Salem Friends Meeting House
Salem, New Jersey
Organized in 1770 and built in 1772. Because of the setback and the much taller buildings surrounding it, this meeting house gets lost on the main street of Salem. But it's nicely maintained and its location testifies to the early settlement of the town by Quakers.
Salem Friends Meeting / East Broadway and Walnut, Salem
In 1772 Salem Friends purchased three acres from Colonel Robert Johnson and William Hancock and built this patterned-end meeting house. On the west end the date of construction is written with vitrified bricks.
The building's distinctive features include its fine proportions; its 12-over-12 window panes, many of which may be Wistarburg glass; its two saddle doors at the rear; and its 16-inch thick walls.
British soldiers bivouacked in this meeting house in 1778. After the Revolution, courts were held here to hear cases involving confiscation of Tory properties.
The Salem Friends Meeting is noted for the longest continuous service of all churches established in New Jersey.
Friends Meeting House has a beautiful cast iron fencing that is signed 'Bennett & Acton, Salem, N. J., 1900.' You will find this on the main gate posts. On the front pavement the iron cistern cover made by the 'Acton Foundry, Salem, N. J., 1870.'
From: Michael and Barbara Mihalcik
Compare this to the meeting houses in Hancock's Bridge and Greenwich.
Alloways Creek Friends
Lower Alloway's Creek Township, Salem County
Also known as Hancock Bridge Friends
Organized in 1684 and built in 1756. A cornerstone says 1784, but that was for a later addition.
The Alloways Creek Friends Meetinghouse, constructed in 1756, was the third meetinghouse constructed for the Alloways Creek Friends. The original form of this meetinghouse, a one story, single-cell building, was a common form for small Friends Meetings in the Delaware Valley from the late seventeenth through the mid-eighteenth centuries. The construction of a major addition in 1784, along with alterations to the original building, converted the meetinghouse into a two-story, two-cell form that quickly dominated Quaker meetinghouse design in the second half of the eighteenth century.
While new meetinghouses constructed during the period were built with equal-sized rooms, reflecting contemporary thought on space arrangement for worship and business meetings, the Alloways Creek Friends Meetinghouse retained a slight discrepancy in the size between the two rooms, maintaining the distinction between the main worship room/men's business meeting room and the women's business meeting room found in the earlier generation of meetinghouses. Typical Quaker meetinghouse elements exhibited by the Alloways Creek Friends Meetinghouse include its plain, rectangular brick form with a side gable roof, covered entrances, unadorned interior, facing bench platforms, a U-shaped gallery and a movable partition that allowed joint worship services and separate business meetings.
The east end of this meeting house was built in 1756 on land provided by William Hancock. The west side was built in 1784. The buttomwood trees were planted in 1812.
This meeting house is in remarkably pristine condition. Interior architecture, including saddle doors, balconies, and panels that separated men and women during Business Meetings, remain intact. The yellow pine woodwork has neer been painted. The benches are original, with pads of homespun linen. The cast iron wood stoves (c. 1810) are of New Jersey bog iron. Many windows still have old glass, possibly from the Wistarburg factory near Alloway.
This was not the first meeting house for Lower Alloways Creek Quakers. They held their first Meeting in the home of James Denn in 1679. In 1684 they built their first meeting house and established a cemetery on one acre of ground on the north side of Alloways Creek, about one mile upstream from the present bridge in town. The Friends moved to the south side of the creek near Logtown, now Harmersville, and built another meeting house, with a cemetery, in 1718. The Lower Alloways Creek Friends Meeting was laid down in 1951 and is now used only for special occasions by the Salem Quarterly Meeting.
From: Michael and Barbara Mihalcik
Woodstown (Pilesgrove) Friends Meeting House
Woodstown, Salem County
Organized in 1720 and built in 1785. Although the skirt porch is found on a number of Quaker meetinghouses, it is probably a later addition. The year, 1785, in glazed brick, can be seen in the gable surrounding the top right window.
Woodstown Friends Meeting House (1785) North Main Street, Woodstown The first portion of this meeting house was built in 1785 for what was then called the Pilesgrove Meeting. Chimneys built into each of the two 18-inch-thick side walls were used for stoves set in the aisles next to columns which still show evidence of charring which occurred before they were protected by sheets of iron. Timbers were cut locally and dressed and finished with hand tools. From these were made shutters, doors, sash and, all interior trim. Vitrified bricks were used for the construction date on an exterior wall.
The building was originally sixty feet long and just over thirty-eight feet deep, but in 1849 it was enlarged by removing the rear wall and extending it. The newer bricks were slightly smaller than the original bricks; the connecting joints are visible on both exterior side walls. Members added an annex in 1907 and in the past twenty-five years have made some interior additions to create a library and bathrooms.
Although the Pilesgrove Friends began holding mid-week worship meetings in 1722, their first official monthly meeting was held in 1794. Meanwhile, in 1725 they had erected a frame meeting house near the present structure which was later razed. The name was changed in 1929 to the Woodstown Monthly Meeting.
From: Michael and Barbara Mihalcik
Subject: [PA-QUAKERS] Meeting Houses of Salem County NJ
Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000
http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/PA-QUAKERS/2000-09/0969838048
Greenwich Friends
Greenwich, Cumberland County
In many areas the schism in the Quaker ranks left the Hicksites in control of the meetinghouse, but in Greenwich, the Orthodox Friends were in the majority so they retained possession of this brick building dating to 1771. It is little changed, inside or out, since that date. National Register