 Refer to Harriet Franklin's pedigree for help! |
This line of Quakers appears in the direct ancestors of Harriet Franklin. Her family has an example of Quaker intermarriage. Harriet's parents, Samuel Franklin and Mary Waters, were first cousins, since they shared common grandparents in Jacob Franklin, Sr. and Mary Giles. This means (refer to the chart for help) that Harriet had six (rather than eight) sets of GG Grandparents—which I note because at that stage we have reached the most recent generation of immigrants. Her GG and GGG Grandparents' generations both included immigrant ancestors.
*Robert Franklin, Sr. was the immigrant ancestor of the Franklin family of West River, Maryland. Confusingly, he had two wives named Sarah. His first wife's last name is contestable, but she was likely to have been *Sarah Puddington. She was the mother of Robert Franklin, Jr. who married Artridge Giles. Robert Sr.'s second wife was Sarah Gott. It's not likely that Robert was a Quaker when he arrived in Maryland, and the immigrant Puddingtons were not Quakers either, but his son Robert Jr. certainly was. Robert Jr. and Artridge married each other at the West River meeting house in 1680, which makes theirs one of the earliest Quaker weddings in the region.
*John Giles, and *Mary (whose last name is unknown) were probably Puritans when they crossed the Atlantic, and converted in Maryland. They were the parents of Artridge Giles who married Robert Franklin, Jr. Their children's births appear in the West River meeting records; his family later moves to Harford County.
The third couple includes another John Giles unrelated to Mary's husband above. This John Giles, an immigrant from Cornwall, married Rachel Griffith, the daughter of *Samuel Griffith ("of Wales") and a woman named *Elizabeth. This John and Rachel were Episcopalian, since their children appear in the church register for St. James' Parish (in Anne Arundel county), not in the West River Meeting records.
 The Burying Ground is all that remains of the Quaker community which lived around West River, Maryland. |
This leaves four other pairs of immigrant GGG Grandparents for Harriet Franklin whose lines include Quakers. Two of these families were Quakers for generations.
*John Waters married *Susanna White. John Waters, the immigrant ancestor of the Waters family of Anne Arundel County, was brought into Maryland by Richard Wells before 1669. The Wells family had Puritan leanings. Waters participated in the Nanticoke Indian expedition on the Eastern Shore, for which he was rewarded by William Burgess with 120 lb. of tobacco in 1678. Since Quakers disapproved of military service, it must have been after this that he became convinced. In any event he did later convert; his second wife, whom he married before 1684, was Elizabeth Giles, who was definitely a Quaker; she was another daughter of John Giles Sr., and sister to John Jr. and Artridge.
*Richard Arnold (or Arnell) married Martha Thomas. Richard Arnold immigrated as an indentured servant, not as a freeman, which made his first years in Maryland, no doubt, rough, though he was able to purchase his freedom. Martha Thomas, born in Maryland after 1651, was the daughter of immigrant *Philip Thomas from Bristol. He was a Puritan, who was convinced some time before his death; his wife *Sarah Harrison, who outlived him, was a Quaker preacher. Their children and grandchildren were instrumental in forming Sandy Spring Meeting in Montgomery Co., Maryland.
Familial religious allegiance was, however, less fixed than we might imagine; this seems to be more true of the Maryland Friends than of communities farther north. The other two descents here contain generations which convert back and forth between sects. Conversion often happened, it seems, at marriage for the sake of a spouse.
*William Iiams Sr. married Elizabeth Cheyney. William had settled in the South River Hundred by 1665 as a planter, and not as a Quaker. He met his wife in Maryland; she was the daughter of immigrant *Richard Cheyney, who was apparently related to an English family of Royalist rather than Puritan leanings, so this was an Anglican family. Their son William Jr., however, married Elizabeth Plummer, and the Plummers were Quakers. It seems that Elizabeth left her parents' Quaker faith when she married William, since in June of 1698, at about age 20, as the wife of William Iiams Jr., she was baptized by the rector of All Hallow's Parish.
*Thomas Plummer and *Elizabeth Stockett. These are the parents of Elizabeth, above. While Thomas Plummer was a Quaker, the Stocketts were Anglicans, so Elizabeth Stockett would have been convinced to marry her husband. In the next generation, as mentioned above, their daughter Elizabeth Plummer converted back to Anglicanism to marry William Iiams Jr. And in the following, third generation, the marriage of their daughter Charity Iiams to John Waters (grandson of the immigrant) was also an Anglican marriage, which means that this line of the Waters family had moved away from Quakerism just two generations after its immigrant ancester John had become convinced.
Johns Hopkins, philanthropist. |
The fact that Quakers read members out of Meetings for marrying outside of the faith or for joining the military meant that over time, Quaker populations decreased in Maryland. Another factor was probably slavery. Quakers owned slaves, but by the later 18th century many Meetings had resolved to fight it. In the process, some members who did not want to give up their slaves left Meetings.
What of Maryland Friends outside of these core trees? Friends from other Maryland families marry into the core trees of this site, and are therefore cousins or the ancestors of cousins though they do not donate direct ancestors. I link here to the earliest ancestor of these connected families. NOTE that, as above, not all of the folks in these family lines were Friends.
As might be imagined, a wide array of Quaker families from West River marry into the core trees over generations. These families included the Galloway family, who lived at "Tulip Hill" in West River; the Chews; the Snowdens, who lived in Anne Arundel and in Prince George's Counties; the Hopkinses, including the family of the well-known philanthropist Johns Hopkins; the Johns family (where "Johns" Hopkins got his first name); the Cowmans; the Coales; the Richardsons; and the Janneys, who were mostly from northern Virginia, across the Potomac; others of these families also connect to northern Virginia and Pennsylvania Friends.
Another set of Quaker families here are from Sandy Spring in Montgomery County (and their relations further abroad, especially in Alexandria, Virginia). These include the Hartshorne family. Charles R. Hartshore married Ella M. Lansdale in 1886. Along with the Hartshornes come the Sandy Spring Brooke, Briggs, and Farquhar families. The Brookes especially were important in the founding of Triadelphia, where Lansdales lived for three generations (read more about this town on the Maryland Histories page).