Chichester Friends Meeting House

Chichester Meeting for Worship was established in 1682 and began holding monthly meetings in 1684. The first meetinghouse on this site, a log structure of about 1688, was destroyed by fire; the present unimproved fieldstone building replaced it in 1769. A datestone in the west gable reads R + D 1769, attributed to Richard Dutton, a major contributor to Chichester Friends' interests. The meetinghouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

The building is a single room divided by a paneled wooden partition, with separate entrances — the arrangement used by Friends to hold men's and women's meetings for business simultaneously. A burying ground adjoins the meetinghouse.

Hannah Brown, daughter of Daniel Brown of Upper Chichester, married James Rigby, the schoolmaster at Village Green in Aston Township, in the winter of 1756–57. The marriage took place outside the care of Friends, and in 1758 Concord Monthly Meeting — which had oversight of Chichester's Friends — took up a complaint against her for marrying out of unity.

The men's and women's minutes record the case across several months of 1758: the complaint, visits by appointed Friends, and her written acknowledgment, which the meeting ultimately accepted. The minutes direct that her paper be read publicly at Chichester. She remained a member of the meeting, and remained married to James Rigby, for the rest of her life.

The interior retains its plain benches, whitewashed walls, and the wooden partition with raisable shutters that divided the men's and women's sides during meetings for business. Under Quaker discipline, cases concerning women members — including Hannah's in 1758 — were taken up by the women's meeting. A wood stove and pipe were later additions; a fireplace stands in the gable end.

Hannah (Brown) Rigby died in June 1824, in her 88th year, twenty-three years after James. The Concord Monthly Meeting register of births and burials records her burial at Chichester. In keeping with Quaker practice, the burying ground's markers are low and plain; on the family's 2026 visit, more than half of the stones were no longer legible, and no marker for Hannah was identified. Her burial here rests on the register entry.

The meetinghouse remains in occasional use. The meeting's sign, kept inside the building, gives worship on the third First Day of the fourth and ninth months. The building and grounds are maintained, and the interior — benches, partition, and fireplace — remains substantially as built in 1769.