HOMEVILLE: Happy 175th Birthday to Homeville Meeting

The 175th birthday party for Homeville Friends Meetinghouse on Sunday afternoon, Aug. 24, was a memorable and well-attended event.
The meetinghouse and its adjoining burial grounds sit along Route 896 in Upper Oxford Township, near the Lancaster County line, and the rural view looking west is stunning.
Before the worship service, guests mingled outside (I saw many from London Grove Friends Meeting), listened to Cochranville musician Janet Witman playing the harp, and browsed through the research about the meeting's history. We wandered through the peaceful burial ground, which has are both traditional, simple grave markers and modern ones featuring pictures of the dead person, and recognized a lot of familiar Chester County surnames on the gravestones.
Charlie Brosius of West Marlborough, whose family has deep connections to the meeting, helped organize the event (Donna McCool was the committee chairman) and served as emcee. He welcomed the guests, outlined the afternoon's agenda and introduced local State Rep. John Lawrence, who brought along a fancy certificate from the General Assembly honoring the meeting's anniversary.
For the worship service, the small meetinghouse couldn't accommodate everyone on its wooden benches, so some people sat outside under the shaded canopy. During the service several people were moved to speak about ancestors who had been members of the meeting. Some said the clip-clop of horses' hooves on the road outside (there were a lot of Amish carriages passing by) made the past feel not so distant. One woman who lives near the meetinghouse said she had always considered it a cold and lonely place because it's no longer active -- but she wouldn't anymore.
After the service, we listened to an entertaining talk by Chris Densmore, curator of the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College. He gave a brief history of the meeting and Quaker life in the nineteenth century and noted that Homeville members were active in abolitionist groups, including the Clarkson Society, and promoted the use of "free produce," meaning cotton cloth and other consumer goods that were made with no links to slave labor. The Homeville Quakers were also part of the fledgling women's suffrage movement.
A nice spread of cookies, brownies, lemonade and iced tea greeted us after the talk (Mr. Densmore made a joke about having the dangerous time slot of "just before the refreshments").