The first recorded minutes of the meeting are dated July 2, 1684, not long after William Penn landed in nearby Chester to establish the colony of Pennsylvania.

Its design is similar to that of the Horsham Friends Meeting House with separate entrances for men and women.

In 1682, prior to the coming of William Penn to his new Province, there had settled in this place eight Friends from England (three of them with families).

These early settlers were Samuel Bradshaw and Thomas Worth from Oxton, county of Nottingham, John Blunston, Michael Blunston, George Wood, Joshua Fearne, Henry Gibbins and Samuel Sellers, from the county of Derby.

In the next year came Richard Bonsal, Edmund Cartlidge, Thomas Hood, John Bartram, and Robert Naylor from Derbyshire; John Hallowell, William Wood and Thomas Bradshaw from Nottinghamshire, and Richard Tucker from the county of Wiltshire.

It is not unnatural that this little body of people, severing ties in the old world to begin life again in the new, and coming, as they did, from almost the same neighborhood, should desire to give to their new home a name which would recall to them the old.

As most of the early settlers were Friends by convincement, some of them having suffered persecution for their faith, it is not likely that their religious meetings were suspended during their voyage, much less after their arrival.

The first minute, dated the 2d of the 5th Mo., 1684, is to the effect that (( Samuel Sellers and Anna Gibens of Darby, declared their intentions of taking each other in Marriage, it being first tyme."

In a letter to Friends in England, dated from Philadelphia 'the 17th of the 1st Month, 1683, and signed by William Penn, Samuel Jennings, Christopher Taylor, John Blunston and many others, we read, (( For our meetings, more especially for worship, there are * * **in Pennsylvania, one at the Falls, one at the Governor's House, one at Colchester river, all in the County of Bucks; one at Tawcony, one at Philadelphia, both in that county, one at Darby at John Blunston's, one at Chester, one at Ridley at John Simcock's, and one at William Ruse's at Chichester in Cheshire.

Doubtless these concerns were not without effect) but there is no evidence that the Darby Friends ever joined themselves with the Meeting at Chester.