Farmington Quaker Crossroads Historic District

At the crossroads of County Road 8 and Sheldon Road in Farmington, New York, a cluster of Quaker buildings and a burying ground records more than a century of religious life. Friends built a double log meetinghouse here in 1796, replaced it with a frame building in 1804, and raised a much larger meetinghouse in 1816 across the road. After the 1827 split between Hicksite and Orthodox Quakers, the 1816 building became the Hicksite meetinghouse, while Orthodox Friends later built the present 1876 frame church. A cemetery with about 670 known graves, including freedom seekers, surrounds the church. The 1816 meetinghouse was sold in 1927, moved 325 feet north and used to store celery. The district is considered significant because local Quakers took part in national movements for Native American sovereignty, woman's rights and abolition, and because the Congregational Friends formed in the 1816 building in 1848. A granite and bronze tablet from 1929 marks the earlier meetinghouse sites.