Location: NC 87 south of Fayetteville
County: Cumberland
Original Date Cast: 1972
Early Quaker settlers found their way into North Carolina’s Cape Fear River valley beginning in the 1730’s. From as far away as Pennsylvania, members of the Society of Friends migrated to the region for its fertile land and ease of navigation. By 1740, two of the earliest known meetings were established in close proximity, Carver’s Creek and Dunn’s Creek. Dunn’s Creek met in a part of Bladen County that became Cumberland County in 1754. Both Carver’s and Dunn’s had attendance sufficient to forward to the Perquimans Quarterly Meeting and Eastern Yearly Meeting a request to be given the status of Monthly Meetings. Carver’s received that status in 1746 and Dunn’s request was granted in 1750. Dunn’s was led by founding member Richard Dunn who first associated the Meeting with Eastern Quakers but the group later joined the Western Quarter in 1760. From that point forward, Dunn’s became closely associated with the Cane Creek Meeting in Alamance County.
The tumultuous times of pre-Revolutionary North Carolina were difficult for the pacifist Quakers of Dunn’s and many of the meeting’s members moved to Orange County and to other states. By 1772, most of Dunn’s members were gone, possibly to Cane Creek, and the meeting was “laid down,” or discontinued, and, by 1781, all Quaker worship in the area had stopped. Records of the meeting were lost, including the location of the church building and its cemetery. The location of the church and its cemetery was identified by historians in the 1960’s about eight miles southeast of Fayetteville in Cumberland County. Dunn’s Creek was renamed Stoney Creek over time, adding difficulty in identifying the meeting’s original location. Quaker historians point out that since the history of Dunn’s and other Quaker meetings in the Upper Cape Fear is now known, the establishment of early churchgoing in the region can be attributed to Quaker influence in addition to Presbyterianism.
References:
Stephen B. Weeks, Southern Quakers and Slavery (1896)
Fayetteville Observer, May 21, 1972
North Carolinian (March 1959)