34. Tuckahoe Neck Meeting House

Quakers as Underground Railroad Agents
Privately Owned

Built in 1803, this was one of five Quaker meeting houses in Caroline County whose members sustained a local Underground Railroad network. Quakers also supported women’s equality and the end of slavery. By 1790, Quaker meetings on Maryland’s Eastern Shore were free of all slave owners. Quakers then became some of the earliest and most effective activists to end slavery in America and abroad.

They quickly began establishing a loose network of individuals with shared values who could be tapped to help escaping slaves find their way north, and provide support and shelter once they arrived. Abolitionist Hannah Leverton from the Linchester Mill area spoke here and was married here.

Quakers were at the forefront of the fledgling Women’s Rights Movement in the mid-19th century. Quaker women like Lucretia Mott, her sister, Martha Coffin Wright, and many others participated in the first women’s rights convention held in Seneca Falls, New York. Other powerful abolitionists and like-minded men and women supported them. Harriet Tubman would become close to many of these women, and through them, she would become involved with the women’s suffrage campaigns of the 19th and early 20th centuries.