Catawissa Friends Meeting
Catawissa, Columbia County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
The nearby Friends meetinghouse, built about 1775, was the place of worship for early Quaker settlers among the pioneers of this region. Catawissa itself was laid out by William Hughs, a Berks County Quaker.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In the years just before the Revolution, Quaker families pushed into the Susquehanna's West Branch country and raised a plain log meetinghouse near Catawissa around 1775. The town itself owed its existence to William Hughs, a Berks County Quaker who laid out its streets, and the Friends who gathered here brought their quiet worship and tight community discipline to a raw frontier. Their meetinghouse stood as one of the first houses of worship in a region still contested and sparsely settled.
Why it matters
Quaker settlement of the Pennsylvania backcountry shows how faith communities seeded towns and civil life on the colonial frontier, long before statehood.
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Related people
- · William Hughs
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Catawissa Friends Meeting
Montour Township, PA · est. 1948
A few miles from this spot in Catawissa stands a log meetinghouse built about 1775, still upright generations later as one of the finest surviving examples of a pioneer place of worship in the region. Simple and sturdy, it sheltered the Quaker settlers who filtered into the Susquehanna Valley in the last colonial years. Its survival is a rare physical link to the plain religious life of Pennsylvania's early frontier communities.
Columbia County
Bloomsburg, PA · est. 1983
Columbia County was carved from Northumberland County in 1813 during the early republic's rapid subdivision of Pennsylvania's frontier interior, its name a patriotic nod to the young United States. Its seat, Bloomsburg, holds the distinction of being Pennsylvania's only incorporated town, and the county's Quaker roots reach back to a Friends meetinghouse raised at Catawissa around 1789. The famous twin covered bridges at Forks remain a beloved local landmark.
Montgomery House
Danville, PA · est. 1952
Built in 1792, this house was the residence of General William Montgomery, a pioneer settler on the Susquehanna frontier and father of the man who founded Danville. Solid and dignified, it stood as one of the early anchors of a community pushing into the Pennsylvania interior in the years after the Revolution. Today it shelters the Montour County Historical Society, which keeps the region's past alive within its walls.
William Maclay
Sunbury, PA · est. 1947
William Maclay lived in a house on this street from 1773 to 1786 and helped survey Sunbury in 1772 before moving to Harrisburg. Chosen as one of the first United States senators, he kept a candid journal of the Senate's earliest debates—an invaluable record—and emerged as an outspoken critic of Washington and Hamilton and an early champion of Jeffersonian democracy.