Cropwell Meeting held its first annual Trunk or Treat on Sunday, inviting neighborhood families over for games, treats, a pumpkin hunt, and tours of the meetinghouse.
The area around Cropwell has changed quite a bit since Friends first settled there in the 1780s. A patchwork of Quaker family farms has given way to twenty-first century suburbs, and today the meetinghouse property is an oasis of open space in a built-up area of housing developments. Few of the neighbors have ever visited the meetinghouse.
Cropwell contacted the homeowners association for the adjacent Marlton Village development, which agreed to distribute 210 Trunk or Treat flyers to its families. Cropwell also announced the event on its Facebook page and website.
About thirty neighbors showed up. The kids came with great costumes (princesses, dragons, tigers, at least one ninja), while parents came with lots of questions about Friends. “I didn’t know this building was still used for anything,” one told us, adding “I love history!” There were many tours of the 1809 meetinghouse, in which Cropwell clerk Earl Evens and others shared the meeting’s history and explained Quaker worship. One parent said “you guys did a fabulous job” as she left a tour.
The visitors were all invited to come back for worship some future Sunday morning.
