FUN FACTS
Beginning around 1800 most farms in the Halfmoon Valley south of present-day Stormstown were purchased by Quakers moving primarily from the Philadelphia area, most with deeds from Philadelphia Quaker Henry Drinker.
Halfmoon Friends Cemetery is the site of the original Halfmoon Valley Quakers’ meetinghouse.
The cemetery is the only Quaker cemetery in Centre County still accepting burials. About forty former members of State College Meeting are memorialized there. The Halfmoon Friends Cemetery Association, of which at least one member of State College Friends Meeting is a member, oversees the maintenance of the cemetery.
Halfmoon Friends’ second meeting house is now the Halfmoon Grange Building, further north up the Halfmoon Valley.
In 1841 Lucretia Mott, important Quaker suffragette and anti-slavery advocate, visited that meetinghouse for Centre Quarterly Meeting. Many Friends had to sit on the lawn outside, so two years later they built a larger third meetinghouse next to the second one.
When this meeting ceased to be active, in the 1930s, members of the Way family began attending State College meeting, including sons Elwood and Ralph. Elwood later wrote a history of Centre County Quakers, and Ralph built the State College Friends’ present meetinghouse on Prospect Avenue in 1980, and also built Foxdale Village Quaker Retirement Community in 1990.
Half of State College Meeting’s benches were donated by Halfmoon Friends, both to the 1927 meetinghouse on Atherton and the 1980 meetinghouse on Prospect. (They’re the ones with the open backs.)
To read more about both the Halfmoon Friends Meeting (Chapter Two) and the Halfmoon Friends Cemetery (Chapter Three) click on this link to Quakers in Centre County, Pennsylvania.
To see maps of the memorials at the Halfmoon Friends Cemetery, click on these links: Map1 Map2