EAST VASSALBORO -- The names -- Pope, Kent, Taber, Haslam, Robbins, Webber and perhaps most of all, Cates -- are familiar to the natives.

Quakers all, they built their first Friends Meeting House in 1779, seven years after the town was incorporated. It still stands near the former Oak Grove-Coburn School, now home to the Maine State Police Academy.

They farmed, and ran the general store across the road from China Lake for 100 years. Roads -- and even a pond -- are named after them. Their names dot the gravestones in the Quaker Cemetery next to the present Meeting House, and overlooking the outlet stream to China Lake.

Dr. Samuel Cates, the quintessential country doctor, might have been the most famous of all the East Vassalboro Quakers.

"He was a wonderful man and did great things," said Dr. Cates' second cousin, Paul Cates, whose family ran the store. "He covered the whole region, and really quite thoroughly, especially the back country towns. I keep running into people who were born in his house."

Dr. Cates, who died in 1963, lived and ran his doctor's office in the stately lakeside home on South Stanley Hill Road, not far from the current Friends Meeting House.

Paul Cates, 83, was the last formal minister at the meeting house, which was built in 1833.

Today, the refurbished Friends House remains healthy, with 70 members. Perhaps 30 to 40 attend informal worship services.

"The meeting really is thriving," Cates said in the Lillian Haslam Memorial Library. "We're getting new people, and have more in the summer, especially from the Haverford area of Pennsylvania."

Haverford, Pa., is a noteworthy place for the area's Quakers. Not only did Paul Cates attend Haverford College, the man he described as "the most famous Quaker of the 20th Century" -- a man who grew up in nearby South China -- taught philosophy and psychology there from 1893 until 1934.

Rufus Jones, a prolific writer who died in 1948, helped found the American Friends Service Committee in 1917. The committee, which Cates said is the Quaker's own relief organization, is dedicated to humanitarian missions overseas.

"Rufus Jones was a hero to our family," Cates said. "My father knew him. Many of his books are right on these shelves."

Jones also devoted 30 to 40 pages to the area's Quakers in the history of Kennebec County, written by George J. Varney in 1886.

Cates noted that David Sands, a New York state Quaker minister, visited the town in 1777. John Taber, for whom Taber Hill Road is named and whose home still stands on Cross Hill Road, helped build that first Meeting House.

"They'd meet in the winter in that half-finished Meeting House with no heat, and sometimes the meetings would last three hours," Cates said.

Remington Hovey, the town's first magistrate, then invited the Quakers to hold their meetings in his home. David Starkey, for whom the Starkey apple was named, became a reluctant convert.

"One day he allowed his horse to choose which direction they went, and the horse followed the other horses to the Quaker Meeting House," Cates said. "Sands was visiting at the time. He stopped preaching and told David Starkey, 'thee should have let the horse choose the way much earlier.'"

David D. Lang, born in Gardiner in 1789, was another prominent East Vassalboro Quaker. The self-educated man, who married Ann Stackpole in 1820, once journeyed west of the Mississippi River, to understand the plight of the American Indians there.

"President Grant appointed him commissioner of the Indians," Cates said. "In 1846, he purchased the woolen mill in North Vassalboro."

Cates' great-great grandmother, Anna Cates, was one of the first members of the Meeting House built near China Lake, in 1798. Needing a larger Meeting House, the Quakers tore that one down and built the current structure in 1833.

The Quakers built the Oak Grove Seminary in 1850.

In the Civil War era Cates' great-grandfather, William, first operated Cates Store which is now the Vassalboro Country Store. When William Cates became ill, his son George H. Cates ran the store.

Paul Cates said his brother, Ben, sold the business in the 1970s.

"He said, after 100 years, he was just plain tired," Cates joked.

Dr. Cates had offices in Palermo and Liberty, in addition to his East Vassalboro residence. His daughter, Peggy Carleton of Quincy, Mass., recalled the era of the country doctor.

"He went on the lake from East Vassalboro to China when it was frozen over to see patients, for a shortcut," Carleton said. "He had a wonderful disposition."

Paul Cates has the same recollection, of Dr. Cates driving his car across the lake. There were many weeks when the ice was not snow-covered, Cates explained, and at other times the old stagecoach that delivered mail would pack the snow down.

Dr. Cates used a fish-based salve that was effective in fighting infections, Cates said.

"He was really pleasant, but got distracted," Cates recalled. "He had some places he had to go, and had to be in a hurry to get there."

Cates has a special memory of a visit to Dr. Cates' office.

"He took out my tonsils, and while he was at it, a few snags of teeth that I wasn't taking very good care of," Cates said.

On June 26, 1971, the Morning Sentinel published a work by then-18-year-old Stephen Robbins and 15-year-old Deborah Robbins on the history of the East Vassalboro Quakers. They included a paragraph on the 1931 Bicentennial program at the Meeting House, during which Rufus Jones spoke.

For the town's bicentennial in 1976, Stephen Robbins wrote a History of Friends in Vassalboro, which is available at the Vassalboro Historical Society, at the old schoolhouse near the lake.

Larry Grard -- 861-9239

lgrard@centralmaine.com