Camden Friends Meetinghouse is a historic

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

meeting house A meeting house (meetinghouse, meeting-house) is a building where religious and sometimes public meetings take place. Terminology Nonconformist Protestant denominations distinguish between a * church, which is a body of people who believe in Chr ...

located on

Delaware Route 10 Delaware Route 10 (DE 10) is a state highway in Kent County, Delaware. It runs from Maryland Route 287 (MD 287) at the Maryland border in Sandtown east to an interchange with DE 1 at the North Gate of Dover Air Force ...

(Camden Wyoming Avenue) in Camden,

Kent County, Delaware Kent County is a county located in the central part of the U.S. state of Delaware. As of the 2020 census, the population was 181,851, making it the least populous county in Delaware. The county seat is Dover, the state capital of Delaware. It i ...

. It was built in 1805, and was still in operation as a Quaker meeting house when it was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1973. A modern Camden Friends Meeting and Social Hall has been built behind the historic building, which now serves the meeting, and was designed to be energy-efficient and architecturally respectful of the historic building. Camden was a center of Quaker population; the town itself was laid out by Daniel Mifflin, a member of the Society of Friends, in 1783. The Camden Monthly Meeting, or Camden Meeting, was established in 1830, as a merger of the 1828-founded Motherkill Monthly Meeting and the Duck Creek Meeting, and met alternately at this building and at a Little Creek Meetinghouse until 1865, after which it met just here. In 1973, it was the only active Quaker meeting in southern Delaware, and was "under the jurisdiction of the

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, or simply Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, or PYM, is the central organizing body for Quaker meetings in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, area, including parts of Pennsylvan ...

." The meetinghouse is a two-story, gambrel-roofed, brick building. The roof is punctuated by two shed roofed dormers. The second floor housed a school that operated from 1805 to 1882. and ' Numerous members participated in the Underground Railroad, including John Hunn who was a conductor and in fact "Chief Engineer" of Delaware operations. The Meetinghouse's cemetery, which has notably tall gravestones, contains the remains of John Hunn and his son, Delaware Governor John Hunn. The new meetinghouse won the 2011 Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA)'a "Zero Net Energy Building Award, was one of the 2010 Real Estate and Construction Review's "Best New Green Projects in the Northeast Region", and won the "2010 Preservation Award of the Year" of the Friends of Old Dover. File:Camden DE Friends.JPG File:Camden DE Friends 2.JPG

References

External links

* Historic American Buildings Survey in Delaware Quaker meeting houses in Delaware Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Delaware Churches in Kent County, Delaware Religious buildings and structures completed in 1805 19th-century Quaker meeting houses 1805 establishments in Delaware National Register of Historic Places in Kent County, Delaware {{Quaker-stub