Chesterfield Meeting is located in the village of Chesterhill, in Marion Township, Morgan County, Ohio. It is the surviving meeting of Pennsville Quarterly Meeting. See also the pages for the Chesterfield Preparative Meeting and Chesterfield Monthly Meeting.
The earliest Quaker settlers in the area were members of Deerfield MM. At that time, Marion Township was part of Athens County (it was switched to Morgan County in the 1840s). The earliest meetings for worship in the area were held during by Henchman Haines, a travelling minister from Philadelphia YM.
Deerfield MM granted a meeting for worship at Chesterfield in 1834, and it was first held on 12/25/1834. A meeting house was built in 1836 that quickly became too small, and in 1838 the current MH was built. It is the oldest MH in use in Ohio YM today.
Chesterfield Meeting was one of the largest in Ohio YM in the mid-1800s. Removals to Iowa and disownments drained the membership thereafter. The meeting received a particular spiritual boost when Carl Patterson joined. Patterson and his wife, both descended from earlier members, brought new energy to the meeting at a particularly low time, and eventually Carl Patterson became one of the most gifted ministers in the entire Yearly Meeting in the early 20th century. After his death in 1942, the meeting entered a slow decline.
In the 1980s, attendance had dwindled so much that Chesterfield members began the process of having the meeting laid down. Members of Stillwater QM began to visit to try to revive the meeting, and over time attendance has grown again.
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