Parrish Hall is 127 years old in 1996-115 as rebuilt after the fire of 1881. Swarthmoor Hall, the Elizabethan manor house for which the College was named, will soon reach the age of 400. English Quakers are now restoring and renovating the older building to ensure it at least another century of useful life.
If those Hicksite Friends who chose the College's site 11 miles southwest of Philadelphia had followed customary Quaker practice, our alma mater would have been called Westdale College. This area, at the time part of Springfield Township, had taken its name from the family who owned the farm west of Chester Road by the railroad station. Almost universally before 1850, Quaker meetings and institutions were named after the place where they were located. Memorializing individuals or places was very unusual until the late 19th century, so that the Friends School, Providence, only became Moses Brown School in 1904. So why did those 1860s Hicksite Quakers choose to name their new institution after a building near the small town of Ulverston in northwest England?
In this case the name was chosen before the site. At the December 1863 annual meeting of the Friends Education Association, which had been organizing and raising funds for the project, the final choice between Westdale in Springfield or Wissahickon in Upper Dublin was submitted to the unquakerly procedure of a vote, with a 10-day allowance for receipt of mail votes. (The final tally was Westdale 1,458, Wissahickon 427.) The choice of a name was made at the same meeting, before the results were in.
Margaret E. Hallowell of Sandy Spring, Md., wife of the well-known educator Benjamin Hallowell-and certainly a "weighty" Friend in her own right-is credited with suggesting "Swarthmore." We do not know the alternatives proposed, but, unlike the choice of site, the name seems to have caused no controversy. The meeting directed the Board of Managers to draft and apply for a charter to incorporate "Swarthmore College."
It is hard not to read significance into the fact that a woman proposed the name of Swarthmore for this radical experiment, a college offering the same curriculum to both men and women on the same site. Swarthmoor Hall was a symbol of the strong leadership roles taken by early Quaker wo-men. It was the home of Margaret Fell, who from 1652 provided the administrative skill that kept the movement from falling apart from the centrifugal forces of its individualistic theology. When, as a widow, she married George Fox, Quakerism's dominant leader, Swarthmoor Hall became his home as well. Strikingly, he renounced all control over her wealth, making her an anomaly in the 17th century-an independent, propertied married wo-man. The building is thus both a landmark in Quaker history and in women's rights, an ideal model for a college that numbered Lucretia Mott, Martha Tyson, and Margaret Hallowell among its founders.
The building it-self was constructed by George Fell, an Ulverston attorney, on an estate acquired by his family at the breakup of the monasteries in 1532. The gray freestone of the walls has long since been covered with plaster and pebble-dash, but the local slate roof and mullioned windows preserve the 17th-century character of the exterior. The building's austerity is relieved only by a large three-story window bay and the now-restored balcony from which George Fox occasionally preached.
The interior was paneled throughout, though the original paneling survives in only two bedrooms. The flagstone floor and large stone fireplace give the dining hall a clear 17th-century flavor, though the oak paneling is the result of 20th-century renovations. Also surviving from the building's earliest days are a beautiful carved fireplace and a rare newel staircase rising from the ground floor to the attic. In the 20th century, visitors frequently remark on the building's quiet peace, but 350 years ago, it would have been filled with the noise and bustle of a large family, a working farm, public affairs, and a steady stream of visitors.
Margaret Askew Fell came to Swarthmoor Hall in 1632 as the bride of George Fell's son Thomas. As her husband became absorbed by politics-eventually becoming judge, member of Parliament, and Vice Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancashire-she assumed primary responsibility for managing the estate, along with raising eight children (all girls but one). When she heard George Fox preach at Ulverston in 1652, his challenge to find the Spirit behind Scripture struck home, and she immediately turned her home into a base of Quaker operations in the north of England and worldwide.
It was from Swarthmoor Hall that Margaret Fell went forth to preaching and later to prison in Lancaster. It was at Swarthmoor Hall that she maintained, in effect, Quakerism's original secretariat and treasury. With her daughters' assistance, she managed a network of correspondence and financial subsidies that linked the scores of traveling missionaries "publishing the Truth." As the movement's center of gravity shifted from the north of England to central bodies in London, Margaret Fell's power declined, but she remained a revered matriarch until her death in 1702.
Thomas Fell's will left Swarthmoor Hall to his widow, unless she remarried, at which time it reverted to his residual heirs, his daughters.* At Margaret Fell's marriage to George Fox in 1669, formal title to Swarthmoor Hall thus fell to her daughters, though she retained other properties. There was little immediate shift in practice, since they had long been full partners in the management of the estate. Daughter Margaret and her husband Donald Abraham became the main caregivers during the mother's declining years, and the Hall passed to them on her death in 1702.
By the mid-18th century, Swarthmoor Hall had become just another rental property for their heirs, and the building deteriorated steadily while occupied by tenant farmers. Almost all the paneling was removed, and half the building collapsed. In 1912 family descendant Emma Clarke Abraham bought what was left and 107 acres of the property. She restored the Hall with great care, according to the standards of the day. London (now Britain) Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends bought it from her heirs in 1954, making basic renovations and refurnishing it with period furniture. Since then it has been primarily a tourist attraction for those interested in Quaker history and old houses, with occasional small meetings being held there.
By 1989 it had become clear to London Yearly Meeting that Swarthmoor Hall required major renovation. Minor roof repairs uncovered major structural damage. Unwilling to spend the amount of money required simply to maintain a tourist attraction, the Yearly Meeting initiated a full review of the property's use.
In 1992 the Meeting's executive committee approved a plan calling for the full renovation of the original Hall and construction of a smaller, separate building with residences for 14 people. The combined facility will operate as a small study and retreat center, which is intended to restore Swarthmoor Hall's role as a spiritual focus for the Society of Friends. And it will continue to be a lasting reminder of its Quaker roots to the College that bears its name.
Mary Ellen Grafflin Chijioke '67 is curator of the Friends Historical Library. By mid-January British Friends had raised about 70 percent of the £500,000 (about $750,000) required for the proj-ect. They are hoping to raise $70,000 from American sources. Donations earmarked "Swarthmoor Hall Appeal," may be forwarded to Friends World Committee for Consultation, Section of the Americas, 1506 Race Street, Philadelphia PA 19102.