Croton Valley Friends Meeting

The Croton Valley Friends Meeting was established in 1804 as a preparative meeting of the Chappaqua Monthly Meeting. You may know the Society of Friends by the more well-known name of Quakers. "Quakers" was originally a word used to describe Friends by outsiders (referring to the way that Friends were said to "quake" with the spirit of God during their meetings) but is used by many Friends to refer to themselves today.

In 1827, the Society of Friends experienced a schism - the "Great Separation" - that split the Croton Valley Meeting into Orthodox and Hicksite groups. The present Croton Valley Meeting developed out of the Orthodox group, becoming its own Monthly Meeting in 1954.

You are looking at the third Croton Valley meetinghouse, built in 1902. The first and second were sold to make way for the Croton Dam. Although the first meetinghouse was completely inundated by the dam, I learned that the second, built in the 1850s, was located on the edge of the water, so that you can still see the foundations if you go down into the woods to look for them.


These last two pictures show some of the landscape along Meetinghouse Road, in between the home of the Haines family and that of Helena Rutherfurd Meade. It's probably one of the most beautiful places in the area.