A Brief History of the Crosswicks Friends Meeting

Crosswicks Friends Meeting is the successor of the Chesterfield Monthly Meeting founded in 1684, shortly after the settlement of the township in 1677.  The name and configuration of the Meeting have changed several times over the years, and in 1976 we officially became know as the Crosswicks Friends Meeting.

After the restoration of the British monarchy in 1660, there was a wave of violent attacks and imprisonment of Quakers, owing in part to Charles II’s redoubled efforts to quell any sedition or heresy following the bloody Civil War and ensuing Interregnum.  The Quaker movement, which had grown substantially since the early days of its founder, George Fox, sought a solution involving William Penn’s recent purchase of land along the east bank of the Delaware River (then called the South River) in the newly formed colony of New Jersey.  In 1677, the Kent was the first of four ships to sail from Kingston up Hull to what later became the city of Burlington, NJ, laden with Quaker settlers.  That first winter, the first make-shift meeting house was made from the ships’ sails at Burlington, and soon after the village of Crosswicks was settled 15 miles to the north.

The Chesterfield Monthly Meeting’s first minutes date to 1684, although it is assumed that informal meetings took place prior to this date.  The year 1684 also marked the sale of six acres to Frances Davenport, a Crosswicks Quaker and New Jersey Assemblyman, who gave the property for use by the Quakers.  This six-acre tract is still owned by the Quakers, and is where our meeting house and First Day School are situated.

By 1692, a small wooden meeting house had been built on the Quaker property in Crosswicks, and in 1706 it was replaced by a larger one located at the north of the property, approximately where the Crosswicks Community House is located today.  In 1773, using the newly built Buckingham Meeting House in Bucks County, PA, as a model, the Chesterfield Friends built the current brick meeting house at a cost of £3,750.  The structure took nearly three years to complete and was finally finished on the eve of the Revolutionary War in 1776.  Throughout the war, the meeting house was used to house troops from both sides, with the understanding that the soldiers were to keep the meeting free for Sunday worship by the Quakers.

From the very beginning, West Jersey Quakers had entered into a peaceful coexistence with the local Lenape Indians, and the Chesterfield Friends were no exception.  In 1756 and 1758, the colonial court in Trenton convened two councils at the meeting house in Crosswicks to decide the fate of the Lenape, and it was at the final council that the first reservations were created, in what is now Shamong Township.  The Lenape insisted that the meetings be held in Crosswicks, since it was a place where they had enjoyed mutual trust and fellowship with the local Quakers.

In 1790, a fund was started for the creation of a Quaker school, and the meeting changed its name to the Chesterfield Preparatory Meeting.  The old meeting house from 1706, which had still stood after the new meeting house had been built, was finally dismantled, and the proceeds were used to build the First Day School, which stands adjacent to the new meeting house on the south side of the property.

Like all meetings in the Philadelphia area, the Chesterfield Preparatory Meeting was affected by the Hicksite-Orthodox schism in the years following 1827.  Since the Hicksite movement appealed primarily to rural Quakers, there was only a small minority of Orthodox followers that split from this meeting; however, this faction was substantial enough to build its own meeting house on Ward Avenue in the 1830s, which still stands today.  The two factions were finally reconciled in 1955 and both meeting houses are now the property of our meeting, which was re-chartered as the Crosswicks Monthly Meeting in 1976.  The old Orthodox meeting house is currently leased to the Chesterfield Township Historical Society and houses its museum.

The Orthodox Meeting House on Ward Avenue in Crosswicks, now the Museum of the Chesterfield Township Historical Society