After sharing the same Fifth Street lot with the Hicksites since the late 1820s, the Orthodox members of Cincinnati Friends Meeting eventually decided that they needed more land. Nicholas Longworth, who originally owned the property purchased by the meeting in 1813, also owned two lots to the west of it—about 48 feet of frontage along John Street, about 24 feet deep, which extended to the boundary of the meeting’s lot. Longworth leased the land to the Orthodox Friends in 1845, with the option to purchase it within 10 years. If that right was not exercised, the property would revert to Longworth after 10 more years. To ensure that the opportunity to buy the lots did not lapse, James Taylor bought the land himself in 1855 and held it in trust for the meeting, with the understanding that he would receive the purchase price ($1,813) in five years, while also receiving 10% interest paid semi-annually until then.

With additional space now available, a committee was appointed to consider the feasibility of building a new, larger meetinghouse on the Fifth Street lot. However, the committee came to the conclusion that sufficient funds could not be raised from among the meeting's members until the meeting resolved the "unsettled state" of its property— that is, the fact that the originally purchased land was occupied by two different factions of Friends. If they could sort that out, then "no hurdle would be had in raising the necessary amount.”

To that end, the meeting took two significant steps. One was getting the consent of the majority of the meeting’s members to incorporate, which was required by a new law passed by the state of Ohio in regard to property held for religious purposes. In 1857, 91 Friends signed the petition to incorporate as “Cincinnati Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends.” This enabled the meeting to act as an independent legal entity. Eventually, all of the meeting’s property was transferred directly to the meeting rather than being held in trust by individuals on behalf of the meeting.

The second step was dealing with the jurisdictional claims of the Hicksites to the same property. In November of 1859, nearly 30 years after the Orthodox had abandoned the original meetinghouse and built their own, the Orthodox and Hicksites officially divided the property between themselves. The Hicksites ceded the western portion of the original lot to the Orthodox (along with two thirds of the Fifth Street frontage), and the Orthodox ceded the eastern portion of the lot to the Hicksites, who by that point had already torn down the original log meetinghouse and constructed a new brick one. Yet it would be another ten years before the Orthodox finally had a new meetinghouse of their own.

This article comes from the book Friends Past and Present: The Bicentennial History of Cincinnati Friends Meeting (1815–2015). You can obtain a copy of the printed book or a Kindle version from Amazon.com. The proceeds of all sales go to Cincinnati Friends Meeting.

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