Early Edgmont Quakers met for worship at any home large enough to hold the congregation. But soon they had a number of other choices. In 1701, the first Middletown Meeting was built on five acres, made of wood with a later stone addition. In 1770 members subscribed to replace the wooden structure with a solid stone building. Old records show prominent Edgmont settlers in regular attendance. For those in the north, Newtown Square Friends Meeting House, first constructed in 1711, offered another Quaker option. And by 1798, a beautiful stone meeting house opened its doors in Willistown. For the Church of England settlers, the closest option was the 1717 St. John’s Church in Concord. Scotch-Irish immigrants could travel to the 1720 Middletown Presbyterian Church relatively conveniently.
Church attendance was one of the principal forms of socializing and entertainment in the sparsely settled farm community, and a long carriage ride with the family on Sunday morning would have been a highly anticipated event, well worth the travel time. With so many nearby options, Edgmont does not seem to have had its own church building from the initial settlement in 1681 up until 1860.
The Delaware County Temperance Society called for the friends of the temperance cause to meet at the new Marple Presbyterian Church on August 5, 1841 “for the purpose of devising and adopting some means of inducing the Legislature of this State to exert its lawful and appropriate influence in diminishing and mitigating the miseries entailed upon Society by the Vending and Drinking of Intoxicating Liquors.” In 1843, the Edgmont Temperance Society built a Temperance Hall on the Chester Great Road. That initial wave of anti-liquor fervor played out by 1859, when in the words of Jane Levis Carter, the Edgmont Society “ended where it began.” The mortgage on the building had to be paid, and so it was sold to a Methodist congregation.
Gradyville M.E. Church opened for business in the former temperance hall in 1860, the first church in Edgmont township. The Methodists had a long run in Edgmont from that time, though in 1973, they experienced what insurance contracts call an “Act of God” – the first tornado recorded in Delaware County:
“I thought I was going to meet my maker,” said Reverend Kenneth Kleckner of the Gradyville United Methodist Church. “I could feel the pressure drop. I didn’t know what was happening but I hit the deck!”
The church survived that incident with some damage that was repaired. Sadly, declining membership and Covid conspired to close the church in 2020. The old temperance hall survives and rumor has it that it will be filled with a new church use.
For more information on the Edgmont Township Historical Society, visit their Facebook page at: https://facebook.com/groups/edgmonthistoricalsociety/