Marple in the 1850s: Part Seven — Churches
By Sam Pickard
This is Part Seven of an eight-part series on Marple Township in the 1850s.
Part Six focuses on Schools in Marple during the 1850s.
Part Eight focuses on Cemeteries in Marple during the 1850s.
At present, Marple Township is home to 17 houses of worship representing multiple faith traditions. During the 1850s, there were only two churches in the whole township.
Due to the separation of church and state, the census does not inquire about individuals’ religious beliefs, so it can be hard to come up with statistics on the religious affiliation (if any) of Marple’s residents in the 1850s. Despite this, we can say with confidence that the vast majority of the township’s residents in the 1850s were at least nominally Christians. Additionally, of these, a healthy majority were adherents to some form of Protestant Christianity.
Friends’ Meeting Houses (Quaker)
Southeastern Pennsylvania had been largely settled by English and Welsh members of the Society of Friends (commonly known as Quakers) at the onset of colonization in the 1680s. As such, most of Marple’s early settlers were members of this denomination. Some, such as the Coppocks, even facilitated Quaker worship, allowing meetings to be held in their home before donating land for what is now Springfield Friends Meeting.[1]
Curiously, however, despite the large number of Quakers—who likely formed a majority or sizable minority of Marple residents into the 19th century—there was never a Quaker meeting house within the borders of the township. Marple Quakers would have had to travel to one of the surrounding townships to attend meeting, which might be literally across the municipal line for Springfield Meeting, or well into Newtown, Haverford, Radnor, or Nether Providence for the respective meeting houses in those townships. As noted in part one of this series, many of Marple’s main roads were initially laid out to link the township to the surrounding Quaker Meeting Houses.[2]
What of the churches actually in the township? There was not much in the way of choice for the township’s residents.
Marple Presbyterian Church
The older of Marple’s two churches was Marple Presbyterian Church, which had been constructed in 1835 on what is now Sproul Road near the intersection with Marple Road and the appropriately named Church Lane. By the 1850s, the church had become an important township institution and in 1859 it had roughly 90 communicants. The church had four pastors during the 1850s: Rev. Marcus E. Cross, who served in a supply (interim) capacity from 1844 to 1852; Rev. A. Rood, 1852-1857; Rev. James C. Laverty, 1857-1859; and Rev. Beriah B. Hotchkin, 1859-1878.[3] A Sunday school running from April to November was established in 1858 and with the installation of Hotchkin in October 1859, plans were made to erect a new manse (parsonage). Built in 1860 for $2,000, house still stands at 61 Church Lane.[4]
African Union Church of Marple
Marple’s other church was what was then known as the African Union Church of Marple (and after a split in the denomination during the 1860s, it would become Marple UAME). This church, which is further discussed in a post from June 2021, served the African American community in Marple and the surrounding townships. Formally founded in 1838, just a few years after Marple Presbyterian, the African Union Church was led through the 1860s by is pastor, Deacon Charles Brown. While located in southern Marple Township along the border with Springfield, the church drew congregants from many of the surrounding townships. Indeed, Pastor Brown, who had initially owned the land surrounding the church, sold his property and moved his residence to Upper Providence in 1854. While the congregation moved to Media in 1893 and still meets as Trinity UAME Church, the old cemetery (Hayti Cemetery) on Old Marple Road bears witness to the church’s presence.[5]
Other Churches
In addition to the Quaker meetings and two above-mentioned churches, it’s likely that at least some of Marple’s residents attended other churches in the surrounding townships. While it would not be practical to list every church, it is perhaps worth mentioning four nearby congregations that likely had attendees from Marple. A rough distance in miles to each of the churches from the intersection of West Chester Pike and Sproul Road (using roads at the time) will be given for each of the churches.
Bethesda Methodist Episcopal Chapel (2.75 miles) was located across Darby Creek in Haverford Township southwest of the intersection of West Chester Pike and Eagle Road. The congregation had been established in 1831 and its chapel was constructed in 1832. For Methodists in Marple during the 1850s, this may have been the closest place of worship.[6] At least one of Marple’s residents—William Wiley, the English weaver mentioned in the post on Manufacturing in the 1850s, had baptized his children in a Methodist church when they had lived in Philadelphia.[7]
The First Baptist Church of Newtown (3.00 miles) was located on the east side of what is now Pennsylvania Route 252 in Newtown Square. Founded in 1832, the church is particularly notable in its relation to Marple Township during the 1850s because of its pastor, Rev. Robert Compton. Compton, as more fully explored in a December 2020 post, served the church at various points during the 1850s and was finally installed as its permanent pastor in 1856. In 1857, Compton purchased a small truck farm at the corner of Sproul and Paxon Hollow roads in Marple, though he soon became too ill to serve as pastor. Newtown Baptist Church’s congregation continues to function (in a different location) to this day as Liberti Church Newtown Square.[8]
St. Denis Roman Catholic Church (3.75 miles) was founded in 1825 after Irish immigrant Denis Kelly donated land in Haverford Township for a church. While the church’s congregation was primary drawn from millworkers along Cobbs Creek in Haverford, it’s quite probable that some of Marple’s residents during the 1850s were Roman Catholics, especially considering that the Irish-born population made up 8.3 percent of the township’s population by 1860.[9]
St. David’s Protestant Episcopal Church (4.75 miles), founded in 1715, is reputedly the oldest non-Quaker house of worship in Delaware County. Located on the border of Newtown and Radnor townships, it was nearly five miles from the center of what would become Broomall.[10] While it is not known whether any Marple residents attended St. David’s during the 1850s, William Stinson (murdered in 1868) has his children baptized in the Episcopal Church and H. Jones Moore was buried at St. David’s when he died in 1896.[11] In 1854, Christ Church opened in Media, giving any Episcopalians living in southeastern Marple Township a (somewhat) closer congregation to attend.[12]
Next time, the final installment of the Marple in the 1850s series will focus on the final stop for residents of the township: cemeteries.
[1] Sam Pickard, “The Coppock House: A Preservation Failure,” Marple History, 29 July 2021, https://marplehistory.com/coppock-house/.
[2] Sam Pickard, “Marple in the 1850s: Part One – The Landscape,” Marple History, 23 January 2022, https://marplehistory.com/1850s-landscape/; Lucy Simler, Marple Township: The First 100 Years, ed. Bonnie Scott (Marple Township, Pennsylvania: Havertown Printing Co. (printer), 1986), 42-47, 49-50.
[3] Henry Graham Ashmead, History of Delaware County, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: L. H. Everts & Co., 1884), 581; “Installation,” Delaware County Republican (Chester, Pennsylvania), 11 November 1859.
[4] “Installation,” Delaware County Republican (Chester, Pennsylvania), 11 November 1859; “Our History,” Marple Presbyterian Church, 2022, https://www.marplepres.org/ourhistory.
[5] Sam Pickard, “Hayti Cemetery and the Marple UAME Church,” Marple History, 18 June 2021, https://marplehistory.com/hayti-cemetery/.
[6] Ashmead, History of Delaware County, 575.
[7] “William Wiley,” 13 April 1837, Salem Methodist Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in “Pennsylvania and New Jersey, U.S., Church and Town Records, 1669-2013,” Ancestry.com, [online database], original data from Historic Pennsylvania Church and Town Records, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
[8] Clara McVeigh and Erma Shaver, “3. First Baptist Church of Newtown,” in Historic Newtown Township (Newtown Square, Delaware County, PA.), 1681-1983, eds. Alice and Carl Lindborg (Newtown Square, Pennsylvania: Newtown Township Tricentennial Commission, 1984), 231–34; Sam Pickard, “‘…In Harvest Thou Shalt Rest’: Rev. Compton’s Marple Farm,” Marple History, 26 December 2020, https://marplehistory.com/compton-marple-farm/; “Our Story,” Liberti Church Newtown Square, 2022, https://www.libertichurchnsq.org/our-story.
[9] “St. Denis History,” St. Denis Roman Catholic Church, 2022, http://saintdenis.org/st-denis-history/; 1860 U.S. Census, Schedule 1.—Free Inhabitants, Pennsylvania, Delaware County, Marple Township, pages 93-116.
[10] Carl Lindborg, “5. Old St. David’s,” in Historic Newtown Township (Newtown Square, Delaware County, PA.), 1681-1983, eds. Alice and Carl Lindborg (Newtown Square, Pennsylvania: Newtown Township Tricentennial Commission, 1984), 36–38.
[11] “Thomas Stinson,” 20 June 1852, Church of the Holy Trinity, West Chester, Chester County, Pennsylvania, in “Pennsylvania and New Jersey, U.S., Church and Town Records, 1669-2013,” Ancestry.com, [online database], original data from Historic Pennsylvania Church and Town Records, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; “H. Jones Moore,” death notice, Philadelphia Inquirer, 14 September 1896, 9.
[12] Ashmead, History of Delaware County, 603.