Appoquinimink Meetinghouse
Odessa, Delaware
About Freedom Seekers
The National Park Service has included the meetinghouse on the Harriet Tubman Byway, recognizing that she referred to its role in helping Blacks escape from slave owners. This downloadable PDF from 2016-17 explains.
Two local Quakers were among those who are recorded as helping: John Alston and John Hunn. The Black community was certainly involved, but there are no records. Alston continued to worship here until his death. Hunn moved away after losing his property in a famous court case. See an account by Camden-area historian Michael Richards here.​
John Alston’s diaries, ledgers and day books, 1830 to ca. 1850, archived at Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College, provide a wealth of details about Appoquinimink Meeting’s place in the community of Cantwell’s Bridge, later Odessa. Alston’s manuscr ipts inform us of his administering the purchase of the woodstove, cords of wood, planks to repair the fences, and hiring help from the local Black community to clean the meetinghouse and burial ground. He served as the overseer of a small tenanted house on the property to a Black man whose job it was to replaster the interior. That was likely the former Friends School, dated to 1735 in Scharf’s “History of Delaware,” earlier than the meetinghouse itself.
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Alston had been farming about a mile to the west. Cousin John Hunn moved from Philadelphia and took up the farm south of Alston’s. Together these Quaker farmers collaborated as agents on the Underground Railroad.
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Alston was Appoquinimink's last active member in the 1800s. After he died, the meeting house went dormant and the property was rented out to farmers. His grave is here but his marker is nearly unreadable. It is deemed fitting by the current Appoquinimink worshippers to commemorate John Alston with a new permanent marker on May 3, 2026.
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A transcription of Alston’s documents is in Binder 1 in the Appoquinimink Meeting House library bookshelf.
According to the National Parks Service National Register nomination:
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Built for the local Quaker community as a place of worship, tradition has passed down that the meeting house was used as a station on the Underground Railroad. The community that utilized this meeting house included members that were ardently anti-slavery and acted on those beliefs, assisting escaping slaves at potentially great risk to themselves. One member, John Hunn, was caught assisting slaves escape, was sued by the owners, and lost his personal fortune [click for biography].
The other, his cousin John Alston, was not caught but is documented as assisting slaves through the testimony of John Hunn. The issues in the Quaker faith surrounding the role of the individual in the abolition of slavery, including the actions taken by specific individuals, are reflected in this building where they came to explore and reaffirm their faith.
Therefore, the Appoquinimink Friends Meeting House is being designated under NHL Criterion A as the focal point of a strong anti-slavery Quaker community emblematic of the Quaker role in the Underground Railroad and for its association with two documented "station-masters" who were members of this meeting, John Hunn and John Alston. According to the Revised National Park Service Thematic Framework, the Appoquinimink Friends Meeting House falls under Theme II. Creating Social Institutions and Movements, Topics 2. Reform Movements, and 3. Religious Institutions.
[Robin Krawitz Bobo, documentarian/author.]
