Longtime Friends
By Katie Mulvaney Providence Journal USA TODAY NETWORK
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Marking 325 years, Quaker meeting house in Portsmouth is RI’s oldest active church
Portsmouth Friends Church has an unassuming presence set across from Town Hall on a hill above Narragansett Bay, but a depth of history stands within those walls. The Portsmouth Friends Meeting House, as it is also known, is believed to be the state’s oldest, active house of worship.
On Aug. 23, the community will celebrate the building’s 325th anniversary with a tree planting, tours and dedication at 11 Middle Road in Portsmouth. The event kicks off at 9 a.m. and runs until 2 p.m., including a break for refreshments.
What distinguishes the Meeting House is how original it remains, according to Stephen Luce, a Portsmouth Historical Society board member, congregant and town native.
“As a historic structure, it is literally of national significance,” Luce said.
What can be found within?
The austere wood-shingled building might not turn heads, but beams hewn by workers’ hands centuries ago arch over the congregation. Original glass window panes, with telltale imperfections, are found within. Authentic pews sit in the balcony.
Cannonballs rest on the fireplace mantels, artifacts from the period in which British and Hessian troops made it their barracks and
tended to their wounded there during the Revolutionary War. One clash of the Battle of Rhode Island of 1778, known as the Battle of Quaker Hill, played out nearby, according to a historical account provided to the National Park Service.
In 1784, it housed Moses Brown School, the nation’s first boarding school. A cemetery behind the building includes a monument to people in unmarked graves. (A landscaper at some point dug up fieldstones that weren’t inscribed and placed them on the stone wall.)
‘Great stones and other stones to lay the foundation’
Though it remains unknown exactly when the Portsmouth Meeting House was completed, construction was underway in 1699. Records from Aug. 17 of that year read: “Friends have laid out and appointed the place where the meetinghouse shall stand and have brought great stones and other stones to lay the foundation.”
In 1700, proceeds from the sale of the old meeting house, purchased in 1692, would be dedicated to the new structure, Newport Historical Society (Vol. 810) reflect.
The National Registry of Historic Places indicates that construction of the Portsmouth Meeting House spanned from 1699 to 1702, according to Kate Wells, state librarian. (The Great Friends Meeting House in Newport, the state’s oldest surviving house of worship, was also built in 1699. It remained active until 1922.)
‘Giving women way more power’
The Portsmouth Meeting House has evolved over time. In October 1701, horse sheds were constructed. Four years later, a women’s addition with a movable wall was built.
According to Elizabeth Cazden, a Quaker history scholar whose descendants include members of the Borden family, entire congregations worshipped together, but in separate sections based on gender. A partition would be lowered or raised for business meetings.
Women attended to matters such as how to care for elderly widows and impoverished neighbors, in addition to interviewing prospective brides to gauge their readiness, said Cazden, whose ancestors worshipped at the Meeting House. Men dealt with slavery and financial matters, as well as questioning future grooms.
Cazden, of Providence, speculated that men and women were separated during services to tamp down on flirting, courtship and other socializing.
While the genders remained separate, Quakers gave women a measure of authority, though not outright equality, she said.
“It was giving women way more power than they had in any other church or institution,” she said.
Evolution of the building, friends
The late 1800s brought major changes. A new partition, privy and porch were added, as well as updated fireplaces. (The outhouse holes still exist.)
In 1890, a parsonage was constructed after the congregation shifted to an evangelical ministry, meaning it would be led by a pastor. Traditionally, congregations had remained silent, with worshippers speaking only when moved by the spirit.
Luce theorizes that the congregation’s numbers were dwindling at the time, spurring the change to a “programmed” service with singing and a prepared message by a pastor.
“My feeling is they felt they had to,” he said. “It was much more of an evangelical model,” with Sunday school and hymns, resembling Methodist or other Christian traditions, to draw in younger generations and mill workers from Portugal and Ireland, Cazden said.
Prior to that, the congregation adhered to the tenets of George Fox, the leader of the Quaker movement, who rejected the pomp and constraints of established religions in 17th century England. They adhered to the belief that God doesn’t need an intermediary, such as a priest or minister, to communicate to the faithful.
Fox preached that “people, not steeples” was what was important – not an ornate building but the congregants themselves – beliefs they still hold, Luce said.
Pacifists who opposed slavery, Quakers landed in Rhode Island after facing persecution in Puritan Massachusetts, drawn by the state’s religious tolerance.
More change afoot
In the 1990s, a heyday of sorts for the congregation, an addition was built providing handicap access, meeting rooms, a library and office space on the first floor, with new bathrooms, a kitchen and a fellowship hall on the lower level. The basement was updated as a nursery and classrooms.
Matthew Kent, the architect, painstakingly saved all the historic wood and window panes.
Kent arrived at the Quaker church in the 1980s by “divine hand.” As a fourthyear architecture student at Roger Williams University, he was assigned to design a Quaker retreat.
He attended a service at the Portsmouth Friends Church with classmates.
“In the early ’90s, we were filling the place up,” Kent, now the Portsmouth building inspector, said.
Kent, who had worshiped at the church in his youth, was moved by the welcome and went on to raise his children there.
“The love I felt,” Kent recalled. “It’s a family community.”
Talk of putting the Meeting House up for sale
The Evangelical Friends Church Eastern Region in Ohio, the church’s governing body at the time, closed the building to service in 2017 as membership diminished and moved to sell it.
“There was talk about a gas station,” Luce, of the historical society, said.
The regional group even reached out to the Providence Friends Meeting House about its interest, Cazden said.
“There was discussion, but it never officially went up for sale,” said Pastor Edward Walsh, executive director of the Eastern Region.
With the help of the Portsmouth Historical Society, the congregation regained possession of the building in 2020 and operates independently.
Looking to grow
Today, 20 to 30 people attend the 10:30 a.m. service on Sundays. The congregation just brought on David Chatowsky as the full-time pastor after he served in the interim role. It remains a supportive, welcoming community that shares a potluck meal in the fellowship hall after the service, he said.
The church has a website, posts sermons and hopes to grow in the years to come.
“This is an open and active church,” said Chatowsky, an artist who grew up in Warwick’s Cowesett neighborhood.
Always spiritual, Chatowsky, of Portsmouth, said he was “led” to the Meeting House. He is in his second year studying with the School of Ministry, founded by Anthony Pappas, the former pastor at Harbor Church, a Baptist congregation on Block Island.
The building, he said, infuses members with an appreciation for all those who came before them.
“If you want to get a sense of how it was, come visit,” he said.
Newport Daily News August 23, 2025
