Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
2014. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“The Swansea Friends Meeting House and Cemetery, at 223 Prospect Street in Somerset, Massachusetts, are a pair of religious properties believed to include the oldest extant Quaker meetinghouse in the state, with the oldest surviving meetinghouse form in which the pulpit and entrance face each other across the building's short dimension. The oldest portion of the building dates to 1702, when Somerset was part of Swansea.”
Wikipedia article Swansea Friends Meeting House and Cemetery, CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 272 National Register listings in Bristol County · listed in 2014 · category: Building · one of 8 National Historic Landmarks in Bristol County.
George H. was one of a family of six. In addition to the common schools of Dighton had the advantage of an attendance of two or three sessions at a kind of select school in Somerset. He had the misfortune to lose both his parents early in life. He was only twelve years of age at the time of his father's death, and three years later his mother died. The elder brother, however, hired a housekeeper, took charge of the family, and thus kept them together until the several members were of an age capable of taking care of themselves. When George H. was fifteen years old he obtained employment in the Dighton Tack-Works, where he remained a few months, when he hired to work on a farm. After a year spent in this occupation he engaged with the Dighton Woolen Company, where he learned wool-sorting. He remained with this company (except an interval of about four months) until their works were destroyed by fire some three years later. During the interval above mentioned he went to West Buxton, Me., and took charge of a wool-sorting establishment. After the Dighton works were destroyed he spent a few months in the same line of business in Stillwater and Providence, R. I.
Somerset is one of the western tier of towns, and is bounded as follows : On the north by Swansea and Dighton, on the east and south by Taunton River, which separates it from Berkley, Freetown, and Fall River, and on the west by Swansea. Mount Hope bay also touches it upon the south.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 29 fires within 5 miles of Swansea Friends Meetinghouse and Cemetery between
2008 and 2020, burning about 46 acres in total. None started naturally. 3 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
14
Debris and open burning
7
Arson/incendiarism
3
Misuse of fire by a minor
2
Recreation and ceremony
1
Power generation/transmission/distribution
1
Equipment and vehicle use
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 1,043 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Swansea Friends Meetinghouse and Cemetery between 1844 and
1975: 596 Animalia, 358 Plantae, 77 Fungi, 9 Chromista, 3 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A E Schuyler, A. B. Hervey, A. Macrae and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
1 working within 5 miles of Swansea Friends Meetinghouse and Cemetery: 1 plant.
All of them still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Somerset, the town this property stands in, in 9 storm reports between 1998 and 2025: 4 thunderstorm wind, 3 flash flood, 1 flood, 1 lightning.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
Two to four inches of rain fell across Bristol County, resulting in minor street flooding. In Dartmouth, Russell Mills and Horseneck Roads were flooded and impassable and Old Westport Road was flooded with six inches of water. River Road near Sylvia Street in New Bedford was closed due to flooding. Stafford Square in Fall River was flooded with water two and a half feet deep and the westbound lane of Roebson Street was flooded.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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