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Abbie Loring in Cape Cod Quaker attire, ca.1930.
Photo by Alton H. Blackington
Beginning as a meeting for worship in Leeds, Maine, in 1782, the present-day Winthrop Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends became a preparative meeting under care of Durham Monthly in 1811, before finally being set off as Leeds Monthly Meeting in 1813. Subsequently, the meeting has changed names twice: first to Litchfield Monthly (1841) and then to the current-day Winthrop in 1880. Its record of name changes and shifts within the organizational structure of Quaker meetings has been quite complex, reflecting the shifting history of Quakerism in the Kennebec Valley towns of Leeds, Winthrop, Litchfield, and Sidney.
The first meeting for worship in Winthrop (a town immediately east of Leeds) was held under care of Vassalboro Quarter in 1792. This meeting became a preparative meeting ten years later and was set off to Sidney Monthly in the same year. After being transferred to Durham Monthly Meeting as a worship group in 1808, it was set off as part of Leeds Monthly in 1813. Winthrop emerged as a preparative meeting under care of Leeds in 1816. After changing name to Winthrop, the meeting absorbed the defunct Sidney Monthly Meeting in 1932. Pondtown Monthly Meeting was set off from Winthrop in 1983.
The history of quarterly affiliations for Winthrop is similarly complex. Over the years, Winthrop (under its various names) has passed under the care of three different quarterly meetings, beginning with Falmouth (1813), Vassalboro (1813-1841), and Fairfield (1841-1952), before returning to Vassalboro in 1952. It has been a parent of a prolific array of worship groups and preparative meetings.
Winthrop is currently a semi-programmed meeting.
SCUA's holdings for Winthrop Monthly Meeting are limited to a single volume of meeting minutes (1944-1969); a volume recording births, death, and marriages; and two volumes of membership records. The bulk of the records for Winthrop are held in the collections of the Maine Historical Society.
The collection is open for research.
Gift of the New England Yearly Meeting of Friends Records, March 2016.
This collection is part of the
The bulk of the records of Winthrop Monthly Meeting are held in the collections of the Maine Historical Society. As listed in Richard D. Statler's 1997 Guide to the Records of the Religious Society of Friends in New England, these include:
Processed by Nora D. Charles, Mar. 2020.
The volume is identified as being revised in 1943, but additions contined to be made until at least 1961.