Well, I've had my nose to the grindstone...the keyboard actually...all day and I'm not much further forward.
Lurching back and forth reading about the Quaker settlers in America...practically the only ship which hasn't yet had its passenger list transcribed is the very ship I want of course...one of the passengers gave birth to a baby while the ship was still in dock and then her husband died on the voyage...so now I'm stuck, because from then on she was described as 'the Widow Iden' which is little help when I need her first name...
And some bright spark put a spanner in the works by deciding that the baby's name was Hieronymus when it was nothing of the sort...baby Hieronymus was born in the dock at Plymouth and my baby was born at Bristol dock...but there you are...it's a bit like stepping carefully through a minefield.
The Quaker records are excellent...they go into such detail, even giving the cause of death with the burial records and how deep the grave was...usually six foot deep but some were eight foot because they were buried with a deceased relative...
If you decided to move on from the township where you were living, you had to ask permission from the Elders...they made certain you'd paid any debts due before you went...they gave you a letter of introduction to the Elders of where you were moving to...must have been a comfort in the 1600's to know you'd find a welcome in your new home.
What the Quakers also did was keep a record of where all your children had been born...so if you'd sailed with six children who had all been born in Somerset, that was written down in their records once you reached Pennsylvania...those records are missing of course for my Widow...or maybe I just haven't found them yet...
Something which immediately endeared me to the early Quaker settlers was the fact they lived side by side with the Native Americans in peace...there was no squabbling over land or religion or such-like...quite unlike the Puritans who thought nothing of murdering the Indians and of stealing their food...straight out of their burial places in some instances.
Whereas the Quakers were peaceable, with a live and let live outlook, the Puritans, for all their holier than thou attitude, were not nice people...
Those women must have been tough...I can't imagine boarding a wooden ship with a newborn baby and several small children...never mind managing to survive the loss of a husband with his burial at sea...they must have been made of stern stuff.
More Dodgy People In Himself's Family...
Back in the days
