Page 54 - The Hunt - Winter 2024

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.
52 THE HUNT MAGAZINE winter 2024-25