Quogue Chapel History – Diane F. Perry, Church Historian
The historic marker on the front of the building declares that this chapel was constructed in 1870.
Yet I like to think that its history dates back to 1810.
Not unlike many chapels established in Suffolk County, such as in Sweet Hollow and Massapequa,
the Quogue Chapel was built to house Sunday School classes and worship. However, those chapels
were formed as outreaches to new communities; were established in the 20th century; and resulted
in new churches. The Quogue Chapel is different.
Westhampton Presbyterian Church began in the first half of the 18th century in Ketchabonack,
now Westhampton. We claim 1742 as our founding year, for the freemen of the Town of Southampton
voted on April 6, 1742, to set aside land on Brushy Neck for the use of a Presbyterian minister.
The first meeting house was built a bit further east at Beaver Dam before 1775.
By 1810 the membership had grown as a result of the second “awakening,” and the Rev. Abram Luce
established three Sabbath Schools – one in Speonk, one in Ketchabonack, and one in Quogue –
presumably in parishioners’ homes. That 1810 weekly gathering in Quogue was the forerunner of
this chapel.
The Speonk community formed their own church before 1850, but the Quogue community did not follow
suit; or more accurately I should say that the white people of Quogue felt no such need. For in
about 1870, two chapels were built in Quogue, this chapel and another one-storey building north
of the highway on the west side of Jessup Avenue.
This simpler building had no steeple or outward appearance of being a chapel, yet it was, and
Westhampton Presbyterian arranged for various ministers or young seminarians to provide worship
therein during the summer months, even into the first half of the 20th century.
There is no way of pretending that this was not segregation; it was even called the Quogue Colored
Mission. Eventually, this colored community did form a new church, the St. Paul A.M.E. Zion Church.
The chapel continued to be used by St. Paul and by the colored community until burning down during
my childhood.
