Immediately, my mind jumped to the oldest female immigrant to the United States I've been able to document in my family so far. I could've sworn I'd previously written about her. But seeing as I haven't, let me introduce you to Jane Lyon, my Quaker foremother from Lancashire, England!
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| Friends Meeting House, (woodcut), Philadelphia, PA, circa 1830. |
Jane Lyon was one of the original Quakers from Lancashire, England. She came over on the ship Submission in 1682, as part of William Penn's original fleet. Being unable to pay for her own passage, she came as a servant to an older couple from Lancashire named James and Ann Harrison. These settlers, known in many circles as Welcome claimants, were among the earliest Quaker settlers in the New World. They have their own lineage society, similar to that of the Mayflower descendants. The difference between the two, however, is that original passenger lists for the Welcome fleet do not survive. Much work has been done to reconstruct these lists and determine who made the voyage as part of this fleet.
Because Jane Lyon was a servant to James Harrison, following the record of his journey to Bucks County, Pennsylvania will mean following Jane's as well. And it's important to note The Submission deviated significantly from its original navigation. Due to a storm and some possible intentional interferences from the ship's captain, the ship had to detour into Maryland instead of the Delaware River. James Harrison's family disembarked in Choptank, Maryland at the end of October--nowhere near their original destination of Pennsylvania. James Harrison left his family and servants in the house of William Dickerson and attempted to rendezvous with William Penn in New Castle, Delaware. He and his son-in-law then headed for Philadelphia, and eventually made their way to Bucks County. They wouldn't send for their families and associates to join them in Bucks County until the spring of 1683.
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| "Pensilvania in America, Divided into Countyes Townships and Lotts," surveyed by Thomas Holme, ca. 1687. (Note the property of Richard Lundy, listed as person 22 in the plot immediately to the left of Pennsbury Manor, the estate of William Penn) |
Jane Lyon was among these early settlers of Bucks County. I've attempted to determine the length of her service to the Harrison family, but there don't appear to be any surviving records of it. She doesn't reappear in what records I can access until 1691. She appears several times in various congregational records for the Society of Friends, called meeting minutes. And as a good example of what these minutes look like, here's her marriage record to Richard Lundy from Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
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| "U.S., Quaker Meeting Records, 1681-1935," database, Ancestry.com (https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2189 : accessed 6 August 2018), filed under Bucks Quarterly Meeting, "Records for Marriage Certificates, 1683," image 53, entry for the marriage of Jane Lyon and Richard Lundy; citing Society of Friends (Bucks County, Pennsylvania), "The Quarter meeting record for marriag certificates in Bucks County beginning in the yeare 1683," call number: RG2 Ph B86 3.2, Swarthmore College. |
An important thing to keep in mind with Quaker records is how to read the dates on the records. Dates from before 1752 in Quaker records use the Julian calendar, not the Gregorian calendar we know today. This means that the marriage date in this record, rendered the 24th day of the 4th month, is June 24th. Not April 24th. Here's a guide on how to convert the dates in case you need one.
Another thing to know is Quaker meeting minutes were not just a record of a single event, kept in a local congregation (called a monthly meeting) for their reference. Activity in monthly meetings were presented in Quarterly meetings, and were also published in their records. This means that the same event will appear in various meeting records, including in records for communities in which the event did NOT take place. The records were also recopied and abstracted for the sake of records preservation, and will appear in meeting minutes in later time periods. The Ancestry entries and indexes to these records rarely, if ever reflect this distinction. You must examine each image carefully to determine its age and source.
This record appears in the Philadelphia (Archer Street) Monthly Meeting minutes, even though the event took place in Bucks County. It's also an abstracted copy of earlier records, assembled and published in 1889. I've included it here because it's much easier to read, and even provides some insight into the ceremonial content of early Quaker marriages.
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| "U.S., Quaker Meeting Records, 1681-1935," database, Ancestry.com (https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2189 : accessed 6 August 2018), filed under Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, Arch Street, "Record of Certificates of Removal, 1682," images 76-77; abstracted entry for the marriage of Jane Lyon and Richard Lundy; citing Society of Friends (Bucks County, Pennsylvania), "A Record of certificates of removal of Friends, commencing in the year 1682: copied from the original records int he year 1889," pages 149-150, call number: MR Ph 738, Swarthmore College. |
Quaker records hosted at Ancestry are not easy records to cite, especially to appropriately reflect when they are derivatives of other records. One source citation, as in the example above, may include information for an online database, information for the primary source, the derivative, and the repository holding the records. But making the attempt is always important because it's the most direct way to wrap our minds around the exact record, among many abstractions and reproductions that also exist for the same event in Quaker collections.