Randolph  County,  Indiana  Family  History
White River Township

Churches


Dunkirk  Friends  Meeting

The denomination of this church at the present time is unclear.
It is not listed in the Indiana Yearly Meeting Directory.
Between 1859 - 1880 it was associated with the Christian Church "New Light" movement.
Dunkirk Friends Meeting was established again in 1912.

Tucker History Page 147
Dunkirk was established about 1822, and laid down about 1856.
It became wholly Anti-slavery, and has never been renewed since that body of Friends dissolved their organization.

Page 148. Dunkirk.
          The first meeting-house at Dunkirk was built in 1822, and the second and last one in 1830.  The Friends there were led by Isom Puckett for thirty-six years; when he died, the church went down (l856).
          The Dunkirk Society as a body went with the Anti-slavery Friends, and the meeting went down before that body dissolved its organization.
          The first house was built of logs, with puncheon floor, earthen fire-place in the middle of the floor, without any chimney, the smoke escaping through an opening in the middle of the house.
          Among those who helped to build it are Jerry Reynolds, Isom Puckett, Jesse Green, Elijah Jackson, John Wright, Solomon Reynard, Solomon Wright.
          It was situated on the Paul Way farm. The church is still standing.  The graveyard is used for purposes of burial, though much out of repair.  It is to be regretted that the early Friends were so unwilling to place memorial stones over the graves of their dear departed, since by that neglect all memory of most of these ancient pioneers will speedily pass from among men.
          Dunkirk has scores, perhaps hundreds, of rough stones set up as a token that at some time some friend or relative was deposited beneath; but who it may have been, or when the act was done, or what the age or sex of the one above whose dust the "dumb token" still remains, that lifeless, that letterless stone will not reveal, and no mortal now living can tell, and the secret is forever hidden.
The tomb is locked, and the key is thrown into the river, and perpetual darkness rests down upon the rolling wave!
          That ancient graveyard would be regarded by coming ages as a thrice sacred spot, and all the more could future generations read upon the fair face of the slabs of unmoldering marble the names, the ages, the virtues of fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers in a long, backward-extending line of honored and venerable, but now wellnigh forgotten ancestry!
          In New England and the East there are no spots like those ancient "God's acres," where whole generations of ancestors lie, entombed, and where, moreover, the monuments above the lifeless dust of the departed dead preserve in fadeless freshness the memory of those who in their appointed lot and place, in ages long gone by, served well their generation according to the will of God.
          In Old England there is no spot upon her honored soil like that wonder of the world, the mausoleum of the British Empire- the burial place of the great, the honored, the renowned, the venerated among that mighty nation -Westminster Abbey. And think of being buried in Westminster Abbey with no stone to mark the resting-place! To be honored with a niche among that congregated host of heroes worthy and beloved, and yet to lie utterly unnoted and wholly unknown among that company of England's best and noblest, even as though bleaching in the blank and empty desert, or as though in the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
          And Dunkirk, in the Randolph woods, though a humble, is yet a sacred, spot, and could we, as we repair thither, but point out the graves of the worthy sires and grandsires, and of the aged mothers and grandmothers who have in that solemn place been buried out of sight until the Archangel's trump shall sound, after they had well fulfilled the mission which the Great Master above had given them to do, instead of being, as it now threatens speedily to become, simply a ruinous old inclosure, rough and unsightly, with uncouth, shapeless stones projecting uselessly from the hillocked earth, that same Dunkirk, hidden away in the recesses of the forest, would grow to be, and more and more as the years and the ages roll, become a veritable "temple of Mecca," a shrine sacred to love and affection, and to reverence of the lamented dead.
          Erect the gravestones and preserve the cemeteries, and let suitable and imperishable monuments mark the resting places of the "dear ones long departed," not indeed for vain and costly show, or in the way of proud and senseless display of aristocracy and pride, but under the gentle power of affection and with a sincere and worthy purpose to preserve to the public through succeeding generations the knowledge and the memory of those who, during their lives, were devoted to friendship and kindness and the love of God and man.


Our Special Heritage
Sesquicentennial History of Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers) Page 147
A list of laid down Friends Meetings of Randolph County, IN.
Little else at the time of publication is known about them.
Info was collected by Willard Heiss (of Jericho) Indianapolis.
Dunkirk laid down 1843.


Past & Present of Randolph County, Indiana 1914 Page 675.
Dunkirk
The Friends there were led by Isom Puckett for thirty-six years; when he died in 1856 the church went down.
The Dunkirk society body went with the anti-slavery Friends and the meeting went down before that body dissolved its organization and meetings were again established in this community in 1912 at which time the society purchased the nearby school house and converted in into a church.
The meeting is at this time thriving and prosperous.

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