Stony Brook Meeting House and Cemetery

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 Township, 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 and burial ground.http://books.google.com/books?id=XcE3AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA96]

Meeting house

The original meeting house was constructed in 1726, but in time the structure failed, so the second stone building was built on the original foundation in 1760. [http://books.google.com/books?id=6tcMAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA70] 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 Institute Woods cover those fields today, the meeting house offered a clear line of sight to the opening skirmish at William Clarke’s orchard. [http://books.google.com/books?id=kLge44pA_1wC&pg=PA40]

Today, the Princeton Monthly Meeting of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends holds worship services in the meeting house on First Day ("Sunday") at 9:00 & 11:00 am. [ [http://www.pym.org/burlington-qm/princeton.htm Philadelphia Yearly Meeting - Princeton Monthly Meeting ] ] 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. [ http://books.google.com/books?id=c4wMAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA415] 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.

Noted interments

*Richard Stockton (October 1, 1730 – February 28, 1781) - lawyer, jurist, legislator, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
*Charles Smith Olden (February 19, 1799 – April 7, 1876) - Republican Party politician, who served as the 19th Governor of New Jersey from 1860 to 1863.

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 their own $1.8 million schoolhouse. [ [http://www.towntopics.com/sep0804/other3.html Town Topics ] ] In the Fall of 2007 the school broke ground for a second building. The school uses the schoolmaster's house, built in the 1800's near the cemetery, to support its arts curriculum. A 225-year-old Quaker farmhouse houses the school's administrative offices.

References

External links

* [http://www.princeton.edu/~howarth/360/quaker.html Quaker Meeting House]
* [http://www.pym.org/burlington-qm/princeton.htm Princeton Monthly Meeting]
* [http://pmmfds.blogspot.com/ Princeton Monthly Meeting First Day School]
* [http://politicalgraveyard.com/geo/NJ/ME.html#RNP139I9O Stony Brook Quaker Cemetery interment information] from The Political Graveyard
* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=cr&CRid=641085 Find-A-Grave interment information for Stony Brook Quaker Cemetery]