The Old Meetinghouse by T. Sidney Cadwallader, 2nd
In October 1859, John Brown made his famous, ill-fated raid on Harper’s Ferry and eventurally holed up in a well-built engine house where he was surrounded and captured, leaving his soul to go marching on. About the same time, a group of city Quakers from Yardleyville decided they had enough winter travelling over muddy country roads to Dolington, and sought permission to establish an “Indulged Meeting” at Yardleyville. Permission having been granted, with the help of a non-Friend, Jolly Longshore, who gave them a parcel of ground, Yardley Friends holed up contemporaneously with John Brown at the stone meetinghouse at the corner of South Main and College Avenue. Here they stayed almost 100 years from 1859 to 1956 when the new meetinghouse was built.
I don’t know much about that first group of Friends. I don’t know whether they ever filled the little meetinghouse or not, but it would seem that in less than forty years, the meeting pretty much declined. At the time, my Aunt Elsie Cadwallader Wood was attending. Just before the turn of the century, only ten to twenty attenders were coming – mistly from three or four families – the Twinings, the Knowleses and the Cadwalladers. Most everybody walked to meeting, although there was carriage sheds out back. Clarkson and Elizabeth Wilson sometimes stopped there.
The arrangement of the meetinghouse in 1899 was about the same as I remember it as a child. There was a three-tiered gallery across the front and all benches faced front, with two aisles in the middle of which sat two pot-bellied stoves. In Aunt Elsie’s day, the attendance was so small that some benches were turned around the stove on one side in sort of three-sided square.
Aunt Elsie described who attended. The list included her grandfather, who was a widower and attended with his daughters, Achsah and Helen. There was Elsie’s father, T. Sidney with his children, Elsie, Algernon and Augustus. Mahlon and Miriam Knowles attended with thier mother, Sarah Knowles, who taught firstday school. Miriam, a nurse, died in service during World War I. Bess Large and her mother, Stephen Twining and his mother, Ella Moon and her mother attended. Also there was Grandma Jenks who was nearly deaf and communicated through a long ear trumpet. Uncle Gus Cadwallader came bur rarely, but he did penance by furnishing the iron fence around the meetinghouse. To protect this from the boys who kept sitting on it and bending it, a thick barberry hedge was planted. Uncle Gus also purchased aboiut half of the cemetary land at Makefield. Elsie’s grandfather, Algernon Sidney, browk meeting until his death. After that her father, T. Sidney, took over. However, after he married Saraah Twining, some time after the death of his first wife, it was my observation that Sarah initiated the handshake which broke meeting.
By the time I came to meeting, about 1916 or ’17, the meeting didn’t look much healthier. The room looked the same. Grandfather and Grandma Cadwallader sat front row center right. I often slipped between them as I could get away with more. Grandfather let me play with his gold watch, which may still bear my teeth marks. Behind us were my parents. The Satterthwaites came occasionally and Uncle Gus and Aunt Lulu came more often and sat front left. Stephen Twining and his mother came, and I have a vague recollection of Ellwood Stapler, his parents and sister, Sarah, coming – strangely enough sitting on the lower right facing bench. Lizzie Pickering also came with her ear trumpet. There was a William Hough, with a handlebar mustache, and Ray Hampton’s grandfather, with a full beard.
Life came to the meeting about 1927 with remodeling of the meetinghouse into three rooms. While the work was being done, Meeting was held at Lakeside, at Satterthwaites and at my grandfather’s home on West Afton Avenue – now the St. Andrew’s Woman’s Exchange. It was intended to hold Meeting in the samm southeast corner room of the meetinghouse where it was bright and cheerful. But one day the heater didn’t work and, out of necessity, we moved into the Social Room around the fireplace and never gave it up. The other room was used for firstday school.
A few more people began to drift into the less austere quarters – Elmer Duerr and his mother, Fred and Lowry Danser.