Creek Meeting House and Friends' Cemetery is a historic

Society of Friends Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...

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 ...

and cemetery on Salt Point Turnpike/Main Street in Clinton Corners,

Dutchess County, New York Dutchess County is a county in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2020 census, the population was 295,911. The county seat is the city of Poughkeepsie. The county was created in 1683, one of New York's first twelve counties, and later orga ...

, United States. It was built between 1777 and 1782. The meeting house is a two-story, squarish building constructed of fieldstone. Land for the building was given by Able Peters, whose substantial brick house is the next building on the same side of the road north of the meeting house. In 1828 the Friends Creek Meeting split into Hicksite and Orthodox meetings. The Orthodox meeting moved about a mile north of Clinton Corners to the Shingle Meeting House located on the grounds of the current Friends Upton Lake Cemetery. The Creek Meeting sold the building to the Upton Lake Grange in 1927 and joined the Bulls Head Meeting in 1936.A Short History of the Oswego Monthly Meeting
, page 19 The Grange transferred the building to the Town of Clinton Historical Society in 1995. The original slate covered, moderately pitched gable roof was replaced with metal in the early 21st century by the Historical Society. The still active surrounding cemetery contains over 100 headstones of slate in a plain Quaker style along with many marble and newer granite. The early tradition of marking graves with wood has also left nearly 100 unmarked graves which are noted on the July 1938 survey of the cemetery. The Peters family plot in the northwestern portion of the burial grounds was moved to make room for the

Poughkeepsie and Eastern Railroad The Poughkeepsie and Eastern Railway was the first railroad to run east from Poughkeepsie, New York, and was taken over by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad and assigned to the Central New England Railway in 1907. History Beginnings T ...

and is distinguished by its low enclosure. ''Note:'' This includes The Creek Meeting house 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 1989 and is located directly across the street from the Clinton Corners Friends Church.

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Creek Meeting House And Friends' Cemetery Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state) Churches completed in 1782 Cemeteries on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state) Churches in Dutchess County, New York Quaker cemeteries Quaker meeting houses in New York (state) 18th-century Quaker meeting houses Cemeteries in Dutchess County, New York National Register of Historic Places in Dutchess County, New York 1782 establishments in New York (state) Cemeteries established in the 1770s