The earliest of the four Quaker meetings which have existed in Centre County was located about fifteen miles west of present-day State College in the Halfmoon Valley. In the 1790s several Quaker families, most from the Philadelphia area or areas just west in Chester or Lancaster County, began moving into the valley, most purchasing their land from prominent Philadelphia Quaker Henry Drinker.
In 1799, three years after being approved as a “preparative meeting,” they built the first of what would eventually be three meetinghouses. This meetinghouse, located at the site of the Halfmoon Friends Cemetery (present-day address: 3794 Halfmoon Valley Road; Warriors Mark, PA), was succeeded by a second one built two miles north of that site in 1831. That meetinghouse today serves as the Halfmoon Grange Hall. (In 1841 it famously welcomed a visit by important Quaker suffragette Lucretia Mott.) A third, larger meetinghouse was built in 1844 adjacent to the second to accommodate large Quarterly Meeting gatherings, but it was removed around 2000 due to deterioration.
Halfmoon Valley Friends’ meeting existed for most of its history as Centre Preparative Meeting, part of Centre Monthly Meeting, which also included Bald Eagle/Unionville Preparative Meeting. It was active throughout the nineteenth century but declined in membership and activity in the early twentieth century. Regular worship ended by the 1930s, though the meeting was not officially laid down until 1975. For most of its life Centre Monthly Meeting was part of Baltimore Yearly Meeting’s Centre Quarterly Meeting, which also included Dunnings Creek and West Branch Monthly Meetings.
In 1941, as the meeting itself declined, Halfmoon Quakers created the Halfmoon Friends Cemetery Association in order to maintain and preserve the meeting’s cemetery at its original site. That Association has faithfully carried out that responsibility for the past century, with descendants of the Way and Wilson families serving the majority of leadership roles as trustees (at least eleven of the nineteen persons who have served as trustees). Trustees’ longevity of service is noteworthy, with fifteen having served for over a decade, eleven for over twenty years, and five having served from 41-63 years.
Halfmoon Friends Cemetery continues to accommodate burials to the present, with over 360 identified memorials. (Additional burials are acknowledged from early years when Friends’ practice was to only mark a burial with an unmarked stone or none at all.) For the past four decades that has included over three dozen members/attenders of State College Friends Meeting, which is the only Centre County Quaker meeting which did not establish its own burial ground.
Those interested in learning more about Halfmoon Quakers and Halfmoon Friends Cemetery are invited to read from chapters two and three of this book by clicking on the link below: