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THE FRIENDS' RECORDS
OF
SHREWSBURY, N. J.
VOL. I.
The preponderating religious element in the early days of Shrewsbury was Quaker. As soon as
a sufficient number of families of this faith were settled upon this tract, the) established a meeting,
which convened at the various houses.
irge 1 ox records in his Journal, 27"' of 6 mo., 1672, that he arrived at Richard Hartshorn's, at
Middletown Harbor, which was in a new country now called Jersey; went from there to Shrewsbury,
and they were building a new meeting-house there. It was evidently not ready for occupancy, for
Fox preached near where now stands the station of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, at Little Silver,
under the shade of a tree that stood in the corner of the road that leads to Shrewsbury Meeting
House.*
One tradition has it, that this primitive house was built of brick imported from Holland.
another, that it was of logs. In the center of the room a brick Boor was used as a fire-place, corresponding
to which, overhead, was a sheet-iron canopy, leading to the roof. This building
until 1815, when it was torn down and rebuilt of wood, in the following year.
As has ever been the case among them, they started a record of births, marriages, and deaths,
which ha- been continued, without interruption, from their earliest inception to date. The first
volume shows much marginal wear and decay, and in time it is likely to be lost from these causes. It
i- here produced, as is also the second volume, as literally as possible
* Parker tradition.
r 1