More than 200 members of the Friends' Historical Society of Philadelphia, and their guests, motored to Bucks county and held their annual outing in the historic Buckingham Meeting House recently, The literary program consisted of an address by Colonel Henry D. Paxson, of Philadelphia, on "Buckingham in Revolutionary Times," and a paper by B. F. Fackenthall, Jr., "Durham Iron Furnaces."
At the conclusion of the exercises the members of the society were entertained at Elm Grove, the beautiful nearby home of Colonel and Mrs. Paxson. Colonel Paxson in his address made a pilgrimage back into, the early revolutionary days and the history of Bucks county. He told of the early settlements, roads and the Indians. He concluded his address with a history of Buckingham Meeting House, which during the revolutionary war was an important hospital. It was regarded as the most interesting and complete narrative that has ever been presented of this historic edifice.
The settlers consisted almost entirely of Friends and at first they held their meetings in private houses. An Englishman named Streiper obtained from Penn a grant of 600 acres of land which was located here. Out of this tract Streiper conveyed to the Friends ten acres to build a meeting house and for burial purposes. The valley was then covered with primeval, forest, with the exception of these ten acres, which tradition tells us, was an Indian field where the aborigines practiced a rude form of agriculture.
The first meeting house, constructed entirely of logs, was built in 1705. Some of the Friends petitioned to have window glass used, but not until William Biles and Joseph Kirkbride, members of the meeting volunteered to meet the expense, was this luxury allowed. This building was enlarged in 1720 by a frame addition, when the Monthly Meeting was established.
The second meeting house, of stone, was built in 1731. This building was totally destroyed by fire in 1768 while meeting was in session. A passerby in old York road observed smoke and flames issuing from the roof, and running to the meeting house and opening the door, cried out in a loud voice:
Fire! Fire! Friends, your house is on fire!
The third meeting house, the present structure, was built later in the year 1768. It is forty feet wide and seventy feet long, of grit stone from the neighborhood. It is divided in the middle with a partition made up of a curious arrangement of doors, shutters and panels, which open or shut or slide, or revolve; and in the second story are larger panels, carefully poised on cross timbers, to open and shut by the pulling of a rope.
During the revolutionary war, this meeting house held an important place as a hospital, probably because of its convenient location on an important highway, upon which troops were continually marching back and forth. When not too crowded with patients it was also used for meeting purposes; the soldiers put one end in order, and many of them attended the meeting.
There was one meeting, however, which was not held there, the Monthly Meeting of the First day of the Twelfth Month. 1777, when the meeting house was entirely given up to, the soldiers for hospital purposes.
About this time, when Howe occupied Philadelphia and Washington was in winter quarters at Valley Forge, severe battles were ;being fought and all the hospitals were filled to overflowing. This meeting house, as well as many other buildings in the neighborhood bears the marks of both bullets and cannon balls, showing that there had been some sharp skirmishing there.
This Twelfth Month Meeting, the records state, was held in Thomas Ellicott's blacksmith shop, while the meeting house was filled with injured and dying soldiers; while down on the meadow bank, at the foot of the hill, also the meeting house property, tents were erected for smallpox cases.
Many soldiers died here and were buried in a lot by themselves on the bank along York road, just beyo little stone horse stable and some seventy feet from the meeting house door.
