The First Religious Meetings in North Carolina

In the spring of sixteen seventy-two, Irish missionary William Edmundson arrived in the Albemarle settlement and held what are often described as the first formal religious services in what is now North Carolina. He met at the home of Henry Phillips. That November, George Fox himself, the founder of the Society of Friends, visited the region.

Fox led worship services, met with the colonial governor, and preached to local Indians. The Quaker movement took deep root here, spreading through Perquimans, Pasquotank, and Hertford counties. Friends established what may have been the colony's first school in seventeen oh five.

For generations, Quakers shaped the religious, political, and social life of northeastern North Carolina in ways that stretched well beyond their numbers.