From 1708 to 1712 Friends of New Garden travelled to Old Kennett Meeting House twice weekly to worship in their chosen manner. John Miller then offered his home as a meeting place since Friends were more numerous in this locality by 1712. A request was forwarded through Newark Monthly Meeting (Old Kennett) to this effect and was granted by Chester Quarterly Meeting stating that the Meeting at New Garden was to belong to Kennett Preparative Meeting.
John Miller's 1013 acres of land extended from the center of what is now London Grove Township over to, and including, the site on which the present Friends Meeting is located. It is believed that he intended to donate land as a Meeting House site but he died in 1713, leaving his property to three sons, Joseph, William and James. The last carried out his father's wishes. James and his wife conveyed six acres of ground to certain trustees - Simon Hadley, James Starr, Thomas Jackson, and Michael Lightfoot - upon which a Meeting House was to be built. This conveying to trustees, who being mortal men, passed on to lie in the adjoining graveyard, proved troublesome to the Meeting in later years and required many trusteeship transfers. It eventually became necessary to petition the Pennsylvania General Assembly for a more permanent trusteeship. This was accomplished when the Legislature appointed the following men on February 21, 1795: John Philips, Isaac Richards, Jr., William Thompson, Thomas Hoopes, Holiday Jackson, and Joseph Sharp, and their heirs, as Trustees of Monthly Meeting of New Garden, thus enabling the Meeting to appoint its own trustees. A succession has taken place through the generations since.
While meeting at John Miller's house, decisions were soon made to build a Meeting House and in June of 1713 another request was made to Newark Monthly Meeting, this time requesting permission to build. It was granted. Out of a primitive forest, a place of worship became a reality, the result of courage, endurance, and a strong faith that religion was a necessary part of life. Imagine the task of clearing the forest and building, log by log, a Meeting House while struggling at the same time to build their own homes, clear their farms, and produce enough food for their large families. It undoubtedly represented a sacrifice of personal plans; but in spite of privation and hardships, the first Meeting for Worship was held in the new Meeting House in the fall of 1715, only seven years after the first land grants were made. What a joy and satisfaction they must have experienced as they worshipped there on that First-day morning! Here these sturdy Irish Quakers would continue to worship and marry, and would end their earthly days in the adjoining graveyard.
The log Meeting House served well. Membership increased so much that it soon became too small and plans were made to build a new and larger one in 1743. Roads had improved by this time and they were able to transport brick for the south end from Newport, Delaware that had been used as ballast in sailing ships. The north end was added in 1790.
During the 1750s some forty families from New Garden Meeting emigrated to the hill country of North Carolina and carried the New Garden name with them. That Meeting became a center of North Carolina Quakerism and the mother of many Meetings. It is located near Guilford College about six miles west of Greensboro. During the 1830-1840 period, Friends left there for the northwest, and at least one other New Garden Meeting was established along the way.
Chester Quarterly Meeting became so large, and its fourteen monthly meetings so widely scattered, that nine meetings were transferred in 1758 to become Western Quarterly Meeting. New Garden is still a part of Western Quarterly Meeting. The long trip by horseback or wagon to attend Quarterly Meeting in Chester was eliminated.
Much of the activity of early Friends is covered in other parts of our Township's story - their suffering during the Revolution, their first school, and their anti-slavery activity among other things. Their ties to each other were seldom broken, but once in awhile they were stretched a bit. The period of Separation that began in 1827 was just such a time.
Elias Hicks, an American Quaker Minister, conducted vigorous preaching tours throughout the United States and Canada during the 1ate 1700s and early 1800s. He gained many followers who became known as Hicksites. History says that he spoke twice at New Garden where the Meeting House was filled to overflowing with even the windows sills and steps crowded as people listened to his call to a return of primitive, pure religion as preached and practiced by Jesus.
Some conservative members of New Garden Meeting did not accept his teaching and would not follow him. Thus the separation. Records show that 590 members, when asked which meeting they would attend, wanted to continue worship at the regular meeting while 214 preferred to meet with the Orthodox. Out of the 831 members, only 27 were listed as neutral and there is no record of their final action.
After the Separation, Orthodox Friends travelled to Harmony Road Meeting in West Grove to worship for nearly four years, for there it was the Hicksites who left and eventually built their own Meeting House. Plans were soon made to build another Meeting House in New Garden, however, and a plot was purchased from Enoch Lewis down Newark Road nearer the Newport-Gap Turnpike. Deed to 1½ acres of ground passed to Joseph Chambers, Isaac Moore, Caleb Seal, Daniel B. Thompson, Benjamin Hoopes, and Joshua Sharpless, upon payment of $1.00. Lewis and his wife, Lydia, made the agreement "from a desire to supply the religious Society of Friends at New Garden with a proper site for the erection and support of a Meeting House and burial ground," with the stipulation,
"It being clearly understood and expressly declared that the Monthly meeting herein mentioned and described as New Garden Monthly meeting is that which meets at West Grove and is part of and subordinate to the ancient yearly Meeting of Friends held in Philadelphia;"
and also added:
"that no body or collection of People, whatever name they may assume or however they may be constituted is or will be recognized in this Indenture as New Garden Monthly Meeting, etc."
During late Summer months of 1830 and through the early Winter of 1831, various bills were paid by William Thompson who appears to have been in charge of disbursing funds collected for the building. William Moore may have been the general contractor for many payments were made to him. One "Bill of stuff for a meeting house 30' x 40' " covered "2530 feet of stuff" furnished by Caleb Seal and included "Joice, rafters, collar beams" all of White Oak. Benjamin Hoopes was paid $3.50 for "one day drawing sand with two pairs of oxen and two hands," among other payments. The longest list of expenditures follows:
A list of expenses for New Garden Meeting House
No. 1 - to Geo. Kimble for brick $99.22½
2 - " Wm. Davis for laying brick 31.93
3 - " Daniel Gawthrop for brick 6.00
4 - " E. Cloud for "boads" 28.90
5 - " Jesse Pyle for shingles 7.80
6 - " T. V. Grubb for pullies 2.02
7 - " T. V. Grubb for sundries 5.49
8 - " Isaac C. Preston for boards 7.64
9 - " Able Jeanes for lime 2.16
10 - " Jesse Hillis for hair 1.44
11 - " Joseph Kimble for sawed stuff 40.47
12 - " Isaac Preston for boards 23.02
13 - " T. E. Grubb for sundries 24.37½
14 - " Mahlon Betts for window weights 8.40
15 - " David Walton for oil 1.00
16 - " Thomas Brown for lime 4.50
17 - " Joseph Hut ton for mason work 24.80
18 - " Isaac Hoops for plastering 21.00
19 - " Hibbert Moore for "Nales" .62½
20 - " Wm. Moore for work 30.00
" 4 lb. of candles .46
" 4 Crocks .25
For over a hundred years Orthodox Friends met for worship in this "lower Meeting" as it came to be called, but Ezra Webster, who was Clerk of the "upper Meeting" wrote an account of the Separation that proved to be interesting and prophetic. He was very proud of the fact that New Garden was unique in that it did not formally disown a member who left to worship with other like-minded Friends. He compared the Society of Friends to a stone wall out of which some stones had fallen, leaving the Society a little weaker but still standing. He predicted that someday those stones would be put back into their places in the wall to present a solid face to the world. Though separated in religious thinking the young people of both branches obeyed their hearts instead of their elders and intermarried until the old families were thoroughly desegregated, even though they stuck to old labels.
By 1938 attendance at the Orthodox Meeting House was so small that the building was closed and sold. Happily, Ezra Webster's prophesy came true and the two groups were reunited in 1955. The Orthodox Meeting House is now the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Mario Testa, but the burial ground was not included in the sale. The building may be changed in forthcoming years until it is no longer recognizable as a Meeting House, but the cemetery remains as mute evidence of a sad time that existed within the Society of Friends of New Garden Township and elsewhere.
Certain names run like threads through New Garden Meeting History: Miller, Starr, Sharp, Moore, Cooper, Lightfoot, Lamborn, Jackson, Thompson, Barnard, Wickersham, Thomas, Hallowell, Webster, Richards, Roberts, Gawthrop, Taylor, Hoopes, to name just a few of them. These families furnished many ministers during the first two hundred years. They not only exhorted their fellow members to the Christian way of life for themselves, but urged them to use that inner power generated by worship to improve the condition of their fellow man.
Jacob Lindley was probably the best known of these New Garden ministers as he travelled widely throughout the Yearly Meeting area on various missions. He was a large man, physically as well as spiritually, with a booming voice filled with conviction as he expounded his religious beliefs. Once caught in a heavy rainstorm, he sought shelter in the sheds which formerly stood behind the Meeting House. His thoughts wandered to the many fine sermons he had heard from those buried in the cemetery. Overcome by emotion he started to eulogize those Friends, his booming voice reaching out over the roadway. A man driving by heard this voice, apparently coming from the graveyard, became panic-stricken, and whipping his horse furiously, rode off. Jacob, noting the man's fear and the cruel lashing of the horse, called out to explain. This only terrified the man more and he was observed miles away, still racing his horse!
Another tale is told of his journey with Joshua Sharpless soon after the Revolutionary War. They were sent by the Yearly Meeting to investigate conditions of an Indian reservation and soon came to a stream of water too deep to cross. Joshua persisted in trying. Jacob watched the attempts, then became alarmed and shouted, "Joshua, if thee goes and is drowned, I shall preach thy funeral sermon, and shall say, 'As a fool dieth, so dieth Joshua.' "
Lindley married Hannah Miller from the Miller plantation. Having viewed the young woman with favor at the Meeting House, he gathered up courage one First-day to go calling on the pretext of inquiring about some papers. He was invited to stay, made more visits, and won the lady of his choice. On their Wedding Day, Hannah's father said, "Here, Jacob, is thy little bundle of papers. Take it and take good care of it." Lindley's influence was long felt by Friends.
New Garden Friends felt the need to modernize their Meeting House in 1906. After that was done, a classroom was added to the south end along with a porch across the front where Friends are wont to socialize after morning meeting. A front door in the middle replaced the two older entrances which originally opened into the men's and women's side of the building.
The old horse block on which people alit when leaving horse or carriage has resisted change over the 260 years since it was set in place and remains yet today.
There are so many families who were and are active in New Garden Meeting as well as in all of the activities of our township, county, etc. that it has proved impossible to give them proper recognition and no attempt will be made to do so half-heartedly. They have improved our knowledge, our standard of living, our mental awareness, our physical comfort in most outstanding ways. May we never forget their legacy.