Appoquinimink Friends Meeting House
The Appoquinimink Friends Meetings House, erected in 1783, is located in a community where a strong Quaker antislavery movement existed. The Meeting House is associated with John Hunn (1818-1894) and John Alston (1794-1874), two Underground Railroad "station masters" who were members of the congregation.
Referenced in William Still's 1872 book The Underground Railroad, John Hunn gained notoriety by helping the Hawkins family and several other fugitive slaves, in the care of freedman and famous "conductor" Samuel Burris, escape through Delaware and into Pennsylvania to freedom in 1844. Turned in to local law officials by neighbors who lived near Hunn, the two men were sued by the owners of the fugitive slaves for loss of property under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793; Hunn was fined $2,500, which forced him to sell his farm, and Burris was sentenced back into slavery, but was later purchased from the auction block by a Philadelphia antislavery activist. John Alston, another member of Appoquinimink involved in the Underground Railroad, worked with his cousin, John Hunn, in helping fugitive slaves escape to freedom.
An 1841 entry in Alston's diary closes with: "O Lord...enable me to keep my heart and house open to receive thy servants that they may rest in their travels that this house that thou has enabled me to build may be holy dictates unto thee of the pilgrim's rest." Alston was the treasurer of the Appoquinimink Meeting and was the weekly caretaker of the building until his death in 1874.
