New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends

New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends was formally organized in 1695. In the 1660s Friends' Meetings began to be held on Long Island. From that time through the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth century, New York Yearly Meeting Friends began to spread to the north and west from the New York City area. In 1828, the Hicksite-Orthodox Separation took place in New York. Subsequent separations occurred in the 1840s and 1850s, with more radical Hicksites going to the left and becoming Progressive or Congregational Friends. The Orthodox separated into Wilburite and Gurneyite, and in the Fingers Lake area subsequently separated into Kingite and Otisite. In the 1870s and 1880s, the Orthodox Gurneyites separated again. In the 1850s at Popular Ridge, N.Y., there are said to have been five different New York Yearly Meetings of Friends. In 1834 the Hicksite Meetings in western New York joined with the Hicksite Meetings in Michigan and in Ontario, Canada to become Genesee Yearly Meeting, being set off by New York Yearly Meeting (Hicksite). This Yearly Meeting no longer exists. The Yearly Meetings rejoined in 1955. Approximately 280 communities are represented in the collection. The current boundaries include New York State, western Connecticut, a meeting in Vermont, and northern New Jersey.