The Origin of Middletown Friends Meeting

On June 7, 1682, the Settle Certificate was signed in England, listing the eight families from in and around the market town of Settle who would be sailing to William Penn’s new colony to escape religious persecution. The Settle Certificate is regarded by genealogists as the single most important document of Quaker emigration to Pennsylvania. Those families, nearly all related by blood or marriage, are: 

  • Cuthbert and Mary Hayhurst and family

  • William Hayhurst

  • Nicholas Waln, his wife, and three children

  • Thomas and Alice Wigglesworth 

  • Thomas and Elizabeth Walmsley and 6 children (3 children died enroute,Thomas died within weeks of arrival) 

  • Thomas and Agnes Croasdale and 6 children (Thomas died within weeks of arrival, one daughter died within a year)

  • Thomas and Margery Stackhouse (This couple was married in June 1682, right before they departed England. Margery died a month after they arrived).

  • Widow Ellin Cowgill and children 

These brave Quakers sailed from Liverpool on The Lamb on July 17, 1682, and arrived at the Delaware River on October 22, disembarking at the mouth of the Neshaminy Creek. They made their way to Four Lanes End (now Langhorne Borough) to begin a new life in Middletown Township on land they had purchased from William Penn, sight unseen, as dedicated participants in Penn’s “Holy Experiment” of religious tolerance, justice, and peace.

A Monthly Meeting was formally established in 1683. For five years, Meeting for Worship took place in the homes of Nicholas Waln and Robert Hall. The first meetinghouse was built in 1688 on the banks of the Neshaminy Creek. It was named Neshamina Meeting. The name was changed to Middletown Monthly Meeting after Middletown Township was established in 1692. Traces of the original meetinghouse have been lost to time. As the Quaker population grew, a larger meetinghouse was constructed on the site of our present grounds in 1721, where the graveyard had been established some years before. In 1793, that building was replaced by the meetinghouse that we use today. At one time, there were long sheds behind the meetinghouse to shelter horses.

A schoolmaster was hired in 1693 to teach Quaker children at the meetinghouse. In 1734, a schoolhouse was built on the meetinghouse grounds. It was replaced twice (1793 and 1867) and remained a Quaker school until 1929. The building continues to be a place of learning, now under the auspices of Bucks Learning Cooperative. The First-Day School room is in the lower level of the Waln Building, adjacent to the meetinghouse.