The Forty-Fort Meeting House is probably the most culturally significant place in northeastern Pennsylvania.

How did it come about?

So the Wyoming Valley is settled predominantly by Connecticut Yankees, which brought their sensibilities, their morals, their manners, and their religion, their architecture, with them when they came here in 1769.

This cemetery is laid out in 1777, and the style of architecture that we have is New England architecture.

The people that came here came as farmers.

Connecticut at this time in the 1760s is outgrowing itself, and they thought they had more land west of them from Connecticut, and they came here to settle it because they needed more farmland.

By 1806, Methodist Bishop Francis Ayresbury was traveling around the country, and he came to the Wyoming Valley in the summer of 1806 and charged the residents of the west side of the Wyoming Valley to form a church.

So the second generation and the third generation of the original founders built this particular church.

Lazarus Dennison, Daniel Hoyt, Benjamin Dorrance, Elijah Shoemaker, and Luke Swetland hired a gentleman from New Haven, Connecticut named Joseph Hitchcock, who was very known to the people in the valley because he was already working at another church called the Wilkes-Barre Meeting House down in Public Square.

Joseph Hitchcock and the building committee hired Gideon Underwood to do the carpentry work inside the meeting house, and to this day it has been untouched by human hands since 1808.

A beautifully preserved Connecticut Yankee church.

So the building had very many uses.

First and foremost, it was a union chapel.

The Methodists and the Congregationalists got together to build a common church on land that was provided by the Susquehanna Company, but a secondary purpose was also a civic center, a meeting place for the community.

I think it's interesting to note that it's neglect that actually preserved the meeting house.

The building was in use until 1837 when two churches got formed outside of the meeting house, and it kind of went into non-use, practically abandoned up until 1860.

The community owes a debt of gratitude to William Swetland, the grandson of Luke Swetland on the original building committee, who in 1860 incorporated the Forty-Fort Cemetery Association and took on the preservation of the meeting house.

He slapped a coat of paint on it, put a whole new roof on it, and that was the very first attempt to keep this grand historical architectural gem, a treasure of our valley, to keep it going for the next generations.

In the 1920s, the colonial dames of America took on the church and renovated its interior.

One might think, why is it still here?

Well, the reason it's still here is because it's inside the grounds of the Forty-Fort Cemetery.

I would imagine if it was built across River Street, it might not be here.

The Agnes Flood of 1972 was particularly devastating to the Forty-Fort Cemetery.

It disinterred over 2,000 bodies.

Another act of God, of having a large tree fall in the area that protected the meeting house.

It is quite a possibility that the meeting house could have been wiped right off of its foundations in June of 1972.

But the fact that we continue to keep this building in active use gives us a sense of who we are today.

In the 1990s, Lindsay Coon Robinson created the Committee for the Preservation of the Forty-Fort Meeting House.

In 2007, the community again took on a grand fundraising event to celebrate its bicentennial.

And through the fundraising efforts, we were able to put on a new roof, a new paint job, and a new foundation.

The Forty-Fort Borough Council and Mayor meet here occasionally from time to time.

There are weddings here on various occasions, and a lot of historical tours still take place, so the children of Forty-Fort can know about their history.

Historic preservation and the storytelling that goes along with it is the attempt to pass the torch down through the generations.

And understanding our past gives us a better sense of where we're going for the future.