Damariscotta, Maine

Midcoast Friends meetinghouse

The grounds include a practical statement regarding environmental impact — solar panels for pollution-free energy.

Winthrop Center

Winthrop Friends Church in central Maine has opened its doors to an Anglican congregation. The arrangement seems to suit both worshiping bodies.

The uncharacteristic spire and bell were at the insistence of the donor who underwrote the costs of constructing the meetinghouse. Change was in the air, not just for Friends.

Eliot

The first Quaker meetinghouse in New Hampshire was later moved across the river, where it became the first Quaker house of worship in Maine. This plaque marks the spot.

A small Friends burial ground remains across the road.

 

Winona burial ground

The low, simple stones of the burial ground behind the Winona Friends meetinghouse maintain a witness of simplicity. I find them together to be elegant.

Many of the burials are in unmarked graves, keeping with a discipline of Plainness. The stones are much more recent.

 

North Fairfield

Simple elegance

The Quaker burial ground at North Berwick, Maine, dates from 1750. A meetinghouse was erected at the property in 1758 — the meeting’s second.

North Berwick

The 1850 meetinghouse in North Berwick, Maine, was the local meeting’s third. No longer in use by Friends, the building was sold in 1950.

More to the story

The marker for Nicolas Shapleigh in Kittery, Maine, overlooks his crucial role in advancing religious plurality and tolerance in North America. In 1662 he granted asylum to three Quaker women who had been condemned in Dover, New Hampshire, and been ordered tied to a cart and whipped in each town from there to Cape Cod — a ruling that would have resulted in their deaths. Shapleigh’s courage makes him a hero in my eyes.