Quaker Houses of Worship Around the Brandywine Valley Boast Meaningful Histories

Dr. Freeman Miller sits among the pews at Delaware’s Centre Friends Meeting, where he’s been a member for 35 years. Photos by Jim Graham.

Today’s Quakers may live modern lives, but their historic houses of worship are touchstones to a simpler past.

Dr. Freeman Miller started coming to Centre Friends Meeting 35 years ago— and like many who attend, he wasn’t born into a Quaker family. “My family in Ohio was Amish, and I went to Mennonite services,” he says.

Set in rolling countryside east of Centreville, Centre Friends is one of several meeting houses found across the region. The one-story brick structure contains rows of wooden benches (or pews) in a large room divided in half by a wall with wooden panels that slide open. Each side has a wood-burning stove and little else. Light is provided by the sun and candles. The windowpanes are original, dating to 1796.

“Miller notes that there are days with no messages or testimony. “We used to sing songs, but our voices weren’t that good,” he laughs.

Born either in England or the colonies, those who first worshipped at Centre Friends were subjects of King George III. The place has changed little since then—and if those congregants were alive today, they might be pleasantly surprised to find that it’s still being used for the same purpose. In fact, if the colonists hoped to preserve one symbol of their world for future generations to ponder, they could do worse than this enduring network of plain brick buildings.

The Religious Society of Friends began establishing meeting houses across southeast Pennsylvania into Delaware and Maryland in the late 1600s. Many of them remain, with few major alterations—at least 40 in Pennsylvania and Delaware. Most are still in use.

Miller is a prominent Delaware pediatric orthopedic surgeon, though now he’s mostly retired. On this weekday, he’s doing some maintenance work in his role as clerk of Centre Friends. “It was originally part of New Ark Meeting, which was a wooden meeting house on the other side of the Brandywine in the Fairfax area,” says Miller. “In 1687, George Harlan, who lived on the west side of the Brandywine, asked if he and his neighbors could meet in their homes during the winter, when crossing the creek was often difficult.”

And so, in 1690, Centre Friends became its own congregation. A log meeting house was completed in 1711. The current brick building was erected on the same property 85 years later. A cemetery that dates from those early days is still in use. “They called it Centre Meeting because it was halfway between the existing New Ark Meeting and the Kennett Friends Meeting,” Miller says.

Since the early days, the only major thing that’s been altered is an attached stable that was converted to a house with a kitchen and bathroom. It’s the sort of addition most other meetings have made as well. A small schoolhouse, no longer in use, sits across the intersection of Centre Meeting and Adams Dam roads.

“The one-story brick structure contains rows of wooden benches (or pews) in a large room divided in half by a wall with wooden panels that slide open. Each side has a wood-burning stove and little else. Light is provided by the sun and candles, and the windowpanes are original, dating to 1796.

“In 1690, Centre Friends became its own congregation. A log meeting house was completed in 1711. The current brick building was erected on the same property 85 years later.

The Religious Society of Friends was founded in England in the mid-1600s by George Fox and his followers. Like many Protestant religions of that era, it went against the grain of established churches. These spiritual rebels believed God dwelled within everyone and wasn’t available exclusively to kings, popes and other anointed conduits. Persecution forced many to flee to America, where they were welcomed by William Penn, who’d converted to the Quaker religion as a young man and was briefly jailed for his beliefs. Penn’s father was friends with the king, however. And upon the elder Penn’s death, his son was given land west of the Delaware River as payment for a debt the monarch owed the family.

In England, Friends had been derided as “Quakers” because they were instructed to “tremble” before God’s word. Rather than chafe at the insult, they owned it instead. Today the terms Friends and Quakers are used interchangeably.

The basic Quaker service today isn’t all that different from colonial days, with meetings on Sunday mornings. No one has a religious title, so either the clerk or someone designated by one of the several Quaker committees will signal that it’s time for the meeting to start. “We usually sit quietly for five or 10 minutes,” says Joan Broadfield, clerk of Chester Quarterly Meeting in Delaware County. “Some people focus on clearing their minds. Others will hear the Spirit speaking to them—and I don’t mean ‘spirits,’ but the Spirit. Then they can decide if the prompt from the Spirit is for them alone or whether it’s intended to be shared with other people.”

Miller notes that there are days with no messages or testimony. “We used to sing songs, but our voices weren’t that good,” he laughs.

Quakerism isn’t all about weekly worship. Centre Friends has a business meeting each month—one of 105 such meetings across Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey. “From the beginning, there were men’s business meetings and women’s business meetings,” Miller says.

“Located off Route 926 in West Chester on a site that was part of the Revolutionary War’s Battle of Brandywine, Birmingham Friends is one of the more frequented meeting houses in the region. There’s a mass grave nearby marked with a memorial. Quakers are historically pacifists, so they added a peace garden.

A practicing psychologist, Martha Boston is clerk of Birmingham Friends Meeting. Located off Route 926 in West Chester on a site that was part of the Revolutionary War’s Battle of Brandywine, it’s one of the more frequented meeting houses in the region. “We get a lot of visitors because of the battlefield,” Boston says. “During the battle, the building was an American hospital, then a British hospital.”

There’s a mass grave nearby marked with a memorial. Quakers are historically pacifists, so they added a peace garden. Many were also part of the Underground Railroad that brought enslaved people north to freedom before and during the Civil War. Some meetings continue to commemorate these activities and the people who took part in them.

Birmingham Friends has about 200 members, but only 40-50 attend the Sunday meeting, which may involve singing, poetry readings and planned talks. They also offer an array of social and community activities.

At Centre Friends, weekly attendance hovers at around 30 or so. Some meeting houses go largely unused due to loss of members. According to Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, there are 16 locations throughout the area that are no longer used regularly, though they’re still maintained and host occasional special activities. “We’re all getting a bit gray,” Miller says of his own congregation, adding that Quakers don’t have any real methods to shore up membership.

But Miller does point to the many Friends schools operating in the area. Non-Quaker students often want to learn more about the religion and may even become converts. Still, the question lingers: What is it that keeps these modern, financially successful and progressive people so loyal to such simple, old-fashioned worship?

“Our values—what we call our testimonies—begin with the word simplicity,” says Boston. “Simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality and stewardship.”

The meeting houses themselves are a testimony to that formula, which has endured for almost 400 years.

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