The First 100 years
Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting (CHFM) was started by a group of young adults, many of whom had served together doing Quaker war relief in Europe at the end of The Great War (World War I). They returned to the Quaker world in Philadelphia, yearning for a forward-looking unified worship experience for their young families.
The purpose of this story is to offer the general flow of this Friends Meeting’s evolution, its growth, decline, and resurgence; the associated buildings and community projects, and its setting in the larger world of “Quakerdom,” all while offering a sampling of the colorful and dedicated people who sustained it as a community for its first 100 years. However, it does not track membership applications, marriages, routine committee reports, or budget details.
The Centennial timeline is drawn from the draft history researched and written by Shirley Phillips, Mickey Abraham, Dona Garrettson, Trude Fuchs, and Roberta Foss (from the 1920s through 1980) for the 75th Anniversary in 1999, and finished by Steve Elkinton (1990s through 2024-2025) for the Centennial. Unless otherwise cited, the basic sources for this timeline and draft history are the CHFM business meeting minutes held in the Haverford College’s Friends Historic Collection.
The timeline links, below, are by decade. The timelines include links to other documents, videos, and primary source materials.
