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FALL 2000
James Turk
Director, Salem County Historical Society
These are the notes from which James Turk spoke at Salem Quarterly Meeting in Session, 11 June 2000. They represent an appreciation of the Lower Alloway’s Creek meetinghouse that was gratefully heard by Salem Quarter members and visitors. We’re grateful for the opportunity to reprint them here. —Ed.
CHRONOLOGY
1679 Alloways Creek Preparative Meeting is formally organized and meeting at the home of John Denn (Denn chair at Salem County Historical Society). Alloways Creek Meeting is the third oldest meeting in West Jersey, the first Quaker Colony in North America — meeting established three years before the founding of Philadelphia.
1684 Edward Champneys and John Smith donate adjoining half-acre lots to the meeting on the north side of the creek, whereupon a log meetinghouse is built shortly thereafter. Joseph Daniel Sr. is one of the prominent early ministers of this meeting. He is said to have spent considerable time with the local Lenape Indians, learning their language and frequently acting as an interpreter.
1717 Joseph Ware donates a lot on the south side of the creek for a meetinghouse. This building is used from 1718 until 1756. Most members of the meeting live on the south bank of the creek.
1756 William Hancock, builder of the Hancock House, donates a lot on which a larger meetinghouse is built — half of the current building.
1774 William Hancock, son of the builder of the Hancock House, donates additional acreage to the meeting. Four years late this William Hancock is one of the victims of the massacre that occurs in his home.
1783 Greenwich Preparative Meeting proposes a division in Salem Monthly Meeting, it then comprising a large membership. Division is granted to form Greenwich Monthly Meeting that also encompasses Alloways Creek Meeting. They are at that time directed to hold monthly meeting in Greenwich until such time as an adequately large building is built in Alloways Creek. The division is formally approved in 1784.
1784 The western end of the meetinghouse is built, clearly to accommodate the need for a larger building for monthly meetings. This expansion was the last major modification to this building. Interestingly enough, the meetinghouse in Greenwich is also enlarged around the same period.
From this time into the 1840s it remains an active meeting, the meetinghouse used for both preparative and monthly meetings.
1812 or 1820 Ten buttonwood trees are planted around the meetinghouse, eight of which remain today. These are referred to as Quaker lightning rods.
1827 As the Orthodox-Hicksite controversy and schism comes to a head, members of Greenwich Monthly Meeting express their desire to live in peace and harmony.
1841 The beginning of a long decline in membership. Not a single member is admitted by convincement for the next 50 years. Marrying out of meeting accounts for a significant loss of membership, as well as out migration to Ohio and Indiana. Ironically, it is probably this decline in membership that helped preserve this remarkable structure.
1850 to 1860 Underground Railroad, Greenwich and Salem Lines. John Mason in nearby Elsinboro claims to have assisted over 1,800 slaves to freedom. We know, for example, that Rachel Nicholson Hancock, a member of this meeting, was active in the abolition movement and a cohort of Lucretia Mott. She was also a fierce proponent of the Temperance movement.
1863 Cornelia Hancock, a member of this meeting and the daughter of Rachel and Thomas Y. Hancock, becomes a Civil War battlefield nurse. Her courage and compassion earn her the title, “America’s Florence Nightingale.” She also worked in hospitals for escaped enslaved African Americans and actively lobbied for the establishment of the Freedmen’s Bureau (1865). In 1866 she went to Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, to start a Freedman’s School. This institution survives today as the Laing Middle School, which named its library in honor of Cornelia Hancock in 1980. Later she returned to Philadelphia and became very involved in developing programs for African Americans and immigrants in poor neighborhoods, bringing her in contact with a number of the major social reformers of her time. Hancock died in 1927 and is buried in the Friends Burial Ground in Harmersville.
1906 Louisa Powell writes a brief history of this meeting. She is among the last members of this meeting, and she frequently worshipped alone in this meetinghouse.
1938 Alloways Creek Meeting is laid down. Meetinghouse is maintained by Salem Quarter.
c. 1945 Salem County Historical Society enters into an agreement with Salem Quarterly Meeting to lease this meetinghouse and operate it as an historic site in conjunction with the Hancock House, which at that time it also operates. The Society underwrites placement of some of the memory stones still to be seen along the two entrances to this building.
c. 1955 Salem County Historical Society terminates its lease, around the same time that it relinquishes operations of the Hancock House to the state of New Jersey. These decisions are made for financial reasons.
1999 Development of a regional heritage tourism plan for Salem County; note this buildings links with early Friends history and architecture, relations with Native Americans, Revolutionary War in Salem County, Underground Railroad, westward migration, Civil War, peace and social reform movements, to name some of the more obvious connections. This building is the only meetinghouse in Salem County that retains most of its original fabric, and one of very few in the region.
On a personal note, I truly discovered this building while curating an exhibition on the Quaker heritage of Southern New Jersey in Mullica Hill in 1980–1981. Visits here confirmed the unique ability of this place to communicate its past and the ideas and ideals of its builders. I can easily imagine Louisa Powell almost a century ago, worshipping in solitude here, but I do not imagine her alone, so powerful is this building’s ability to evoke a sense of the community that created it. During and since that time, I have been privileged to bring many groups of visitors to this place, and few leave without connecting with its heritage in some way.
Our guide and mentor for most of those visits was Bill Waddington. He ended each of those experiences with the recitation of a poem. Those words summarized how the tangible — such as special places like this building — can connect us with the intangible — our very heritage — in ways more powerful than a mere recitation of facts. That is what makes this building such a rare treasure for many who come here.
When asked, Mr. Waddington kindly wrote down the poem for me. So taking his cue, and in homage to him, I will close my remarks as so many times did he:
In the stillness a thought falls like a pebble in a pond, unspoken.
Concentric circles widen and contain us all.
In the silence we hold on to each other without touching.
Exploring Lower Alloway’s Creek
Salem Quarter has a property in Hancock’s Bridge: the Lower Alloway’s Creek Meetinghouse.
In it, we also have a heritage and a resource.
At our June session of Quarterly Meeting, we decided to continue reasonable efforts to maintain the building. We also heard of its history, worshipped in a setting shared with over 200 years of Quaker fellowship, and speculated just a bit on what future service the property may provide.
If the Lower Alloway’s Creek Meetinghouse is to be anything more than a stop on a tour of historic sites, we need to make it such. That’s why Quarterly Meeting also decided to create an ad hoc group to consider how best to use and develop the Meetinghouse.
We do not know how much time this will take. We may just get together for a couple of hours, bat around some ideas, and make our report to Quarterly Meeting. Or we may find ourselves under the weight of a wonderful opportunity, spending substantial efforts in research, worship, and prowling about the attic.
We’ll be gathering on Saturday, 2 September, at 6:00 PM for potluck supper, discussion, and worship. Please join us as we explore future possibilities for this piece of our history in Salem Quarter.
George Crispin and Mario Cavallini
convenersRETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
Last modified:
Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 08:19 AM
