Oswego Meeting House
Oswego Meeting House and Friends' Cemetery is a historic Society of Friends meeting house and cemetery. The Meeting House is a 1+1⁄2-story frame building sided with clapboards and wooden shingles. It has a moderately pitched gable roof and two entrances on the front façade, each flanked by two windows. The cemetery contains about 50 stones and burials range in date from the 1790s to 1880s The first meeting, an offshoot of the Oblong Meeting in Pawling, was held in 1758. The most famous member was Dr. Shadrach Ricketson. This Meeting was subsequently combined into the current Bulls Head - Oswego Monthly Meeting. It is located at 4 North Smith Road.
The cemetery, in early Quaker tradition, contains many unmarked graves as well as simple stones. 19th century maps show a number of houses and a Friends boarding school nearby. Among the 164 headstones, the earliest grave stone is listed by Roots Web as being in 1802.
In 1750, the building of Oswego Meeting House and Friends' Cemetery was authorized. In 1751 two acres of land were purchased for a meeting house and cemetery.
In 1757, the first Meeting House at this location was built. In 1758 Oblong Meeting granted permanent status to the group at Oswego, and they held their first meeting.
In 1760 a new meeting house was constructed with two doors; one to the men's section and one to the women's section.
In 1790 a larger Meeting House was constructed due to space needs.
In 1828, Oswego Meeting was maintained by Hicksite group. The Orthodox group that previous maintained it moved to Poughkeepsie.
After 1852, Oswego Village Academy, a flourishing boarding school, was established by the Hicksite group on land west of the meeting house.
From 1861 until 1865 Andrew A. Skidmore owned and ran the school.
In the cemetery look for graves of John and Content Moore Wilkinson. John Wilkinson the third (1780-1842) was the first supervisor of the town of Union Vale (1828). In 1783, John Wilkinson the second built a brick house one half mile south of the meeting house. It was sold in 1848 and later torn down.
References:
1876 F&W Beers
"A Short History of Owego Monthly Meeting" (Alison D VAn Wagner, 1986)
Find A Grave for headstone details
