Neshamina Meeting, 1683-1700

NESHAMINA MEETING31 NESHAMINA MEETING, 1683-1700 By Marion H. Longshore1 From our vantage point of 250 years of Quakerism in Middletown Monthly Meeting, with all that implies of opportunity, privilege and responsibility, we look back with deep gratitude to those first Friends of 250 years ago, who braving the unknown, the hardships, the dangers, settled here and established, as an integral part of their life, the meetings for worship and for discipline which have continued down through the years, first as Neshamina and then as Middletown Monthly Meeting. For the past weeks we have been going over the records of the early minute books, an absorbing and fascinating task, placing together the information gleaned from the minutes, the certificates of membership, the marriage certificates, the records of births and deaths and the condemnation papers, fashioning a picture of those long-ago beginnings of our meeting. It is natural for the settlement of a new country to follow rivers and streams, so it is not surprising to find early settlers in these parts taking up land bordering the Neshaminy Creek. The meeting for worship was simultaneous with the settlement of Friends, hence it is that we find those first Friends as early as 1682 gathering together for worship each First-day morning in the homes of Nicholas Walne, John Otter, and Robert Hall. In the records of Bucks Quarterly Meeting for 1684 we find the following minute: Whereas, heretofore, from the first settlement of the county, there was only one monthly Meeting within the said County, at the Yearly Meeting held at Philadelphia in 7th month, 1683, it was then agreed that the said Monthly Meeting for the ease and benefit of Friends should be divided into two parts : the one to be held about Neshaminy and the other near the river Delaware. And that the said Meetings shall meet together once every quarter ; which was accordingly observed. Thus we find Falls Monthly Meeting which had been established in Third Month, 1683, soon taking steps to allow for the 1 An address read November 1, 1933, at the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of Neshamina Meeting, at the Middletown meeting house at Langhorne, Pennsylvania. See this Bulletin, Autumn number, 1933, page 135. 32 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION setting up of Neshamina Monthly Meeting. For in the first minute book of Neshamina Meeting we find this as the first minute : "At our monthly meeting houldon at Nicholas Walne's, the first day of ye 11th month, 1683." From then on, till 1688, with but few breaks, the monthly meeting was held alternately at the homes of Nicholas Walne and Robert Hall. Following the opening minute, we find : It is ordered by this Meeting that Friends do bring in their certificates to the next Monthly Meeting. It is ordered by this Meeting that Friends bring in their births and burials. It is ordered by this Meeting that the next Monthly Meeting be held at Robert Hall's. Thus we see the beginning of that painstaking care that ever since has been given the keeping of records, a fact to which succeeding generations must always be indebted. Let us look through some of the certificates brought into that second monthly meeting and others that followed during the next year or so. We find such prominent names as Walne and Langhorne . Many of the names that come to light are familiar ones that still persist in the annals of Langhorne and vicinity : Paxson, Stackhouse, Croasdale, Hayhurst, Heaton, Allen, Cutler, Eastburn , Atkinson, Mitchell, Pearson, Penquite, Heston, Rowland, and White. Among them will be recognized ancestors of many of the present members of Middletown Meeting. We also find names we no longer hear : Wrigglesworth, Cowgill, Scaife, Constable , Radcliffe, Rutledge, and Rumford. Settle Monthly Meeting in Yorkshire, England, contributed no less than eighteen families to Neshamina Meeting, mostly in the first ten years. Other Yorkshire meetings, as well as meetings in Bucks, Oxford, Berks, Lancaster, Cornwall, Cumberland and Westmoreland , we find yielding up their pioneering sons and daughters to our meeting. Altogether there are forty-eight certificates covering fifty-nine adults and a goodly number of children listed in our first minute book ; all...