Background on Pembroke Monthly Meeting
Abbie Loring in Cape Cod Quaker attire, ca.1930.
Photo by Alton H. Blackington
In the heart of the Massachusetts South Shore, the town of Pembroke was host to meetings for Quaker worship as early as 1660, just three years after Quakers first began to infiltrate the Puritan colonies. The dedication of officials in Massachusetts Bay to eradicate the scourge of Quakerism from their midst was not precisely mirrored in Plymouth County, where local opposition in Scituate and neighboring towns provided a moderating influence. While authorities in Boston executed four Friends between 1659 and 1661, Plymouth merely arrested, beat, and fined their infiltrators.
Mounting pressure from the crown after 1661 brought an end to capital punishment for New England dissenters and Quakerism took root. When the New England Yearly Meeting of Friends was formally established in 1672, the South Shore spawned one of the first meetings for business to be recognized -- under the name Duxbury Monthly Meeting -- and Quakerism spread through adjoining towns from Scituate and Duxbury to Marshfield and Pembroke. The first meetinghouse was constructed near the North River in Scituate in 1678, and for half a century after 1685, the meeting operated under the name Scituate Monthly Meeting.
A second South Shore meetinghouse was constructed in 1706 within the northern limits of the town of Pembroke, although the Scituate meetinghouse continued in simultaneous use until about 1730. Known as Pembroke Monthly Meeting by 1735, the meeting continued until 1876, when it was laid down due to declining attendance. Its remaining members were transferred to meetings in New Bedford or Sandwich. The meetinghouse continued to host meetings for worship sporadically until at least 1895, under the care of New Bedford Monthly Meeting, but after they ceased, the meetinghouse began a slow decay. Local preservation efforts in the 1920s saved the building and after its inclusion in the Historic American Building Survey in 1934, the Pembroke Friends Meeting Association provided continuous support. Quaker worship groups operated there sporadically from 1964 to 1979 under the care of Cambridge Monthly Meeting and from 1988 to 1992 under Sandwich Monthly. The meetinghouse itself was deeded to the Pembroke Historical Society in 1974 and it was placed on the National Register of Historic Landmarks on the tercentenary of its construction in 2006.
