In traditional Quaker dress

This portrait sits on a ledge above a stairway in the Dover Friends meetinghouse. I’m not sure who she is, but the dress is in the Quaker style of the 1800s.

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Rare books and files

It’s a big cabinet with protective doors. I love the smell of old books when they’re opened.

The library in many Friends meetinghouses may have a few shelves like this. From a similar bookcase in Ohio I once borrowed Joseph Besse’s 1753 two-volume A collection of the sufferings of the people called Quakers, for the testimony of a good conscience from the time of their being first distinguished by that name in the year 1650 to the time of the act commonly called the Act of toleration granted to Protestant dissenters in the first year of the reign of King William the Third and Queen Mary in the year 1689. Alas, we don’t have that one in our collection – those big books are a genealogical treasure. We still have plenty for a serious scholar or bibliophile to engage. It’s likely that many of the authors visited Dover as travelling ministers.

Who was it who so meticulously wrapped and cataloged all these and more so many years ago?

Look what we did 50 years ago

Found stashed in the gallery upstairs.

We’re getting ready to commemorate the 250^th anniversary of the erection of our meetinghouse in June 1768. It’s our third and went up in one day, like an Amish barn-raising nowadays. The big sign stashed in the gallery upstairs announced a play one Friend wrote and the rest of the Meeting performed in honor of the 200^th anniversary. Yes, poet John Greenleaf Whittier’s parents were married in our meetinghouse.

Needlepoint sampler

A favorite old Quaker counsel when we gather in worship. Dover Friends Meeting, New Hampshire. Note the subtle distinction between “mind” and “thoughts.”

 

Gallery window

The second floor of the Dover Friends meetinghouse was originally a gallery — or balcony — that we closed off in the 1950s to conserve heat in the worship room below. One half of the space has since been converted into classrooms, but this side is used mostly for storage.

Children’s corner

First-day religious education for children often takes place around this table and its chairs while the adults continue their worship upstairs. Dover Friends Meeting, New Hampshire.

A series alive in our own time

While Friends often look to writings from the earliest days of the Quaker movement, much good, often profound, new material is being published in our own time. The Pendle Hill pamphlet series is a fine source of inspiration and practical direction from contemporary voices. Here’s the rack in the Dover Friends social room.

What an incredible range of thought and action emerges in these booklets! Friends’ witness continues in many ways.

Yes, it’s the kitchen sink

Here’s the best place for seeing everyone before or after worship – the kitchen in the Dover Friends meetinghouse.