Background on Uxbridge Monthly Meeting of Friends
Abbie Loring in Cape Cod Quaker attire, ca.1930.
Photo by Alton H.
Blackington
Located on the Rhode Island border south of Worcester, Mass., the town of Uxbridge held its first meetings for Quaker worship in 1767 under the care of the monthly meeting in Smithfield, R.I. A simple, two-story brick meetinghouse was built there in 1770, and became home to a thriving community. Uxbridge was off from Smithfield as a monthly meeting in 1783. This simple rural meeting became known nationally as home to the abolitionists Abby Kelley Foster and Effingham Capron, although Foster was disowned by the meeting in 1841 over her radical views and insistence on allowing antislavery speakers to use the meetinghouse.
Uxbridge Monthly changed its name to Worcester Monthly in 1907, and meetings in the old meetinghouse ceased until 1994, when a worship group as revived under the care of Smithfield Monthly Meeting. A portion of Worcester Monthly broke away in 1952, seeking a return to unprogrammed worship, creating the Pleasant Street Monthly Meeting. Pleasant Street began holding joint meetings with Worcester by the early 1960s and merged in 1979 to create the Worcester-Pleasant Street Monthly Meeting, now known as Worcester Monthly. A worship group continues to gather at Uxbridge once monthly from May through October.
Uxbridge Monthly was part of Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting (1783-1801) and Smithfield Quarterly (1801-1971); the current worship group is part of Southeast Quarter. The meeting was the source from which Richmond Monthly Meeting was set off in 1792 (it returned in 1850) as well as Bolton Monthly Meeting (1799, returned to Worcester in 1972).
