Title: Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Quakers
Source Type:
Author: Dr. Frederick Klein
Publisher:
Year: 1926
Database Type:
George Fox, a "sober-minded serious youth," born in Leicestershire in 1624, "early had his mind turned to religious matters." He began to state his views, which were at least "unfamiliar" in those days of "formalism in religious observances." But he converted many to his belief, and ere long his I and of religious enthusiasts, known as "Children of Truth," or "Children of Light," or "Friends of Truth," were spreading his and their doctrines far and wide in Great Britain, on the European continent, and eventually in the West Indies and North America. The names by which this sect was known eventually crystallized into the "Religious Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers."
The first Quakers to land in America were two women, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, who reached Boston, by way of Barbadoes, on July 11, 1656. They were arrested, "subjected to a brutal examination to see whether they were witches," tnd finally deported to Barbadoes. George Bishop, addressing the magistrates in 1660, said: "Two poor women arriving in your bar- bour so shook ye, to the everlasting shame of you and of your established peace and order, as if a formidable army had invaded your borders." Within two days of their deportation, however, eight more Quakers arrived in Massa- chusetts. They were forthwith returned to England, and a religious frenzy seized the people of Massachusetts, who deemed the "horrid opinions" and "diabolical doctrines" of "that cursed sect of heretics * * * commonly called Quakers" to be a dangerous leaven of "mutiny, sedition and rebellion," devised "to overthrow the order established in Church and commonwealth." Virginia was as hostile to the Quakers as Massachusetts, but in Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland their lot was better. However, not until William Penn established his province of Pennsylvania was the Quaker truly welcomed in America. By the way, Penn's "Holy Experiment" was not the first attempt made to find a sanctuary in North America for the Quaker; twenty years earlier George Fox "had commissioned Joseph Coale to seek such a home in the new world."
Friends came rapidly to Penn's colony. "Twenty-three vessels sailed up the Delaware during the year i1682, bringing probably 2,000 passengers. The Quakers predominated in governmental affairs in the province in the first decades; indeed it was not until the middle decades of the next century that the Quaker legislative hold on Pennsylvania was shaken, this being brought about mainly through the insistence of Benjamin Franklin and others that Pennsylvania appropriate funds to properly protect its settlers against the Indians, who were then in alliance with France, and were raiding the frontier, settlements near the Susquehanna.
The Quakers were among the first to protest against slavery. In 1688 the Friends of German origin in Pennsylvania, with which Francis Daniel Pastorius was connected, at one of their regular meetings in Germantown, "sent up" their opinion, which was that "liberty of the body" as well as of conscience should be one of the fundamentals of rightful government in Quaker Pennsylvania. They declared that "to bring men hither, or to rob and sell them against their will, we stand against."
Among the Quakers of Pennsylvania settlement in the first decades of Penn's government were Welsh gentry who bought a "barony" of forty thousand acres from William Penn, in London, in 1681. They began to cross the ocean in the next year, and settled mostly in Chester county, taking up what is known as the "Welsh Tract," and thus coming very near to what became Lancaster county. The first man to settle in what is now Lancaster county was a Quaker, it seems. He, John Kennerly, settled near Christiana, in 1691, nineteen years before the first Mennonites came. And another settle- ment bordering on Little Britain township of Lancaster, but actually in Maryland, began to take shape at about the same time. A striking testimony of the early settlement of Quakers in the "East End" of Lancaster county is in the old Sadsbury meeting-house, which has withstood the ravages of the elements for one hundred and seventy-five years.
The first meeting house was erected by Sadsbury Quakers in 1725, and though the Presbyterians raised their Upper Octorara Church a few years earlier, it was not until about 1727 that the Middle Octorara Presbyterian Church was erected. The other denominations did not build churches for several decades thereafter.
In 1724 Andrew Moore and Samuel Miller petitioned for the establishment of a Particular Meeting in Sadsbury township, and for the erection of a meet- inghouse. This was accomplished in 1725, a log house being then raised. In 1737 the Sadsbury Monthly Meeting was established, and draw Quakers from Leacock, Lampeter, and Salisbury. Leacock cooperated with Sadsbury to secure this Monthly Meeting status, and all gathered at Sadsbury until 1749, when a larger meetinghouse was built at Bird-in-Hand, East Lampeter township. Then Leacock Monthly Meeting was established, and was continued at that point until 1854, by which time so many Quakers of the Lampeters and Leacocks had moved "toward the great West," that it was decided to take the Monthly Meeting to Sadsbury.
Sadsbury Meeting-The Sadsbury meetinghouse of the Hicksite branch, was erected of stone in 1748, it is believed. Its solid stone walls rise to a height of two stories, and when first built supported high galleries. These galleries, and in fact almost all of the interior woodwork, were burned during the Revolutionary War; and when the repairing was taken in hand by Joseph Guest, who had charge of the original carpentry, it was decided to lay a floor on the second story, in place of galleries. This arrangement has continued to the present. It is not used now, excepting occasionally for funeral services. The building was at one time used by the Amish Mennonites. Among the Quakers who were early members of this church were Andrew and James Moore, Nail Mooney, James Clemson, James Clemson, Jr., Anthony Shaw, Jane Jones, Sarah Metcalf, Isaac Taylor, Samuel Miller, John Aaron, and Thomas Musgrave, Robert Moore, Calvin Cooper, John Truman, and Asahel Walker.
The original site of the meetinghouse was part of what is known as the "Servant's Tract," or the "Christiana Tract." A later addition, bringing the church property to seventy acres, was purchased from Thomas Richard and John Penn. When the division into Hicksite and Orthodox Friends occurred, the former society retained possession of the church property.