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Journal of Family History Journal of Family History http://jfh.sagepub.com "Tender Plants:" Quaker Farmers and Children in the Delaware Valley, 1681-1735 Barry Levy Journal of Family History 1978; 3; 116 DOI: 10.1177/036319907800300202 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jfh.sagepub.com Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for Journal of Family History can be found at: Email Alerts: http://jfh.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://jfh.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations http://jfh.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/3/2/116 Downloaded from http://jfh.sagepub.com at MINNESOTA STATE UNIV MOORHEAD on February 17, 2010 116 "TENDER PLANTS:" QUAKER FARMERS AND CHILDREN IN THE DELAWARE VALLEY, 1681-1735 Barry Levy* &dquo;And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea&dquo; (Matthew 18:5-6). I They directed intense attention to mar- In the late seventeenth and early eigh- riage and the conjugal household and in teenth centuries, the settlers of Chester spoke endlessly their Meetings about and the Welsh Tract, bordering Philadel- &dquo;tenderness&dquo; and &dquo;love.&dquo; These families, however, were not affectionate, phia, devoted themselves to their children, religious, or isolated. It was their and the results were economically impres- sentimental, relig- sive but socially ambiguous. The settlers ious conception of the child that both in- and clearly limited the were under the influence of a difficult relig- spired development of these adults and their society in ious doctrine, which can be called &dquo;holy forming conversation,&dquo; institutionalized in their the Delaware Valley. The settlers were Monthly Meetings and practiced in their able, middling people households. &dquo;Holy conversation&dquo; dictated from remote parts of Great Britain. The Welsh came from social back- that implicit instruction by loving parents, varying included not coercion or stern discipline, would lead grounds ; they eight gentlemen Welsh was as to the child’s salvation. The farmers thus (the gentry not wealthy a rule) and and husbandmen. used the resources of the Delaware Valley twenty-five yeomen to create environments for children and The Chester settlers were mostly yeomen and artisans from Cheshire and surround- young adults, accumulating vast amounts counties in northwest Most of land, limiting the type of labor they ing England. in arrived in brought into their households, and devis- settlers both groups nuclear or more children. ing intricate, demanding strategies to families having two Ap- such Welsh hand out land and money to children. proximately seventy-five Quaker and seventy-eight Cheshire Quaker families settled between 1681 and 1690 *A longer version of this paper was presented at along the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers the Davis Seminar at Princeton February 17, 1978. near Philadelphia (Browning, 1912:1-29; is a Lecturer in at the Barry Levy History University Glenn, 1970: 1-72). of Pennsylvania. This article is based on his doctoral dissertation on rural Quaker families in the Delaware The farmers clearly thought the spiritual Valley. He is currently working on a comparison of fate of their children a vital reason for their Anglican and Quaker families in the same region. coming to Pennsylvania. Each settler car- Dr. would like to thank Dr. Richard Dunn and Levy ried a removal certificate of about two Dr. Jacquelyn Wolf for their assistance on sections hundred words his or her char- of this paper. He would also like to thank Dr. Ann describing Kibbey for assistance in dealing with the concepts of acter. Much of the discussion in these doc- socio-linguistics. uments concerned children and parent- Downloaded from http://jfh.sagepub.com at MINNESOTA STATE UNIV MOORHEAD on February 17, 2010 117 hood. One Welsh Meeting, for example, loose behavior of youthes and the bad ex- wrote of David Powell that &dquo;he hath hope- ample of too many of riper years.&dquo; Bevan ful children, several of them having be- did not want to go, &dquo;but as I was sensible haved themselves well in Friends’ services her aim was an upright one, on account of where they lived and we hope and desire our children, I was willing to weigh the the Lords presence may go along with matter in a true balance.&dquo; He found that them&dquo; [Friends Historical Library, Rad- he could keep his three Welsh farms and nor Monthly Meeting Records (henceforth still buy land in Pennsylvania (a member RMMR), 3/23/I690]. The only thing said of the gentry in Treverig, near Cardiff, of Griffith John, a poor farmer, was that Bevan was the only settler not to sell his &dquo;all his endeavor hath been to bring up his British property). Bevan returned to Wales children in the fear of the Lord according in 1704 with his wife and favorite daughter to the order of Truth&dquo; (RMMR 4/22/ because &dquo;we stayed there (Pennsylvania) 1690). Sina Pugh was a &dquo;good, careful, in- many years, and had four of our children dustrious woman in things relating to her married with our consent, and they had poor small children&dquo; (RMMR 2/5/1684). several children, and the aim intended by The Welsh Meetings acted in loco parentis my wife was in good measure answered&dquo; for children left without parents and sent (Bevan, 1709). Bevan clearly saw Pennsyl- the orphans to Pennsylvania: the Tuddr vania has a place best suited for rearing orphans, for example, &dquo;were under the tu- children. ition of Friends since their parents de- In 1684 on arrival in Haverford, Thomas ceased and we found them living and hon- Ellis, a Welsh Quaker minister, prayed in a est children; and we did what we could to poem, &dquo;Song of Rejoicing,&dquo; that &dquo;In our keep them out of the wicked way and to bounds, true love and peace from age to preserve their small estate from waste and age may never cease&dquo; ... when &dquo;trees confiscation&dquo; (RMMR 2/3/1689). Meet- and fields increase&dquo; and &dquo;heaven and ings often referred to children as &dquo;tender,&dquo; earth proclaim thy peace&dquo; (Smith, 1862: &dquo;sweet,&dquo; and &dquo;loving,&dquo; virtues which typi- 492). Children were implicit in his vision. fied the descriptions of adult Friends with When on a return trip to England in 1685, the most praised behavior. The metaphor after he noted that many English Quakers most often used by the Welsh farmers were suspicious of the large emigration of when describing children was &dquo;tender Friends to Pennsylvania, he wrote to plants growing in the Truth.&dquo; George Fox stressing the relationship Two Welsh Tract leaders, John Bevan between children and wealth: &dquo;I wish and Thomas Ellis, thought that the need those that have estates of their own and to to protect children from corruption ex- leave fullness in their posterity may not be plained the Quakers’ emigration to Penn- offended at the Lord’s opening a door of sylvania. Barbara Bevan persuaded her mercy to thousands in England especially husband John Bevan to come to Pennsyl- in Wales who have no estates either for vania for the sake of their children. &dquo;Some themselves or children ... nor any visible time before the year 1683,&dquo; he later wrote, ground of hope for a better condition for &dquo;I had heard that our esteemed Friend children or children’s children when they William Penn had a patent from King were gone hence.&dquo; Ellis’s argument rested Charles the Second for the Province in on the promise of Quaker life in the new America called Pennsylvania, and my wife world. In Pennsylvania, Ellis showed, land had a great inclination to go thither and could combine fruitfully with community thought it might be a good place to train life: children sober up amongst people and to About fifteen families of us have taken our prevent the corruption of them here by the land together and there are to be eight more Downloaded from http://jfh.sagepub.com at MINNESOTA STATE UNIV MOORHEAD on February 17, 2010 118 that have not yet come, who took (to begin) 30 to be communicated almost all the time by acres which we apiece with build upon and do a man or woman’s &dquo;conversation&dquo; (Haller, improve, and the other land we have to range 1957; Hill, 1967; Nuttal, 1946; Kibbey, for our cattle, we have our burying place where 1973; Bauman, 1974). we intend our Meeting House, as near as we can to the center, our men and women’s Meet- &dquo;Conversation&dquo; was defined in the seven- ing and other Monthly Meetings in both week teenth century, according to the Oxford dayes unto which four townships at least be- English Dictionary, as the &dquo;manner of longs. And precious do we find other opportu- conducting oneself in the world or in soci- nities that are as free will unto given offering The Quakers’ of &dquo;conversa- the Lord in evenings, some time which not in- ety.&dquo; concept tended but Friends coming simply to one an- tion&dquo; included the idea that it was reflec- other and sitting together the Lord appears to tive of a person’s inner being and that it his name be the Glory (Ellis, June 13, 1685).
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