QUAKERS OFTEN FLED VIRGINIA (original) (raw)

Old court orders filed in the York County courthouse reflect the venom of the Anglican Church against Quakers in Colonial Virginia. Quakers who defied the law and held meetings were subjected to whippings and jail terms. Some were subjected to the loss of their farmland, stock and crops.

A study of the times when there were drives to oust the Quakers and other dissenters from the Virginia Colony will help you find your fleeing ancestors.

Quakers went in droves to Maryland where that Catholic Colony observed the Act of Toleration in a leniency not allowed in Virginia.

Quakers went to North Carolina where they soon founded large Meetings and left abundant records.

The “New Lights” (later Baptists) and the “shouting Methodies,” the New England Puritans and all dissenters were also banned by law and driven from Virginia.

Quakers were more vulnerable because they would not resist nor defend themselves.

Wherever they lived or to whatever faraway country they fled, Quakers held the same beliefs. A basic tenet was that each person had a right to choose his belief and this put the Quakers in conflict with any state church of Europe and with the Colonial Anglican Church in Virginia and the Puritan colony of New England, which professed no state church but allowed no doctrinal differences among them.

Shortly before the American Revolution there was a new reason to move as the Quakers were given a strict order to obey the old teachings against holding slaves. Many disownings are recorded in monthly meetings. If your Virginia or North Carolina family disappears before the Revolution and during the decade after, look to the Ohio valley where rich lands afforded a living with less acreage.

It was a time when they also were under stress as conscientious objectors who would not provide foods or materials of any kind to the warring young nation. Local courthouse order books are filled with accounts of fines and grievances over this.

A study of families in Isle of Wight shows rifts, disinheritance and heavy sales of lands and homes around Smithfield, which came as some disassociated themselves from the English parishes and joined the Quakers. Converts were made in the stalwart families of Jordan, Carroll, Williams, Webb, Harris, Bridges, Hardy, Hill and Holiday.

Eastern Shore counties had heavy Quaker populations and these families shifted back and forth into Maryland. Extensive records of these members are available.

The records filmed in England and Scotland and several cities of the British Isles by the late Dr. Milton Riley are not yet indexed, but work is under way. This is a vast work on many subjects and this state-funded project eventually will provide more information on Quakers.

Other countries also have archives of Quaker records. From Berlin Zentralarchiv one may see papers relating to Quakers in Prussia and the German Empire. Harry B. Shufelt’s accounts of New England Quakers moving to Quebec include accounts of the Austin-Pinkham families and Ball, Brill, Perkins, Ruiter, Taylor, Whittier and other families.

Reels in the Family History Center include Quaker records in Scotland from 1622 to 1890, indexed by surname. Also here are about 60 reels of monthly meetings in mid-western and western United States. Joseph J. Green collected more than 20,000 obituaries of the Society of Friends, nearly 500 pages, which you can see either in book or film.

Records of Quaker meetings of the state of New York were compiled by Josephine C. Frost. This is microfilmed and includes births, deaths, marriages and intentions over a long period of time.

“Quaker Arrivals in Philadelphia 1682-1750” by Albert Cook Myers includes a list of certificates of removal received at the Philadelphia monthly meetings. These certificates give the intent to move to another meeting with the date of the request and the destination of the applicant.

A similar listing by the Latter Day Saints Library is available on microfilm.

The old English of the scriptures may still be heard in meetings of Friends in Southampton County where the Babbs, the Turners, Raifords, Stephensons, Williams and many other families established Quaker meetings. These gentle people settled in towns with names like Corinth, Jerusalem, Antioch and Chuckatuck.

If thee wilt hie thee to the card catalog there wilt thou find rich records of thine ancestors, for the Friends have continually sought and preserved accounts of their people.

Virginia H. Rollings is director of the Family History Center in Denbigh.

Originally Published: January 15, 1989 at 12:00 AM EST