Chichester Friends Meetinghouse

What the labels mean

The Quaker meetinghouse on Meetinghouse Road in Upper Chichester is the one surviving building tied to a Carter–Clayton family event. Jeremiah Carter’s son Nineveh married Mary Clayton at Chichester meeting in 1731, and the meeting’s first lot was deeded in 1688 to trustees who included William Clayton Sr. of her family See also the Clayton family and the Barnards.

The place

Chichester Friends Meetinghouse, 611 Meetinghouse Road, Boothwyn (Upper Chichester Township), Delaware County. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 14 March 1973 (NRHP 73001622) SUPPORTED. The 1936 WPA survey puts the walled burial ground on the southeast side of Meeting House Road, half a mile northeast of Chichester Road SUPPORTED.

The meeting began in 1682 as an indulged meeting under Chester (Upland) Monthly Meeting SUPPORTED (Wikipedia, citing the 1971 Pennsylvania Register form). The lot grew to 7 acres by 1705 SUPPORTED (HABS PA-6225).

The 1688 lot and the Claytons

On the “fourth day of Tenth month, 1688” (4 December 1688), James Brown, husband of Honour Clayton, deeded 2 acres for the meetinghouse to trustees William Clayton Sr., Philip Roman, Robert Pyle, Jacob Chandler, Joseph Bushell and John Kingsman DOCUMENTED. The deed’s wording is quoted in Ashmead 1884 p.451, and HABS PA-6225 gives the same date and trustees from the meeting’s minute transcription. The original deed has not yet been seen. (One secondary source gives 4 October; that is probably a misreading of the Quaker month. Ashmead’s text also reads “John Brown” once, likely a typesetting slip.)

William Clayton bought land at Marcus Hook from Hans Olleson, acknowledged at Upland Court on 13 March 1678/9 SUPPORTED (Ashmead 1884). Olleson was one of six patentees of a 1,000-acre grant, and later Chester County deed recitals (1727, 1736, 1743: deed books H8:279, F6:524, G7:174) call Clayton’s holding “a full equal sixth share”, about 166⅔ acres SUPPORTED (deed abstracts). Correction: the often-repeated claim that Clayton bought “500 acres” from Olleson is not supported by these recitals.

The stone house

The first meetinghouse, of log or frame and about 24 feet square, went up about 1688–89 SUPPORTED. It burned, and the present fieldstone house was begun in 1769, stalled for lack of funds in 1770 and finished in 1771 SUPPORTED (HABS PA-6225, from the monthly and quarterly meeting minutes). Sources disagree on the fire: the meeting’s own history and a township survey say 1768; another account says January 1769. The meeting minutes needed to settle it have not been read yet.

The house is nearly square (about 33 × 38 feet), with a gable roof, doors on the north, south and west sides, a corner fireplace and an iron stove. No plumbing or electric wiring has ever been installed SUPPORTED (HABS PA-6225).

Carter and Clayton at Chichester

Nineveh Carter (6), son of Jeremiah of Chester Township, married Mary Clayton, daughter of William Clayton of Chichester, on 3 4mo (June) 1731 at Chichester meeting, under Concord Monthly Meeting SUPPORTED (Potts pp.43–44, quoting the Chester and Concord meeting minutes). That was in the first meetinghouse, not the present 1769 building.

Nineveh’s son Martin Carter was a Chichester member in 1762, and Thomas Barnard was “of Chichester Meeting” the same year SUPPORTED (Potts). No Carter appears among the grantors or trustees of the 1688, 1705 or 1772 lot deeds (HABS PA-6225), and no definite Carter-line burial has been found in the burial ground.

The Barnards

The meeting says Richard and Frances Barnard and Rebecca Barnard Flowers lie in unmarked graves in the burial ground (chichestermeetinghouse.org). Potts p.37 names Richard and Frances Barnard, who came in 1682 and settled in Middletown and then Aston, as the parents of Thomas Barnard, who married Jeremiah’s daughter Sarah Carter, and of Rebecca, who married Enoch Flower. If they are the same people, they are the grandparents and aunt of Mary Barnard. That match is strongly favored by the names, spouses, era and place SUPPORTED, but it is likely, not proven: no burial record yet ties these graves to Potts’s family.

Local traditions

• British soldiers after Brandywine in 1777 are said to have fired at the building, leaving musket-ball holes in the front door FAMILY TRADITION. No contemporary record has been found. See 1777: The British in Aston.
• The caretaker’s house is said to date from 1703 FAMILY TRADITION (meeting website and a 1983 township booklet only).
• A mounting block is said to have been built in 1777 FAMILY TRADITION (meeting website; no source given).

Sources