The earliest mention made of Horsham Meeting is that in the Abington Minutes of 1777, stating:
It is agreed that there be two overseers chosen for Horsham Meeting, viz., John Michener and Thomas Iredell.[493]
This was doubtless very near the time of its first establishment as a preparative meeting. The earliest preparative minutes accessible are those beginning 1757.[494] We may feel certain, however, that there was a school before this time, for in the Gazette for 1753 there appeared an advertisement which stated:
Any person well qualified for keeping a school and comes well recommended by applying to John Lukens, surveyor, Abraham Lukens, or Benjamin Cadwalader, living in Horsham township, near the meeting house, may meet with proper encouragement.[495]
Assistance by donations
This may have been the same stone house in which Isaac Comly of Byberry taught in 1799, we cannot say. In the records of the preparative meeting on the first page there is an account of donations concerning schools, but the page is so badly mutilated that no straight account can be made of it.[496] It will be recalled from the account given of Abington schools that Horsham members were also benefitted by Carter’s legacy and others.[497]
A committee appointed to investigate the conditions of schools in Horsham Meeting reported (1779):
Report on Horsham schools, 1779
Four schools mentioned
We, the committee appointed, report as follows: That upon inquiry we found that the schoolhouse on the meeting house land is wholly the property of Friends, and the subscribers generally Friends; we also find that there has been a schoolhouse lately built on a piece of land held in trust for that purpose between John Parry’s and John Walton’s wholly by the Friends, and generally Friends subscribers; there is also one other schoolhouse near the Billet on a piece of land held in trust for that purpose by Friends and others, and one other schoolhouse near John Jarret’s upon sufferance; the two last mentioned schools being made up by subscribers of different societies; which, after being considered, the same Friends are continued with John Parry, Samuel Shoemaker (mason), John Conrad, and John Jarrett added to them as a committee, to have the oversight of such schools as may be properly under the notice of this meeting.[498]