General Chat

Have you got any?

Someone who has my 4x Great Grandfather in their tree, thinks he was a Quaker, I can't find any real evidence that he was, but while investigating the records she gave me, I see that birth records give the names of those who attended the birth, and marriage records give names of those who attended the wedding, even down to the bridegrooms mothers name who and a different surname saying that she had remarried after her first husbands death.

I wish all my family had been Quakers :-D

Would be very useful then Lynda, but no, none of mine were Quakers.

Can you find his burial ???

He maybe in a Quaker burial ground :-D :-D

I have some in my Tree - in my Brooker family. One of them wrote about the Quakers of Cumbria.

Shame they weren't Rose, you'd know all about them :-)

I don't think my 4x Great Grandfather was a Quaker Joy, well if he was born one he didn't marry or was buried as one. The person who has him in her tree, just attached the records she found to her tree because the dates fitted with him, and his father had a job sort of connected to his profession.
I so wish it was him, it would give me so much more info, I don't have his parents, so it would take me so much further back :-(

Lucky you JoyLouise, do you have birth and marriage records that give the sort of details I have?

lots and lots .... if yr rellies are getting married etc in places called anything like "Great Meeting" Or "Great Meeting House" then they were/are Quakers.
The BMD records before 1837 were not kept with the COfE parish records.

fwiw modern Quakers can and do have a drink if they feel like it.

I'd make a great Quaker Rollo, I don't drink,so I'd be a model one :-D

There is a little more to it than that ;-)
If you have Quaker ancestors try and find out more - like as not you will find some very brave people.

One of OH's ancestors back in the early 19th century was reckoned to be a devout Quaker who preached at Brigg Flatts .......... but he and all his family were married in church

Some ancestors are believed to have been on the Second Fleet of William Penn to Pennsylvania in 1683, but all of us are having trouble connecting "our" branch with that one ............ there's 2 generations of linkage missing.

The family members moved back and forth between a certain area of Lancashire and a certain area of Yorkshire, and the word is that they moved when the persecution got too bad ........... one branch of the family would exchange their mill in one county with another branch in the other.

Yet, all the ones that I have followed up got married in CofE ....... so it is all a bit of a mystery

Yes I have quite a few back in the 16 and 1700s. :-) Mine were the Nixons who settled in Pennsylvania in the early days. They were always on the move with children born in different places but I assumed, maybe wrongly that it was to do with spreading the word. Some came back to England too.

It made me read up on them and I was most pleasantly surprised. They considered everyone equal including women. They kept very good records of marriages etc.

I found this book useful:

http://www.amazon.com/Early-Friends-Families-Upper-Bucks/dp/0806306688

No, Lynda, I have none. The Quakers are not down my direct line.

James Gorton Brooker (b 1895) was the second cousin who wrote about the Quakers of Cumbria. He had a sister and their father died when they were quite young. The father, George Brooker, is my first cousin three times removed. The Brookers were not Quakers but George married into a Quaker family I believe.

This is my maternal grandmother's side of the family.

I was told many years ago that my paternal grandfather's side also had Quakers but I've not been able to trace them so far.

Oops, slip there. It was my grandfather's family also on my mother's side that supposedly had the Quakers that I've been unable to trace - my maternal grandfather, same as my maternal grandmother.

I keep getting DNA matches with descendants of a Quaker family from Rickmansworth some of whom preceded Penn to his colony (which results in me having matches with people in both England and the US who are all still missing a link or two between themselves)

but since my ancestor in question had a completely different name and his roots were in Wiltshire back to the beginning of parish records, it's a puzzlement

I do still maintain that ancestor of mine was closely related to a pair of brothers with his name, who I believe came from his little bit of Wiltshire, who settled a different part of the US and were Quakers

reading up on them, it's fascinating to see the religious intolerance that existed there in the 1600s ... one of their group, a Baptist, was punished by the Puritans in charge, for giving some Quakers shelter for an hour from a rainstorm!

Puritans were not looking for religious freedom; they were looking to run their own show

Unfortunately the same is true of early Quaker settlements in the colonies, where people were shunned and banished for infinitessimal transgressions of the local mores.

Which reminds me of the Quaker connection I'd forgotten, a branch of a Cheshire family of mine on my other side were apparently Quaker back around that same time, as they also headed off to the 17th century Quaker settlements in the colonies where they are documented to within an inch of their births, marriages and deaths.

So I'm with Rambling Rose there ... if only!

OH's 4 x gt grandfather is the one said to have been a Quaker preacher. His possible ancestor, or maybe only a side link, went on the Second Fleet to Pennsylvania in 1683 with his wife and children

Unfortunately, he died of cholera 6 months after arriving ....... and most of his family were later excommunicated :-S

My g.g.uncle married into a Quaker family from Margate, Kent, and went onto to teach in Quaker School in Somerset. My Grandfather attended this School in 1903-1908.

my 9th x grandfather was imprisoned in 1665 and 1668 for being Quakers. His son arrived in Pennsylvania in 1685 aboard the Rebecca from Liverpool with his famiiy.
I have found some interesting documentation but I wonder what their life was really like.

Another branch were Quakers in 1700 - early 1800, all born married and died around Marsden / Crawshaw Booth in lancashire.