The history of Quaker meetings on Nantucket is as varied and complex as in any other location in North America and more than idiosyncratic most. Meetings began on the island as early as 1704, with regular meetings for business beginning since 1708. Formally part of the New England Yearly Meeting, the distance from the mainland led Nantucket to operate as a "Yearly Meeting for Worship" from 1711 to 1829, and with its strong maritime and family connections to Atlantic Canada, it oversaw nascent meetings not in Massachusetts, but in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, beginning in 1752.

The Friends' presence on Nantucket grew steadily through the eighteenth century, resulting in the construction of a second meetinghouse in 1792, which became the home of the Nantucket Northern District Monthly Meeting two years later. This meeting, however, did not thrive and was laid down in 1829. This failure, perhaps, was a harbinger of things to come when Nantucket became an epicenter of the separations that plagued nineteenth century Quakerism. Although New England was little affected by the controversies that cleaved the Yearly Meetings in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York from 1827 to 1830, Nantucket was an exception. Neither the Hicksite nor Orthodox meetings that split in 1830 survived long, but the separation weakened Quakerism on the island.

The Wilburite and Gurneyite controversy in New England was far more serious, and led to a bitter separation on Nantucket. Unlike elsewhere in New England, the Gurneyite faction on Nantucket was smaller than the Wilburite, and survived only until 1869. The Wilburites experienced still another separation when the "Primitive" or Otisite Friends on Nantucket -- and in Warwick, R.I., and Lynn, Mass. -- broke away from 1863 to 1911. Quaker worship on Nantucket effectively ceased from 1894 to 1939. Today, the island is home to a worship group under the care of Sandwich Quarter.