One of the issues facing Quaker researchers is dealing with tracing records of the meetings that were impacted by the Great Separation of 1827. In many cases, the Separation resulted in separate meeting houses and burial grounds being created for the meetings within each faction. Because the Hicksite branch was more prominent through much of the Mid-Atlantic area, it is mostly the Hicksite branch meetings that survived over time to become modern day monthly meetings after the two main branches reunited. For the most part, the records of each side have been preserved, but the piece that sometimes falls through the cracks is the outcome of the physical properties of some of the meetings.

For example, someone who knew that their ancestors were members of New Garden meeting might start their search for grave markers at the modern day New Garden Meeting burial ground, without ever realizing that there is also an old Orthodox burial ground just down the road. Sometimes, the alternate branch has a burial ground and/or meetinghouse very close to the original, such as the case of Goshen meeting, where the two buildings are next to each other, or Concord where the Orthodox burial ground lies next to the Hicksite ground, but sometimes the alternate burial grounds are a little trickier to find.

There is also the case where the original meeting house has long since disappeared after the meeting was discontinued, but the burial ground remains intact. Among the Chester County, PA meetings that fall into this category are Nantmeal, Whiteland and Doe Run (Derry). Aerial photographs often show these cemeteries, but seldom include any indication of their name.

Luckily, there are some tools available to help locate and identify these old burial grounds. In 1996, Clearfield Company of Baltimore reprinted in 1996 a survey of church archives for the Society of Friends in Pennsylvania that had originally been done by the Works Projects Administration in the late 1930’s which details the Quaker meetings of that time period, including some history of many that had already been discontinued. Because this work was done during the period in which the Friends had separated, the book includes information of both the Orthodox and the Hicksite properties. Though the address of the meetings are sometimes rather vague, it is still possible to determine when alternate meeting houses and burial grounds were established. The trick then becomes locating these places, and for that task, I turn to the old atlases. Historic Mapworks has many old atlases and maps online at their site that can be an extremely valuable tool for this purpose. Once I know that an alternate house or burial ground existed, based on information from the survey and the old atlases, I can then turn to the modern mapping tools like Google Earth to determine if the site still exists.

As I work through the process of adding meeting information to the new Data Dictionary on this site, I will be including as much information as possible about these old “hidden” properties and hopefully including some of the gravestones from the burial grounds involved.

On September 20th, the old Colora Friends meetinghouse was opened for worship as is is every year in the fall. It  was a beautiful day and the handful of visitors enjoyed sharing memories. Virtually untouched by time, the old meetinghouse still retains its dividing wall (though we all met on one side!). I plan to attend next year as well and next time, I’ll get some pictures of the inside as well as the outside. As it was, I was able to photograph and identify most of the stones in the burial grounds, so I’ll call the trip a success!

Summer is a great time to go on an adventure. Why not take some time and visit some of the historic meetinghouses in the area? Several of them are open for special worship meetings this summer, providing a unique opportunity to see these old meetinghouses. A few of the openings are noted in our Calendar, so make your plans!

I still have a fair number of photos to ID and upload for West Nottingham, but so far there are over 100 photos added to the online database that are tied in to their respective families. All of the current entries for West Nottingham, along with a photo of the meetinghouse itself and a map can be seen here. Most of the photos that remain have yet to be tied in to their families, but I expect to be able to locate most of them soon.

Yesterday’s trip was moderately successful. My attempt to locate the Octoraro burial ground didn’t work out, but it may be more successful when in the fall or winter when it might be possible to see if a wall still exists in the area, as it appeared from the aerial photo. West Nottingham was easy to find and I have lots of photos to add from there, some of which are already available here. I also took some shots over at East Nottingham.

Colora appears to be private property so I will need to make further plans to see the burial ground there, though I was able to get a shot of meetinghouse from a distance.

On the way home, I stopped at Deer Creek and was able to get some nice pictures, which I’ll be adding soon. Both Little Falls and Gunpowder are behind locked fences, so I was able to get shots of the meetinghouses but not the burial grounds.

All in all, it was a pretty good day!

The sun is shining, it’s reasonably cool and I have some free time this afternoon, so it’s off for a small adventure, locating and photographing some old Quaker meetings in Cecil county. On the list for today’s trip are Colora, West Nottingham and Octoraro, with a possibility of taking a look at Deer Creek and Little Falls on the way back. On the way out, I’ll be stopping to pick up a new data card for the camera to make sure I have plenty of disk space available. Hopefully, I’ll soon have lots of new photos to add to this site.

When I first started researching my family roots, I realized very quickly that the vast majority of my ancestors were Quakers, which certainly made some of my research much easier. As I spent more time and energy doing research, I also developed a side hobby of photographing the meetinghouses in which my ancestors worshipped. This site is my attempt to combine both of these primary hobbies.