On December 14, 2020, a Legends & Lore® roadside marker was

placed on Wayne Center Rose Road, near the intersection of Covell Road, commemorating the Neversweats.

Special thanks to the William G. Pomeroy Foundation®, a grant-making foundation based in Syracuse, N.Y., which fully funded the “Neversweats” Legends & Lore marker.

The Neversweats was a nondenominational religious group of people that originated in the Town of Rose (located in the “Burned-Over District,”) in the 1800s.  Its members believed in the bible and accepted it as a guide, but discarded all church organizations.  They held meetings at the Jeffers schoolhouse, also known as “Spunk Academy.”  Their meetings were known to last long into the night and sometimes into the next morning.  It is also said that during their meetings some would speak in unknown tongues.  Because their meetings were known to be tireless, long and fervent, coupled with the expression attributed to the group “We’ll hold on till morning and never sweat a drop…” earned them the nickname “Neversweats” among the locals.  By the 1850s they left the Rose area and became pioneers of Wild Rose, Wisconsin where they opened a church and became known as the “Standalones.”

* “Burned-Over District” refers to Western and Central New York in the early 19th century, where religious revivals and the formation of new religious movements took place to such an extent that spiritual fervor seemed to set the area on fire.  Charles Finney coined this term in the 1870s when he explained that the region had seen so many revivals in the previous decades that it no longer had any more “fuel” (the unconverted) to “burn” (convert).