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The Quaker Meeting House at Odessa has had a long history which is typical of the history of similar Quaker Meeting Houses in the area of northern Delaware. It has had its ups and downs for more than a century and a half, and it still retains its charm and plain Quaker use as a place for worship.

Mrs. Stickney was the daughter of Susan Corbit Alston Bowes (1859-1937) who had married Dr. T. J. M. Bowes, and who was descended from Lydia Cowgill (1823-1899) who married John Alston (1791-1871). Lydia Cowgill Alston was descended from Mary Ann Corbit (1785-1828) who married John Cowgill (1773-1849). Mary Ann Corbit Cowgill was a descendent of Daniel Corbit, an early settler of this area.

It is said that the John Alston home “Oakdale” in St. Georges Hundred, where Mrs. Stickney visited her grandmother as a young girl, is that now occupied by the Russell Cleaver family. It is situated on the Odessa-Middletown Road and appears much the same as it did when Mrs. Stickney visited there as a child.

An number of years ago, members of the Corbit family set aside a piece of ground adjacent to and east of the Friends Meeting House grounds and designated it as the Corbit Family Burial Grounds. The property has been used as such for many

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