Quakers!! Oh My!!

It's nice to see my old Quaker post from last year revived.

I haven't had time to do any serious research, but have learned that four generations of my Vail ancestors were Quakers (starting about 1700 and ending about 1800). Quakerism was abandoned by ancestor William Vail (1772-1842) and he was officially expelled from the Society of Friends when he was still a young man.

I've read online that there are groups that are specifically devoted to Quaker history. Anybody at CWT know of any of these that might be helpful to me in running down Quaker activities in Westchester County, NY during this period?
 
It's nice to see my old Quaker post from last year revived.

I haven't had time to do any serious research, but have learned that four generations of my Vail ancestors were Quakers (starting about 1700 and ending about 1800). Quakerism was abandoned by ancestor William Vail (1772-1842) and he was officially expelled from the Society of Friends when he was still a young man.

I've read online that there are groups that are specifically devoted to Quaker history. Anybody at CWT know of any of these that might be helpful to me in running down Quaker activities in Westchester County, NY during this period?

Not a group but I was pleasantly surprised to find the Baltimore Quaker meeting records scanned on ancestry.com. That's where I was able to read all the high-stakes drama about Eliza being expelled. :smile:

I'm at work and can't easily access the website but maybe they have the meeting records from where your ancestors lived digitized as well?
 
Howdy Bruce

There was once a great book series called 'Rivers of America.' Oh, I mean it is GREAT. It's all about the geographic and cultural history surrounding, well, our rivers!

One, about the Susquehanna River (written by a Carl Carmer), featured the tale of Cresap's War. This was fought between British rednecks from Maryland and British rednecks from Pennsylvania.

Cresap himself was (I believe) either Anglican or Presbyterian. He is quoted as repeatedly chiding his Pennsylvanian adversaries (mostly Presbyterians), "I serve a real man [Lord Baltimore] and not some quaking dogs in Philadelphia." I love that bolded phrase. Makes me laugh every time I drive past the local Quaker church. :wink:
 
Some of my mother's ancestors emigrated to Chester County and married into Quaker families, though my direct line did not. On the other hand, another branch of her family descended from Danish Vikings. I guess I'm kinda balanced out in between.
 
It's nice to see my old Quaker post from last year revived.

I haven't had time to do any serious research, but have learned that four generations of my Vail ancestors were Quakers (starting about 1700 and ending about 1800). Quakerism was abandoned by ancestor William Vail (1772-1842) and he was officially expelled from the Society of Friends when he was still a young man.

I've read online that there are groups that are specifically devoted to Quaker history. Anybody at CWT know of any of these that might be helpful to me in running down Quaker activities in Westchester County, NY during this period?
There used to be a great site called Quaker Corner. It was part of RootsWeb. Ancestry took over RootsWeb. Then, if I remember right, there was a question about the security of RootsWeb, and Ancestry took the whole thing down and has been returning resources slowly. As far as I can tell Quaker Corner hasn't been restored yet. That being said, you can still see an old version on the Wayback Machine, at https://web.archive.org/web/20160207021450/http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~quakers/index.htm. I'm not sure how much of it is still accessible through that link, but there was a lot at one point.
 
Same, from NC. It has to be a mistake to assume Quakers did not fight- ours left, fought in the Revolution and came back. It wasn't until the Civil War our ancestors left for good. Grgrgrandfather, 126th OVI, married a Methodist, whether because the sect wouldn't allow him back or the Methodist female decided the point isn't known.
Thanks for your response.
Many Quakers in my family became Methodists as well.
 
Thanks for your response.
Many Quakers in my family became Methodists as well.


Interesting! Wonder if there was something in that or, were Methodists just so prevalent at the time, it was considered kinda mainstream? Always assumed my battleax grgrgrandmother pushed her husband that way. She was a little formidable.
 
Interesting! Wonder if there was something in that or, were Methodists just so prevalent at the time, it was considered kinda mainstream?
Thanks for your response.
I credit it to the Second Great Awakening.
 
Daniel Boone's family were Penn. Quakers who moved to N. C.
My earliest Penn. ancestors were originally Quakers who later became members of the Church of the Brethren, or "Dunkers," which seems to me to be rather Quaker-like, but I don't know.

So in your ancestral quest, if you run out of Quakers, they may have done the same as mine.

Dunkers followed a doctrine of baptism that included full submersion in water, 3 times . . . 1 for father, 1 for son and 1 for holy spirit. Some are still to be found in Aiken, South Carolina.
 
... BTW - There is a famous story that Gen. Nathaniel Greene of Revolutionary War fame was kicked out of the Quakers for embracing the war for independence.

Nathaniel Greene is one of my favorite characters of American History: his home in Rhode Island is a State Historical Site and boasts one of the several cannon cast by his ironworks - I don't imagine the Quakers particularly appreciated nor endorsed that kind of activity! As a young man while on business trips to Boston he made the acquaintance of bookseller Henry Knox who had imported for his store all kinds of books, including military manuals which the two apparently devoured. Once the Revolution occurred, Knox and his wife fled Boston, then under British occupation and joined the Rebel army outside the city, including the Rhode Island militia led by his friend Greene. The two soon became part of the staff of the Commander-in-Chief George Washington, due largely to their acquired knowledge, which although amateurish was far more than most of the other revolutionaries. Although Greene's course was far from smooth over the next seven years, his campaign against Cornwallis' British in the Carolinas became a classic of guerilla or small-unit warfare.
 
... Cresap himself was (I believe) either Anglican or Presbyterian. He is quoted as repeatedly chiding his Pennsylvanian adversaries (mostly Presbyterians), "I serve a real man [Lord Baltimore] and not some quaking dogs in Philadelphia." I love that bolded phrase. Makes me laugh every time I drive past the local Quaker church. :wink:
The pioneers of western Pennsylvania HATED the Quakers, largely for their friendliness toward the native tribes who inhabited the region they were attempting to settle. Of course, the eastern part of the colony had already been claimed, originally by Quakers, so these largely Scots-Irish latecomers were forced farther west onto disputed lands encroaching on the Alleghenies and the Forks of the Ohio (modern Pittsburgh). This led to all kinds of excesses on their part, mainly of the "only GOOD Indian is a DEAD Indian" variety - every time there was a conflict they blamed the Quakers. Once the Revolution came, both sides blamed and despised the Quakers for their attempted neutrality and pacifism; with eventual American victory in the war the political domination of what had once been Quaker William Penn's Colony was broken forever.
 
Thanks for your response.
Many Quakers in my family became Methodists as well.
Interesting! Wonder if there was something in that or, were Methodists just so prevalent at the time, it was considered kinda mainstream? Always assumed my battleax grgrgrandmother pushed her husband that way. She was a little formidable.
Methodism was still a fairly recent movement and one that was in opposition to the established and staid Church of England. Under the leadership of the Wesley brothers Methodism was noted for evangelism marked by the ubiquitous Methodist circuit riders who during the Colonial period and afterward roamed the hinterlands proselytizing the frontiersmen, christening babies, performing weddings, etc., all of which popularized the sect. Since the Wesley's remained in England and within the established church, it was mainly here in America that their followers were considered a splinter group and one less radical than the Baptists who would later see dominance in many regions.
 
The Slave's Cause devotes a lot of attention to Quakers as slaveowners and the conflict within the denomination over slavery. Since I live right next to Hicksville, the center of Quaker abolitionism in NY, and my own village of Westbury still has the Hicks family living in it, I will put up a little on the important role that Quakers played in struggling over slavery among the Friends and then facing outward to work for abolition.

ABOLITIONISTS OF THE MIDDLE PERIOD Abolitionists in the middle period paved the way for the second wave. One of the most important was the Quaker reformer Elias Hicks, many of whose followers joined the abolition movement. Echoing earlier abolitionist Quakers, Hicks condemned not just slavery but all wealth making and market society. Like Woolman, he traveled extensively and left a journal of his ministry. In 1811 Hicks published his Observations on the Slavery of Africans and their Descendants, in which he noted that “custom and education” made many believe that African slavery was consistent with “justice and social order.” But simply because slavery was sanctioned by manmade laws, it could not “alter the nature of justice.” In a series of queries Hicks established that Africans were unjustly deprived of their natural rights and that racism was special pleading, a cloak based on selfish motives to cover unrighteous conduct. Slavery was an act of war upheld by violence and “an avaricious thirst of gain.” Enslaving a person and then taking away all the products of his or her labor was robbery. Calling for the immediate abolition of slavery by law, Hicks felt that gradual emancipation, which was “the best step” yet taken, was not fully consistent with “justice and equity.” He pointed out that while whites attained adulthood early, black people in the North were forced to labor for their masters for a longer time before they were freed. At the very least, slaveholders ought to educate slave children.
Sinha, Manisha. The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (Kindle Locations 3702-3707). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.
 
More from The Slave's Cause:

Hicks held consumers and purchasers of slave goods just as culpable in upholding slavery. Like Lay, he called on people to abstain from using products produced by slave labor in order to curb the “luxury and excess . . . the gain of oppression” of slaveholders. Hicks’s ideas and the British Quaker example of a boycott of goods made by slave labor became the basis of the free produce movement led by Quakers and African Americans in Philadelphia, an abolitionist precursor to modern consumer activism. Hicks called on free blacks, “fellow citizens,” who knew from experience how “hateful the oppressor is,” to
lead the movement on behalf of their “oppressed countrymen.” He was also a founder of the Underground Railroad (UGRR) on Long Island, where his abolitionist daughter, among others, continued assisting fugitives. Radical Hicksites sympathized with communitarian movements, workingmen’s rights, and Wright’s feminism. Hicks’s preaching led to a split among Quakers in 1827–28, when orthodox Quakers tried to read him out of the Society of Friends. Later, even Hicksite followers of George F. White came to oppose abolitionists in favor of quietism.19


Sinha, Manisha. The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (Kindle Locations 3711-3716). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.
 
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