7. Quaker Meeting House

Tour the Villages
South Yarmouth

Quaker Meeting House

Although Quakers probably worshipped in Yarmouth as early as 1659, there is no record of a Quaker Meeting House being built until 1714. This early Meeting House was located on the Dennis side of Bass River. (The site is now owned and maintained by the Town of Dennis.) When the Indian Lands in Yarmouth opened for settlement, the Kelley family purchased much of the land and began a new village. Prominent in the Quaker community, David Kelley encourage other Quakers to move across Bass River and offered a portion of his land to the Religious Society of Friends for the building of a new meeting house. Completed in 1809, the Quaker Meeting House looks much today as it did then, austere and simple, lacking ornamentation or religious symbols. Horse sheds visible in this photograph are no longer there, although the Quaker burial ground remains an integral part of the site today. During the mid-19th century, the "thees" and "thous" of the Quakers dominated the village. As subsequent generations of Friends left the Cape, however, the Quaker community began to die out and the meeting house closed in the 1920s. Re-opened for summer services in the 1950s, the Yarmouth Society of Friends has continued to grow and gain members as Quakers from other communities move to Cape Cod, bringing new life to this historic meeting house.