In 1695 the now thriving community in "Merion," named in honor of their Welsh Merionethshire, built a stone meeting house, later to be enlarged. It stood on a well-used path linking the Welsh farms to Philadelphia. Tradition says William Penn visited and preached here. In the loft above the meeting room, school was held for girls and boys, including Indian children.

There is evidence that this is the most pictured Friends meeting house in the United States, if not the world, probably because of its age, and because it was easily accessible from a growing metropolis once a publishing center. Two additional acres were given the Meeting in 1801 and 1804 by John Dickinson, a participant in founding our nation who had family ties to Merion.

Merion Friends recently received a great honor when the meetinghouse was declared a National Landmark by the Dept. of Interior in Washington, D.C. Weekly meetings for worship, as well as occasional weddings and burials in the adjacent grounds, continue to the present day.

This burial record database is the work of Mary Wood, archivist of the Merion Friends Meeting. The listings come from a wide variety of sources, as recordswere kept in many different formats throughout the centuries since the burial groundwas first used. Questions about the location and nature of the sources cited maybe addressed to the Lower Merion Historical Society at LMHistory@comcast.net

A Glossary of terms used in the database is availableto explain some of the Quaker terminology used in the original records.

Updated November, 2002