Stillwater Meeting has been the largest meeting in Ohio YM for many years. It meets in the Stillwater Meeting House east of Barnesville, Ohio. The Meeting House is owned by Ohio YM.
Stillwater Meeting was formed in 1803 by Friends from Wrightsborough, Georgia. These Friends had intended to settle in southwestern Ohio but were deterred by an epidemic. The first Stillwater meeting house was constructed c. 1804 on a location that is now in the burial ground.
The second Stillwater Meeting House was a one-story brick building that was constructed on the site of the current building. It was enlarged when Stillwater QM was established, creating an elongated meeting house that is occasionally found among 18th and 19th century Friends.
In 1878, the second Stillwater Meeting House was demolished and the current Ohio Yearly Meeting House constructed. Ohio Friends made the change after deciding to abandon the Mount Pleasant Yearly Meeting House. The Stillwater Meeting House is slightly smaller than Mount Pleasant. It was constructed without the gallery doors that the Hicksites had used in 1828 to throw Jonathan Taylor (men's clerk) out of the building so they could appoint David Hilles as clerk. Other notable items about the Stillwater Meeting House is that it has a sloping floor, four rows of benches in the gallery (instead of the more common three), and faces east instead of south. The Charleston Fund granted $2,500 towards the construction of Stillwater, the largest amount it provided in the 19th century for a meeting house project.
Stillwater Meeting has been heavily involved with Olney Friends School since 1878. After the Ohio Supreme Court granted the Mount Pleasant Boarding School to the Gurneyites, the Wilburites constructed a new school south of the second Stillwater Meeting House. Many Stillwater Friends have served on the staff at Olney in addition to having been students.
Stillwater Friends have also provided encouragement and/or oversight of several small meetings, some of which grew to become monthly meetings. Among the more recent of these meetings was the meeting located in the village of Barnesville; a meeting in Richmond, Indiana; a meeting in Wheeling, West Virginia; and Crossroads in Flint, Michigan. |
