Stony Brook Meeting House and Cemetery are historic Quaker sites located at the Stony Brook Settlement at the intersection of Princeton Pike/Mercer Road and Quaker Road in

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...

, New Jersey, United States. The first Europeans to settle in the Princeton area were six Quaker families who built their homes near the Stony Brook around 1696. In 1709 Benjamin Clark deeded nine and three-fifths acres in trust to Richard Stockton and others to establish a

Friends meeting house A Friends meeting house is a meeting house of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), where meeting for worship is usually held. Typically, Friends meeting houses are simple and resemble local residential buildings. Steeples, spires, and ...

and burial ground.

Meeting house

The original meeting house was constructed in 1726, but in time the structure failed in a fire, so the second stone building was built on the original foundation in 1760 as close to original as possible. By the Battle of Princeton in 1777, the meeting house was situated at the edge of open fields and faced towards a road connecting Quaker Road with downtown Princeton (Princeton Pike was not constructed until about 1855). Though tall hardwood trees of the Princeton Battlefield State Park and

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Woods cover those fields today, the meeting house offered a clear line of sight to the opening skirmish at William Clarke's orchard. Today, the Clarke house and Quaker meeting house are connected by trails which have existed since the early 1700s. Today, the Princeton Monthly Meeting 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 Pennsylva ...

of the

Religious Society of Friends 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 ...

holds worship services in the meeting house on First Day ("Sunday") at 9:00 & 11:00 am.Philadelphia Yearly Meeting – Princeton Monthly Meeting
/ref> Princeton Friends School holds "Settling In", a version of Quaker meeting, each week in the meeting house.

Cemetery

The cemetery is enclosed on three sides by a stone wall and adjoins the meeting house and First Day School (the Quaker expression for "Sunday School"). It was the earliest and most prominent burial ground in Princeton before the Revolutionary War. Friends traditionally expressed their commitments to simplicity and the equality of all persons by discouraging elaborate grave markers. While some graves in the cemetery are marked by plain stones that bear the name and dates of birth and death, many others are unmarked. Historical tradition of Quakers at the time was to place a simple unmarked stone marker at each grave site. Richard Ridgway (one of the founders of the Meeting Hall) is one of the prominent burials, but which marker is unknown.

Noted interments

* Richard Stockton (October 1, 1730 – February 28, 1781) – lawyer, jurist, legislator, and a signer of the

Declaration of Independence A declaration of independence or declaration of statehood or proclamation of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of th ...

. *

Charles Smith Olden Charles Smith Olden (February 19, 1799April 7, 1876) was an American merchant, banker, and politician who served as the 19th governor of New Jersey from 1860 to 1863 during the first part of the American Civil War. As Governor, Olden supported P ...

(February 19, 1799 – April 7, 1876) – Republican Party politician, who served as the

19th 19 (nineteen) is the natural number following 18 and preceding 20. It is a prime number. Mathematics 19 is the eighth prime number, and forms a sexy prime with 13, a twin prime with 17, and a cousin prime with 23. It is the third full re ...

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from 1860 to 1863. * Richard Ridgway, Arrived by ship from England in 1690 with wife and child. Owned over 400 acres in the area and donated some to Quaker Friends use.

Nearby structures

Soon after the meeting house was built, the Quakers at Stony Brook built a school to teach their children. Primary education continued until about 1901 when the schoolhouse was taken down. In the 1950s, the Meeting built a multi-purpose building to support the First Day School. The Princeton Friends School restored elementary education to this historic site in 1987; in 1997 the school completed its own $1.8 million schoolhouse. In the Fall of 2007 the school broke ground for a second building. The school uses the schoolmaster's house, built in the 1800s near the cemetery, to support its arts curriculum. A 225-year-old Quaker farmhouse houses the school's administrative offices.

References

External links

Quaker Meeting House

Princeton Friends Meeting

Princeton Monthly Meeting First Day School

from

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Find-A-Grave interment information for Stony Brook Quaker Cemetery
{{Princeton, New Jersey, state=collapsed Quaker meeting houses in New Jersey Cemeteries in Mercer County, New Jersey Churches in Princeton, New Jersey Historic district contributing properties in Mercer County, New Jersey Houses completed in 1726