons the 27 day of the 2nd mo, 1756, it appeared to this meeting by a few lines from friends of New Garden that friends near Deep River were desirous to have a first day meeting for worship settled among them, and friends having weightily considered thereof think it may not be improper to grant them the Liberty.
Richard Beeson requests a meeting for worship to be held at his house once in two weeks on a Fifth day of the week which this meeting grants until further orders.
They built their first meeting house in 1758.
Most Quakers refused to take part in the Revolutionary War.
The Deep River meeting was authorized in 1778.
Preparative meetings under Deep River Monthly Meeting included Deep River, Springfield, Muddy Creek, Deep Creek, Belews Creek, Gum Swamp and Hitchcock.
February, 1785 visited friends in Maryland and Pennsylvania as companion to David Brooks
January 1791 visited Friends in Philadelphia
Talbot, Mary
clerk
Thornbrugh, Henry
Joseph Thornbrugh
b. 1742 in NC
Thornbrugh, Rachel
Unthank, John
b. 1740 in Allegheny, PA
September, 1778 visited eastern meetings
Wheeler, Manlove
b. 1748 in Kent, DE
September, 1782 visited the Philadelphia yearly meeting with Aaron Mills as companion
Williams, Isaac
b. 1742 in Philadelphia, PA
Wright, Hannah and daughter Jane
disowned "accomplished her marriage contrary to our discipline and likely to have a child too soon after marriage."
from the High Point Enterprise Sunday, April 20, 1952
Deep River Monthly Meeting Dates Back 200 Years
By FORREST GATES Enterprise Staff Writer
Historic Deep River Monthly Meeting of Friends on Highway 68, six miles northwest of High Point has a long and rich history. Even by 1781 when Lord Cornwallis halted his forces on the hickory and oak studded grove to camp en route to the present location of Guilford Battleground. Friends had erected a Meeting House and a fast-growing Friends community was coming into existence in the rolling hills surrounding the site.
The records o[ the Meeting go back for nearly two hundred years. A minute from the records of the Cane Creek Meeting, now on file at Guilford College, reveals that a request to hold services in the Deep River section was made on November 4, 1753. (For purposes of clarification, a Meeting is the congregation and the congregation is the church. The place of worship is called the Meetinghouse.) In 1758, the group at Deep River was declared a Preparative Meeting which is a sort of probational naming and in 1778, it became a Monthly Meeting, which is a full- hedged Friends church.
In 1758 first meeting house was built in 1758, shortly after consent was given for the Meeting by the Cane Creek organization. It's hard to tell from an old print of the first structure if the building was made of logs or hand-hewn weather boarding. But it is known that it was heated by a pot-bellied stove and smoke was carried by pipe only as far as the ceiling where it was released into the attic to be drawn out through outlets under, the eaves.
Friends tell an amusing tale concerning a stern and domineering pillar of the first Meeting who became disgruntled when the stove was installed in the Meetinghouse. When it was decided that the stove would be installed, this particular gentleman stormed from the meeting vowing that he wouldn't return. Several Meetings later he did return, however, and took his accustomed seat which, unfortunately,, was near the stove. During the services he made a great show of his discomfort caused by the heat from the nearby fire. He squirmed in his seat and sweat coursed down his face. Finally-he left the meeting in a huff.
No Fire In Stove
The remaining Friends let their eyes follow him out of the building then turned to each other, and smiled. They all .knew there was no fire in the stove. . .
