Histories

Entry for Maidencreek Preparative Meeting

Continued as a Hicksite meeting in 1827 by Exeter Monthly Meeting, after division of the oriiginal Mar\idencreek Preparative Meeting. This meeting retained the one-story gray building erected in 1759; the one-story gray limestone school-house built in 1807; and the 1-acre cemetery. All these properties were adjacent to each other and were located what was then known as the Stone Bridge on the site of what is today the maidencreek Reservoir, sometimes called the Lake Ontelaunee. The schoolhouse, which had been used by the original meeting for a weekday school, continued as such under the Hicksite Friends until it was closed in 1870. In 1926 the city of Reading purchased the land surrounding the meeting house, school and cemetery and in 1928 the land upon which thse properties stood, with the agreement that, "the City of Reading shall remove the building stone for stone and rebuild it with the same material on another piece of land suitable to the Friends." The school house and the cemetery were transferred to the present location under the same agreement. The City of Reading agreed to landscape the new 5-acre property and give it perpetual care. The present meeting house of the Maidencreek Preparative Meeting (Orthodox) stands on an adjoining plot of ground.