Conveniently located at the corner of our street and that other road, just short of a mile from our front door, you can see the historic first Quaker Meetinghouse in Massachusetts, built in 1771. It’s right on the Rhode Island border (as are we) and only the happenstance of the way the lines were drawn prevented it from being in Rhode Island like most of the historic Quaker Meeting Houses are in New England.

It isn’t in weekly use any more, but services are held there on Thanksgiving morning and many people arrange for weddings and other important celebrations to take place there. I think we will have our 25th anniversary vow renewal there. It will be our 3rd renewal. Just 2 years to go! If we all stay healthy, come on down!

The church is unheated. They’ve rigged up a sort of warm air blower to take the worst of the chill off, but even at Thanksgiving when deep winter hasn’t arrived, it’s cold inside. You need an overcoat.

It’s spare, plain, and simple inside, as you would expect. And beautiful, as you would also expect.

Located at the intersection of Rt. 146A and Rt. 98, if you find it, you’ve almost found us. Let me know if you’ll be in town!

It is a registered national landmark and is well maintained. You cannot get inside unless it’s one of the special occasions when it’s open to the public, but you are always welcome on the grounds. Hard to get a good angle on it since it’s awkwardly placed on top of a hill, surrounded by trees, its own road, and the intersection of Rt. 146A and Rt. 98, but I’m going to try it again with the widest lens I have and some close-ups of windows and doors … if it ever stops raining here.

Off to Connecticut today to pick up a car that friends are passing along to us as they got something ever so much spiffier. It will be good for us as it’s an all-wheel vehicle that will serve us well in the upcoming winter.

Funny about living here. It’s not yet the 4th of July, full air conditioning season. But thoughts are already turning to winter. Warm weather is brief in New England. This year, as soon as May ended, it turned into the monsoon season, nothing but torrential downpours, 100+ temperatures, followed by more rain. Interspersed with tornadoes, thunder and lightning. It’s the green time of year. Not just leaves. Everything is green with mold from dampness.

My gardens are drowned. My two baskets of fuchsia are still doing okay and one begonia is trying to hold on to life, but there’s been no sun. Plants can’t live in mud. There’s no air in mud and our soil is clay and hard. It doesn’t drain. So summer’s been a washout. Literally.

I hope we manage to squeeze in a few glorious weeks of autumn between season and season. It’s our reward for surviving the rest of the year and maybe it will stop raining long enough for the leaves to change color before they are washed away!

Related articles

• Day 247: Quaker History (findinggod365.com)
• Mary Dyer Hanged for “Wrong” Faith (calvinistview.com)

Categories: #American-history, Architecture, Blackstone Valley, Nature, Personal, photo, Seasons, Summer

Tags: #Photography, Connecticut, historic landmark, Massachusetts, New England, photographs, photos, Quaker, Quaker Meeting House, Quaker Meetinghouse, Quakers, Rhode Island, United States