This illustration is found at a very helpful site: http://barbsnow.net/Quaker.html
For a quick history, wikipedia is always easy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers
The Religious Society of Friends has an official website: http://www.quaker.org
The study of one's Quaker ancestors will include at some point the wonderful and amazing Encyclopedia by Hinshaw. Mr. Hinshaw began his work in NC where his Hinshaw ancestors had lived. The Quaker Monthly Meetings kept very careful records of everything that happened in the area among the members of the Quaker group including births, marriages, deaths, and sometimes what the group believed to be wrong doings by members of the Monthly Meeting. Mr. Hinshaw's six volumes are a transcription of these records. The actual records are held in various Quaker repositories such as Guilford College Library for those that apply to NC.
If you have access to Ancestry, you can find Hinshaw's Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy at
http://search.ancestry.com/search/CardCatalog.aspx#ccat=hc%3D25%26dbSort%3D1%26title%3DEncyclopedia%20of%20Quaker%26keyword%3D%26filter%3D0*37%26
Vol I is NC, Vol II New Jersey and Pa, Vol III is NY, Vol. IV is Ohio, Vol V is also Ohio, Vol VI is Virginia and there is a Vol I supplement available at the site as well.
My brothers and I share two separate Quaker groups in our heritage. Interestingly enough, while one is on our mother's side and the other on our father's side, some of them lived only a few miles away from each other in the late 1700's but then these people's descendents moved away from each other and did not join again until 1946. The Worth family which is on our mother's side attended the above Meetinghouse in the mid to late 1700's. However I will save this family until the end of the article.
All of the Quakers on my father's side arrived first in Pennsylvania. These families include Moore, Elliott, Jenkins, Cureton. Some of these names I have not yet proved to have been Quaker....and I am sure as time goes on I will find more surnames to add to the list. These families for the most part remained in Pennsylvania until the 1760's when expensive land in PA and cheap land in the Carolinas caused a migration down the Great Wagon Road.
The Moore family first stopped in Orange County, NC. To see more about this family in Orange County, view my post dated Tuesday April 24, 2012. Some of the Moore family members moved on to Newberry County, SC just before the Revolutionary War while others moved to Wrightsboro, GA near Augusta, GA in the same time period. For more information about both of these groups, view posts dated Tuesday April 24, 2012 and Tuesday, May 1, 2012 as well as Thursday, May 3, 2012 or use the search engine in the top left hand corner to search for the name that you are interested in or the place that is of interest to you.
The Elliott family moved directly to Rowan County, NC from Pennsylvania. They lived in the part of Rowan that is now Randolph County, NC. For more about this family look at my post dated Saturday Aug 25, 2012.
All of these families lived in the respective areas that I have named during the Revolution. Some fought on the side of the patriots, some on the side of the Loyalists, while many of them tried to stay entirely out of the war because of their pacifist beliefs. However, all of my brother and my ancestors moved out of the south in the first decade of the 1800's and into the non-slave states of Ohio and Indiana. Their settlement there will be the subject of another post.
On our mother's side, we descend from Nantucket Quaker families. Nantucket is a very small island off the coast of Massachusetts.
As the Colonist's desire for independence heated up in the early 1700's, the people who lived on Nantucket became very aware of the dangers to their very small island if indeed a war was fought. Many of the inhabitants were uneasy about how vulnerable to attack Nantucket's position made them. The Quakers being pacifists were even more concerned with that issue. Quakers were dismissed for marrying outside of the Quaker religion and there was some fear that more intermarrying on the island would lead to inbreeding. All of these factors led to a large scale migration of the Quaker families on Nantucket to Guilford County, NC where they were aware that there was already a substantial Quaker population in place.
Our ancestor, Francis Worth, brought his family from Nantucket to Guilford County, NC in 1772 as evidenced by records found in the Folger Collection on Nantucket Island:
“Removed 28th, 11 Month, 1771 to New Garden, NC.
And from records associated with New Garden MM in Guilford County, NC:
1771, 7, 27 Daniel Worth rocf Nantucket MM, Mass., dated 1771,4,25
1772, 7,25 Francis Worth rocf Nantucket MM, Mass., dated 1772,5,25
1774, 1, 29 Jonah Worth rocf Nantucket MM, New England, dated 1773,10,7
1776,8,31 Jonah gct Nantuckett MM, New England
[rocf means Received on certificate from] It is my best guess that because Nantucket is a sea-going community, the family would have sailed from Nantucket to the Quaker area around Perquimans NC. There was a large Quaker community there and I would guess that they would have helped these families make the overland trip to Guilford County from there.
1775 Phebe Worth is dis from New Garden MM in Guilford County, NC. No reason is given for the dis. This is according to Hinshaw Vol I
I do not know yet why Phebe was dis. It is not likely that it was from marrying out of unity because Phebe and Silas's oldest children were not born until the mid 1800's and Phebe would have been only about 15 years old in 1775. Phebe and children born in NC moved to Kentucky with Silas by 1804 and that was the end of the Quaker connection for this family. I will talk about the Quakers in Nantucket in another post.
1804 Silas received a land grant of 400 acres at Georges Creek on Levisa Fork of
Big Sandy River Certificate #115-- date of the Survey was Nov 6, 1804.
(Kentucky) {another source says: April, 1, 1781 in Tazewell Co. Va. Pension #S.40730}
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