THE SATURDAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING: THE STORY OF THE KENNETT QUAKER FAIR

By Lars Farmer

IT STARTED ON STATE STREET

For much of the twentieth century, if you were connected with Kennett Friends Meeting, the Saturday before Thanksgiving meant one thing: Quaker Fair day.

For me, the Fair is tied up with some of my earliest memories of Kennett Meeting: the smell of food coming from the kitchen, rooms filled with books and household treasures, children making things to sell, ponies circling the lawn, my father painting pastel portraits in the front hallway, and practically every Friend in the Meeting having some job to do.

But the Quaker Fair was already decades old before I ever walked through the door, and it did not begin as a fair at all.

The story begins at Kennett Friends’ former meetinghouse on State Street. In 1940, Kennett Meeting had a committee whose purpose was to raise money for the American Friends Service Committee. On March 28, 1941, Friends held a turkey dinner at the State Street Meeting House, and the proceeds, along with bake-sale profits, went to AFSC.

On November 8, 1942, Kennett’s AFSC committee, the Needy Members Committee and the Best Interests Committee were combined into a new Social Service Committee. The new committee continued dinners, bake sales and rummage sales for AFSC.

Then, on December 4, 1943, the Meeting minutes record the first Bazaar at State Street, followed by tea and supper. Ruth Yeatman was chairman. That Bazaar became the direct ancestor of the Quaker Fair.

By 1946, Mabel Jackson reported $536.39 in proceeds going to AFSC. The Meeting also occasionally supported other needs, including the Neighborhood Guild and assistance for displaced persons in the postwar years. Mabel Jackson’s name would live on for generations in one of the Fair’s best-loved departments: Mabel’s Attic.

THE BAZAAR BECOMES THE QUAKER FAIR

In 1951, the Bazaar was chaired by Nancy Darling and Dar Rayne. Then there was a five-year lapse in the Bazaar itself. Friends kept raising money through dinners, bake sales and rummage sales, apparently trying to send at least $500 a year to AFSC.

In 1956, the Bazaar returned under the name that finally stuck: the Quaker Fair. The revived event was financially successful, nearly doubling earlier fundraising.

Not long afterward, Kennett Friends moved from the old State Street Meeting House to the new meetinghouse on Sickle Street in the late 1950s. The Fair moved with the Meeting. The old State Street property was the downtown site later associated with the library and post office area, while Sickle Street became the setting most people of my generation remember when they think of the Quaker Fair.

MY FATHER’S EASEL IN THE HALLWAY

My own memories begin in the mid-1970s.

My father would drag me to the Sickle Street meetinghouse early in the morning and set up his easel in the front hallway. He would begin with a practice pastel portrait of me. I still have one of those old portraits hanging in my bedroom today.

Then he would spend the day painting pastel portraits of children from Meeting families, including the Amosses and the Ograms. To me, that front hallway and his easel became part of what Quaker Fair day looked like.

FIRST DAY SCHOOL PREPARED FOR THE FAIR

For the children of the Meeting, the Fair did not begin on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. It seemed to begin almost as soon as First Day School started again after summer.

We made crafts to sell at our table, and one of our traditions was traveling to Woodward Farm off Route 52 to pick apples. We brought the apples back to the Sickle Street meetinghouse. That is where we pressed cider, with all of us kids taking turns working the press. We even made ice cream there.

Meanwhile, the adults were preparing the luncheon on an entirely different scale. One Friend raised chickens near Doe Run that were used for the chicken salad. Friends gathered to prepare pies, baked goods, croissants and the mushroom soup that became one of the Fair’s great traditions.

EVERY ROOM BECAME SOMETHING ELSE

On Fair day, the meetinghouse was transformed. We hauled tables up from the basement and put them everywhere. Every classroom seemed to have a purpose.

There were books, plants, children’s crafts, games, handmade goods, outside vendors and food. The worship room itself might contain plants and sales tables. One room had children’s activities, including the goldfish game.

And then there was Mabel’s Attic. The Brumbaugh family always seemed able to produce an unbelievable amount of household material, much of it from rental properties. The big classroom became a giant indoor garage sale filled with dishes, glassware, furniture and all kinds of treasures. I usually found something I thought I needed to take home.

Mabel’s Attic also produced one of the great unofficial Fair traditions. At the end of the day, the teenagers would haul leftover glassware down the back steps and throw it into the dumpster. After spending the day carefully arranging and pricing everything, there was something enormously satisfying to a teenager about hearing all that unwanted glass shatter during cleanup.

THE PONIES AND THE WIDER COMMUNITY

Outside, the Ruggieri family brought ponies in trailers and led children around the side yard and backyard of the Sickle Street meetinghouse.

Those pony rides became part of the Fair’s identity. My wife remembers the ponies from her childhood even though she was not a Quaker. That tells you something important about the Fair: it was never just an internal church fundraiser.

It brought the wider Kennett community through the Meetinghouse doors. Families came for lunch, books, Christmas shopping, bargains in Mabel’s Attic, crafts and pony rides. One year we even released doves. For many people, the Fair simply became part of the season.

THE PEOPLE WERE THE FAIR

When I think back on it, I remember the people as much as the departments.

Deb Brumbaugh and Susan Ogram seemed always to be among the cashiers when I was young. They were older than I was and, in my childhood mind, entitled to give me a hard time.

Susan also left me with a memory that has lasted more than fifty years. We were practicing for a Christmas program at Meeting. I was just beginning to learn guitar, Susan was at the piano, and I was trying to play along. Finally she turned to me and said, “You’re just not good enough for the program.” It broke my heart.

I suppose I have spent much of the last fifty years trying to prove her wrong. I am still playing guitar, writing songs and putting them on YouTube, so I guess the jury is still out.

IT TOOK THE WHOLE MEETING

What people coming through the doors probably did not see was how much organization the Fair required.

Nearly everyone had a job. There was someone responsible for Mabel’s Attic, someone for books, someone for plants, someone for the luncheon, someone for children’s activities, someone for crafts and someone for parking.

When I eventually coordinated the Fair myself, I came to understand what those earlier generations had been doing. You did not really run the Quaker Fair. You made sure every part of it had somebody willing to run it.

The Fair also taught Kennett Meeting how to manage crowds and cars. Decades of Quaker Fair parking gave us a practical skill that turned out to have a life of its own.

FROM QUAKER FAIR TO MUSHROOM FESTIVAL PARKING

Today, one of Kennett Meeting’s major fundraisers is parking cars during the Mushroom Festival. We do not cook on anything like the scale we once did. These days, parking is our real core competency.

In a funny way, that modern fundraiser grew naturally out of decades of Quaker Fair experience: organizing volunteers, assigning responsibilities, directing traffic, collecting money and getting a large number of cars safely onto and off the property.

The causes supported by the Meeting have changed and broadened over time. More of the money now stays local, including support for immigrants and other community needs, while the American Friends Service Committee remains part of our long history of service.

WHAT THE FAIR REALLY MEANT

For me, the history of the Quaker Fair is not only a list of dates.

It began with a turkey dinner at State Street in 1941, developed into a Bazaar in 1943, took the name Quaker Fair in 1956, and then moved with Kennett Friends to Sickle Street. By the time I knew it as a child, it had become one of the great annual traditions of the Meeting and the wider Kennett community.

I first knew it as a little boy sitting for my father’s pastel portrait, turning the cider press and looking for treasures in Mabel’s Attic. Later, I became one of the people responsible for helping the whole thing run.

The tables, ponies, books, pies and glassware are mostly memories now. But the deeper tradition remains: Friends working together, finding a job for everyone, opening the Meetinghouse to the community and using the proceeds to support causes rooted in service.

That, to me, is the real history of the Kennett Quaker Fair.

Historical source note: The early dates, committee names and fundraising details are drawn from Janet Heist’s “Fair Roots,” based on her review of Kennett Monthly Meeting minutes at the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore.