Family History and Woodbury Friends Meting 1/10/22

Recently I watched a very interesting video on the structure of the Woodbury Friends Meeting House. which at the time the video was made, in 2015 was 300 years old. I had actually taken a tour of the Woodbury Friends Meeting House some years before when the young and brilliant Megan Giordano was curator at the James and Ann Whitall House at Red Bank Battlefield, National Park. I was then, and have joined again, as a volunteer at the Whitall House. though the house is closed now during the winter season.

Woodbury Friends Meeting was of inteest to me not only because of the Whitall connection; James and Ann were members there and are buried there, but also because I was once a member of the Philadelphia Friends Meeting on Cherry Street, back in the late 1980's and early 1990's. At the time, I was working full time teaching Art in public school in New Jersey, and I was teaching part-time at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Saturday from 9 to 4 in the graduate education program. I had taken my Masters at UArts and because I was experienced as an actual teacher, I was teaching a course on classroom management called The Practicum Seminar. My graduate students were assisting full time public school teachers who were teaching in the Saturday Arts Lab School. I had begun to attend the Philadelphia meeting because my daughter was old enogh to understand and I wanted her to have a religious education as had I. My mother had been Sunday School Teacher at the Gloria Dei, Old Swede's Episcopal Church on Front Street in Philadelphia when I was a child. I thought it was important to have an understanding of religion, but to keep a free mind and the Society of Friends offered that kind of approach to spirituality. At the time, I joined, my daughter and I lived in Philadelphia and could walk over from our apartment on 8th and Pine, to the meeting on Cherry Street, but after we moved to New Jersey and I bought a house, we had to take the bus to the city on Sunday, not convenient. Also, after several years of teaching all week and on Saturday, I found myself teaching the First Day School (Sunday School) at Meeting on Sunday as well. I literally never had a day off, so I quit.

Still, I had taken Quaker 101 before I had joined and I admired and felt at home in the Society of Friends approach to a spiritual life, basically that there is that of "God" or whatever you wish to call it (a higher power), in ALL of us, the LIGHT within, and that you don't need intercessors such as priests or even the bible to speak to you, you can meditate and open your heart and feel the light withinn on your own. Also they had a pastoral relationship as a community and a sense of responsibility for their fellow man and the world at large, a kind of right action. The rejection of force even force of will was part of the relationship between Friends, allowing personal freedom to seek. The peace testimony and the action of speaking truth to power was interesting to me.

At the time that I attended, I had the privilege of knowing the Willoughby family, George and Lillian. They were staunch Friends and activists and the most truly good people. They have since passed, sadly, because the world needs people like them. Lately I had been feeling that now that I am retired and have more time, it would be helpful to once again nourish the spiritual side of my life, so I looked up the Woodbury Friends and found the video about the history of the building. As I said earlier I had once toured the building because the Whitall family had been members. What I learned from the video was the John Cooper had designed the building. Back in the days when Megan was Curator at Whitall HOuse, she had wondered aloud what the relatiohnship might be between the Coopers of Camden and the Whitall family because Ann Whitall's maiden name was Cooper.

At the time, I was also a volunteer at the Camden County HIstorical Society and at the Gloucester County Historical Society Where they have a phenomenal large Cooper family tree framed and on display.I was able to create a sketch of a family tree for Megan showing how Anne Cooper Whitall was related to the Camden Coopers who had founded the city of Camden. One of the Coopers was also a member of the Revolutionary Committees of Correspondence and his house had been occupied by a British General when the British occupied Philadelphia. In fact, the Woodbury Meeting had been confiscated to house the wounded British soldiers during the Battle of Red Bank in October of 1777.

It is a regret of mine that I have run out of time and energy because someone should write a book on the history of the Quakers in South Jersey. Their meeting houses dot the road from Burlington to Salem, the old Salem Road now called the Kings Highway (which is where I live in a different small town) and their mark is everywhere on the history of South Jersey from the first founders, such as the Fenwicks in Salem to the South and the Coopers in Camden, and they have been instruments of righteousness through all the struggles of our state and country such as through the Underground Railroad (Abigail Godwin) and Abolition to Women's Suffrage.

Next Sunday, known as First Day, at 10:00 a.m., I will be attending meeting in that fine and welcoming old building. I will let you know how it goes. By the way, John Cooper designed the Friend's Meeting and a Wood family member donated the land and the resources to build it. A copper cooking pot belonging to the Wood family from when they came here from Woodbury, England, sits on the hearth of the front room at Whitall HOuse. There are many Friends' Meeting houses still welcoming worshippers and also visitorrs and I attended a lecture at the Woodstown FRiends just before the pandemic. If you are driving around eploring, you can find them all along the route from Brulington to Salem and if I were you, I would keep on going and head down through Millville, Bridgeton, and on to Greenwich where there are two particularly fine and interesting Meeting Houses. It wa down to Salem that a descendent of John Cooper, founder of Camden City moved after he married a blacksmith's daughter and from which union sprange the South Jersey Cooper family and Anne Cooper Whitall.

Happy Trails! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com (Please don't bother with the comments function on the blog - it is corrupted by robospam. If you wish to contact me, use my e-mail.)