The Goose Creek Meeting House Complex is a

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 ...

worship center, with an original 1765

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 ...

, an 1817 meeting house, a burying ground, and the Oakdale schoolhouse in the village of

Lincoln, Virginia Lincoln is a historic unincorporated village in the Loudoun Valley of Loudoun County, Virginia, located approximately south of Purcellville. It was established as the community of Goose Creek during the 1750s by Quaker settlers and renamed "Linc ...

. The complex is on the site of the original log meeting house, built about 1750. The 1765 meeting house is a one-story stone building, and was converted to a residence after the construction of the 1817 meeting house. The 1817 meeting house was originally built as a two-story brick building, but was damaged in a windstorm in 1944 and its upper story was removed. The building remained unrepaired for some years after the storm because of wartime restrictions on building materials. Due to a schism in American Quakerism in the early 19th century, there was a second Quaker meeting in Lincoln. Friends from this meeting, known as "Orthodox" Friends, invited the members of Goose Creek to worship with them until the Goose Creek Meeting House could be repaired. When the repairs were completed, the two meetings reunited to form the Goose Creek United Meeting, worshipping in the now-single story 1817 meeting house. The 1817 meeting house was enlarged with the addition of a Gathering Room or First Day School room in 1982 Today, the meeting house continues to be an active center for worship and the activities of the Monthly and

Yearly Meetings Yearly Meeting is a term used by members of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, to refer to an organization composed of constituent meetings or churches within a geographical area. The constituent meetings are called Monthly Meetings in ...

of Friends. The schoolhouse is a one-story brick building on a stone foundation, built in 1815. Oakdale School was the first public school in

Loudoun County, Virginia Loudoun County () is in the northern part of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. In 2020, the census returned a population of 420,959, making it Virginia's third-most populous county. Loudoun County's seat is Leesburg. Loudoun C ...

, and following the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

was the first school in the region to offer education to African-American children. The complex 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 ...

on July 24, 1974. The Goose Creek Meeting House complex and the village of Lincoln lie within the

Goose Creek Historic District The Goose Creek Historic District is a rural landscape in the Goose Creek valley of Loudoun County, Virginia. The district covers about south of Hamilton and Purcellville and includes the village of Lincoln. The majority of the district is far ...

, a rural landscape district.

References

Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia Churches in Loudoun County, Virginia Churches completed in 1765 Churches completed in 1817 National Register of Historic Places in Loudoun County, Virginia Quaker meeting houses in Virginia 18th-century Quaker meeting houses Individually listed contributing properties to historic districts on the National Register in Virginia {{Virginia-struct-stub