Annual Excursion of the Friends' Historical Society of Philadelphia and Interested Friends: 1912

ANNUAL EXCURSION OF HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 151 ANNUAL EXCURSION OF THE FRIENDS' HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA AND INTERESTED FRIENDS* 1912. Salem, New Jersey, by one of the excursionists. The Annual Excursion of the Friends' Historical Society of Philadelphia for 1912 was to the old New Jersey town of Salem. A special train left Camden at 1.07 p.m., connecting with the ferry boat from Philadelphia at 1 p.m. The date, Sixth month 15th, seemed to conflict with sundry school and college functions, and a threat of rain kept some at home, so the company was not so numerous as had been expected. In fact, officers and members of the Historical Society, usually present on such occasions , were conspicuously absent. The threatened rain did not come, the absence of dazzling sunlight was an advantage rather than otherwise, and the trip as a whole was eminently successful. An hour's run from Camden, through a country of farms, gardens and villages, and we were in Salem. Leaving our lunch baskets, etc., at the meeing house on East Broadway (now used by Race Street Friends), we started out to see the town. Points of chief interest were all on streets of moderate length. In the burial ground used jointly by all in the place under the name of Friends, we first visited the Salem Oak. This is a most interesting sight; a single tree which, being unconfined, has grown outward , rather than upward. We were told it was only fifty-eight feet high, but its branches, from tip to tip, covered a space of one hundred and seventeen feet. The trunk, a little above the ground, measures twenty-eight feet in circumference. The tree gave evidence of having been guarded very carefully, and looked as though it might add many years to its estimated age of three hundred. * Note.—Condensed from a paper in the Friend, Philadelphia, Seventh month 4th, 1912. 152 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL SOCIETY. To the east of this tree, in early days, stood the dwelling house of Samuel Nicholson, which, altered to adapt it to another purpose, became the first Friends' Meeting House. This was in 1680. A second house of brick was in nearly the same place. A third house, likewise of brick, built in 1772, was on another tract, and was that in which we had established headquarters for the day. From the tree we crossed the street to the meeting house built in 1837, and still in use. We sat for a little while on the benches used by members of Salem Particular Meeting and by those of Salem Quarterly Meeting until it was united to Haddonfield. The house seemed filled with the memories of worthy Friends, more or less closely associated with it in the not distant past. Most of the company continued their walk to the foot of Broadway (or Bradway Street) to the point on Salem Creek where the settlers first landed. Here, in earliest times, tradition says, they used to tow great whales to cut them up. The surroundings of the boat landing are not now at all attractive. One old house, bearing the date 1691, seemed to carry us back to those primitive days, and looking up Broadway from the boat landing, it was easy to believe that it had once been the one and only street of the straggling village of Salem. Returning to the meeting house on East Broadway, we settled ourselves to learn some history. We had passed Fenwick Station on the railroad, and had come into a town where Fenwick was a good name for a street, a hotel or almost anything else which needed a distinctive title. An hour was devoted to a somewhat informal historical meeting. The president of a local historical society was present with words of kindly welcome, and the secretary of that bcdy read a chapter of early Salem history. George Abbott, Jr., had prepared a paper, which George Abbott, Sr., read, on the career of John Fenwick, and parts of this paper may be summarized as follows : Omitting all reference to Dutch and Swedish emigrants who had made sporadic attempts at settlement at many points on Delaware Bay and its...