Historic Fall Creek, Pendleton Settlement, Inc.
"to promote and preserve the historic character, association, and architecture of Pendleton, Indiana, and the surrounding areas."
Fall Creek Friends Meeting House
“As I look back to the year 1834, all woods then where our house, the meeting house and saw mill now stand, as I was walking through the woods I felt a remarkable stop in my mind and when I turned around then, I had a full view of the grounds. Here the language distinctly to the inner man passed through my mind: ‘Buy this place and give Friends a lot for a meeting house and graveyard and here thy bones may be laid.’ The language was impressive and distinct to my mind. I was thirty-three days in Indiana. I knew the place we now lived was for sale but I left here without any idea of ever returning here again but the above language followed me to Pennsylvania as a duty for me to perform and in one year and one day I was here again with my family having instructed my son-in-law, John J. Lewis, to purchase the place in the fall of 1833 and sent out money for that purpose.” Jonathan Thomas to Rachel Hicks
The building is considered one of the oldest surviving Quaker meeting houses in eastern Indiana and one of the few remaining rural meetinghouses from that early settlement period.
Today the Fall Creek Friends Meeting House stands as one of the most important surviving sites connected to:
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Quaker settlement in Indiana
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The abolitionist movement
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The Underground Railroad
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Early education in Madison County
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Role in the Underground Railroad
Local history and long-standing oral tradition indicate that the Fall Creek Friends community played a role in assisting freedom seekers escaping slavery.
Many Quakers in Indiana were active abolitionists, and the Spring Valley area became known as a sympathetic region for those traveling north toward freedom.
The meeting house is believed to have contained concealed spaces beneath the floor, where freedom seekers could hide temporarily while being guided further north through the Underground Railroad
