Saylesville Friends Meeting House

The Saylesville Friends Meeting House is the oldest meeting house in continuous use. This meeting house, built in 1704 and expanded in 1745, exhibits the plainness and simplicity which 18th-century Quakers mandated in their lives. This meeting was the center of Quaker life in northern Rhode Island for several decades and the home of the Providence Monthly Meeting after 1718. The beauty of this building is not in elaborate details but in how simply it suits its purpose and in the craft and fine workmanship in the handling of materials. A large cemetery, the resting place of many of these early friends, adjoins this historic house. In 1978, the Meeting House was entered on the National Register of Historic Places, in recognition of its antiquity, architectural quality, and its role in the spread of Quakerism in America. It continues to be used as a Friends Meetinghouse, in the unprogrammed tradition of Friends' worship.