Congregations of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, worshipped in plain meeting houses, and the last Richland Friends Meeting House on this site was built in 1872. Ninety-four Friends established the meeting in 1826, and it endured for 147 years. The cemetery holds many generations of members of this meeting. The faith, based on pacifism and simplicity, blossomed in the region during the first half of the 19th century as Quaker families, mostly from southern states, came to the area in the early 1800s to live in a land free from slavery. In 1809, the Friends established the Leatherwood Meeting, which was reorganized in 1826 as the Richland Meeting. The meeting later split in an ideological dispute. The Hicksites, followers of Elias Hicks, occupied the meeting house at Quaker City, so Orthodox Friends established their meeting here in 1828. By the early 1970s, most members had moved away or died. The meeting was laid down, or closed, in 1973, and the building was razed in 1989. The Stillwater Monthly Meeting of Friends in Barnesville maintains the grounds.