Recently, the paper NewmarketToday shared an article about the historic Ebenezer Doan House by Newmarket resident and local historian Richard MacLeod. The article discusses the house’s Quaker origins as well as its more recent history as the Doane House Hospice. The article can be read on the NewmarketToday website.
For those interested in more Doan Quaker connections, the blog has featured in the past articles on Hannah Doan Lundy (1812–1901), an important figure in the Children of Peace schism, and James Doan (1846–1916), who created the popular nineteenth-century brand Doan’s Kidney Pills.
Ebenezer Doan, who the Ebenezer Doane House is named after. Photo from the Sharon Temple Museum Archives.
You may be aware that a few years ago the Records committee made an agreement with Ancestry.com to make available the microfilm of Canadian meeting books, registers, and other records that were microfilmed in 1974. A full list of these holdings was published in Newsletter #13 in 1975 and is available as a pdf on the CFHA website.
Of course, Ancestry requires one to have a paid-up membership account and that prevents many people from accessing these microfilms. In Toronto, the Public Library has for many years given access to Ancestry’s Library Edition to library card holders but only on computers at the library. However, during this Covid period access is available for free at home to library card holders. Simply log into your account, click on “ebooks & online content” and within “A-Z list of databases” select “Ancestry Library Edition.” It may be that other libraries are offering this service during Covid.
A screenshot of the West Lake Monthly Meeting Register, 1820 – 1882, taken from Ancestry.ca
Card holders will be taken to Ancestry and under “Search” select “Card Catalogue.” There are two search boxes titled “Title” and “Keywords”. Entering the word “Quaker” in the Title box only yields 14 titles so use the Keyword box where 36 titles will be shown. Entering Society of Friends yields 7 hits.
The Canadian films are titled “Canada, Quaker Meeting Records, 1786-1988.” Selecting this will present a search screen for the films under that title.
At this point the researcher can make use of the nominal index that Ancestry made for all the Quaker films. This index is limited to forenames and surnames and not locations. For example, I entered Robert Saylor, a known ancestral Quaker to me, and it resulted in 133 hits in various films within the Canada holding. In one click the researcher is taken directly to the actual image of the page.
Within the Canada search page one can also choose a province, a meeting and then an actual book or register to browse the images. Once you are within the actual microfilm the index is not available for searching. The index is only available on the screen associated with the major title for that group of books. Do not overlook the group “Various” when selecting a Province as this has a number of Yearly Meeting books.
Two other titles of the 36 available are of major interest. “U.S. and Canada, Quaker Yearly Meeting Annual Reports, 1808-1930” and “U.S., Quaker Meeting Records, 1681-1935.”
The US holding is quite massive with a number of Yearly Meeting holdings available including Philadelphia. Notably absent are New York Yearly Meeting books which will soon be available on Find My Past, a competitor to Ancestry.
The transcriptions available on CFHA include most of the early Canadian minute books and registers up to about 1860. They are much easier to read that the microfilm images and the full text can be easily searched. Also available on CFHA are transcriptions of some early NYYM books for Nine Partners and Ferrisburg MM’s. Currently we are working on Muncy MM which is under Philadelphia YM.
Hopefully this is helpful to those interested and it would be useful to know if other Libraries are offering this access at home during the Covid period.
We recently received a genealogy question in regard to the ancestry of Jemima Camp Wade (1812-1895).
In 1832, Jemima Wade married Solomon Doan, an active member of the Black Creek PM and Pelham MM. One of their children is listed in the Pelham Register as born in Crowland. We’re hoping some information can be found regarding Jemima Camp Wade’s parentage, in particular linking her to Wells Wade (1780-1858) and Abigail ‘Abby’ Wade (1782-1858).
Do you have any information about Jemima Camp Wade and her family?
Two weeks ago, we featured a post by Albert Schrauwers in which he reflected on transcribing and editing the Journal of Timothy Rogers.[1] Timothy Rogers is celebrated for his role in Quaker settlement on Yonge Street and at Pickering. His wife, Sarah, is not as renowned. Her story gives us insights into the strength and tenacity of the Quaker women who were co-founders of frontier Quaker settlements throughout North America. We have no extant records in Sarah’s hand; much of what we can extrapolate about her life comes from her husband’s Journal, meeting records, or careful reading of parallel sources.
Richard Edsall (1683–1762), “Great Nine Partners Patent” | Public domain (wikimedia)
Sarah Wilde was born 3 January 1759 in Clinton Township, Dutchess County, New York to Obadiah and Sarah Wilde. On 7 January 1776, seventeen-year old Sarah married nineteen-year old Timothy Rogers in the Nine Partners area of the colony of New York. The Wildes were Baptists, although they had a Quaker background and owned a number of Quaker books (Journal, 3). Nine Partners was also home to a sizeable group of Friends. While the newlyweds were living with Sarah’s parents, Timothy read the works of John Woolman and George Fox, began using plain language, and attended a local Quaker meeting. Timothy became a member of the Society in 1778. It was not until after the birth of her fourth child that Sarah became a member in 1782; she had begun using plain language herself in 1777 (Journal, 6, 7).
In their first year of marriage, Sarah and Timothy became parents.Obadiah Wilde Rogers was the first of Sarah’s fourteen children. On average, she gave birth every twenty-four months between December 1776 and November 1802.
Early in 1777 the Rogers family moved to Danby, Vermont, beginning a pattern of consistent relocation as Timothy sought opportunities to improve their economic prospects. In 1778, they moved to Saratoga, New York before returning to Danby in 1780. How did Sarah feel about constant displacement? It is impossible to know with certainty. Timothy notes that after Sarah gave birth to her fourth child, Mary, on 22 May 1782, she “had a very poor turn and never had a well day for two years.” Despite his wife’s poor health, Timothy continued to travel, embarking to the township of Ferrisburg, Vermont where he purchased land “about 40 miles beyond where there was any inhabitants” (Journal, 7).
From there, Timothy went on to New York to buy more land. While he was in New York, he comments that “My wife knowing I did intend to move to Ferrisburg, thought we should be disappointed so she got sleighs and moved before I came home” (7). Despite not experiencing “a well day for two years,” Sarah alone arranged for and moved her household including four children under the age of five to the wilderness of Vermont.
While many of the Rogers family moves were uncomplicated (inasmuch as moving house on the frontier can be uncomplicated), there were occasional disasters. On 2 October 1785, the family was moving from Button Bay in Ferrisburg to Little Otter Creek. Along with their five young children and possessions, Timothy was transporting land records and bonds (his journal records forty deeds for 6,000 acres and about $2000 in bonds).[2] It was a “dark rainy time” when the family’s boat finally came ashore about midnight necessitating the kindling of a fire to light their path. Timothy tells us that he had to lead Sarah by the hand because she was ill (8). The couple woke at sunrise to learn that the tree by which they had lit their fire had burned, destroying the deeds, bonds, and all the family’s clothing (8). Timothy recorded that “this brought me to a great stand to know what to do” (8). Sarah’s response to these events remain a mystery.
The couple did not give up. Timothy continued to travel for personal and meeting business (he was in Quebec in 1786 when their sixth child was born). They continued to relocate around the Ferrisburg region. Sarah continued to give birth roughly every second year.
By 1800, Sarah and Timothy had experienced some prosperity but there had also been some stresses. Timothy does not reveal what these tensions were, only that in late 1798 and 1799 “I had many very great trials, some things so singular in my family that I think not best to mention” (Journal, 102). Both Timothy and Sarah were required to make an acknowledgement in their meeting. Timothy acknowledged “falling into a passion and using unbecoming language and conduct in his family” (Journal, 102–03). Once again, Timothy felt God calling him away, now to the British colony of Upper Canada. Did the stresses motivate the desire to move, or was the desire to move the source of the family stress? We cannot know.
This time Sarah was “unwilling to move” (Journal, 103). She was forty-one years old, pregnant with their thirteenth child; four of her older children were married and had set up their own households in the area. She likely had a strong local community. Perhaps the distant frontier no longer held any appeal for her. According to Timothy’s journal, Sarah’s resistance to his “calling” was a significant impediment to his plans. Until she consented, their meeting would not endorse his travel to Upper Canada where he intended to explore the region to determine the most favourable location for settlement. Something happened to change Sarah’s mind. Timothy does not tell us what it was, only that “about three weeks after an occurrence took place whereby my wife became willing, and on the 24 day of 4th mo. 1800, I started” (Journal, 103).
Timothy spent the summer of 1800 in Upper Canada and decided to locate his settlement in the densely forested land on Yonge Street at what is now Newmarket, Ontario about fifty-five kilometres north of Lake Ontario. The following year, he planned to lead Quaker families from Vermont (many of them his relatives) to this new settlement where Quaker families from Pennsylvania, led by Samuel Lundy, would join them.
Sarah and Timothy Rogers left Vermont in February 1801. It must have been a difficult journey. Many of the women were travelling with young children and infants. Sarah Rogers and her nineteen-year-old daughter, Mary Rogers, both had infants one month apart in age.
These Quaker families initiated a series of chain migrations as settlers encouraged family and friends back in the United States to “mak[e] ready to come to a land as it were flowing with milk and honey.”[3] Immigration helped this community—the Yonge Street Monthly Meeting—to flourish and become the largest Quaker meeting in Upper Canada (now Ontario).
Sarah gave birth to her last child in November 1802, two months before her forty-fourth birthday. Settled on Yonge Street, she lived in proximity to her children. In addition to the eight offspring still living at home, five of her older children had settled in the Yonge Street community. Her son, Timothy Rogers Jr., was at Friends’ School at West-town in Pennsylvania, but he arrived at Yonge Street in 1806 to open a school (at the age of sixteen!). Sarah was active in meeting business and the early minutes record her appointment to varied duties. Was she surprised when, in 1807, Timothy decided to move them again? It cannot have been easy. The couple once again pulled up stakes and moved to Duffin’s Creek in Pickering Township, east of York (Toronto) on Lake Ontario, approximately 65 kilometres away from the Yonge Street settlement. There Timothy constructed a saw and a gristmill. Here, his son, Wing, tells us, he found prosperity: “My father moved here into the wilderness, but settlement went on rapidly, & he became wealthy, for the God his fathers had blessed him in basket & in store.”[4]
Sarah was living at Duffin’s Creek in 1809 when an epidemic ravaged the Yonge Street community, devastating her family. Five daughters, two sons, one son-in-law, and three grandchildren died in the epidemic. Timothy recorded that “My wife entirely gave up business, my family half gone” (Journal, 112). Sarah’s son’s memories align with his father’s: “My parents buried seven children out of the fourteen & most of them were married & had families, which was a great trial to them both, but particularly so, with mother. I was young but I can remember of seeing [mother] meet the neighbour women & talking of her troubles & great loss, with the tears running down her aged face, & comparing it to Job’s troubles.”[5]
Some families never recovered from the death toll of the epidemic. According to Timothy, Sarah “kept along in a strange way.” She was so debilitated by her experience that Timothy was unable to attend to his meeting duties. No doubt sick and tired of the frontier that had claimed so many of her children, Sarah told Timothy that if he would build “her a good house or to that effect [he] might go” (Journal, 113). Timothy summarizes what followed: “in 1810 and 11, I got a house so I thought to amoved in in a short time; had a barn, and a considerable of clearing. About the third day of the 1 month 1812, my wife Sarah and I started to go to York with me to get some things she wanted to begin said house. And as we rode this 24 miles, she talked pleasant and told her wishes, and the next day attended to sell and buy” (Journal, 113). January 3, 1812 was Sarah’s fifty-third birthday. Despite her losses, it seems that Sarah had a pleasant day.
A few days later, as they made their way home from York, they stopped to visit one of Sarah’s distant relatives. There Sarah fell ill and, after a six-day illness, died on 13 January 1812. She is buried in what is now the Pickering Friends Burial Ground; at the time it was Rogers family land. Hers was the first death in a second epidemic that claimed many more lives in the Quaker community in 1812–13. As with the first outbreak, no one can say what it was. Timothy recorded “that first it was called the Typhus fever, but latterly we have had the Measles, by which some have departed this life; but mostly it has been such an uncommon Disorder that it seems to baffle the skill of the wisest and best physicians” (Journal, 117–18).
Sarah’s life comes to us in glimpses from the words of her husband and son, and from brief mentions in meeting minutes. Without her own words, much of her lived experience remains unknown. Even so, this short outline of her life demonstrates that Sarah Wilde Rogers was a woman of strength and tenacity. These traits served her well as one of the founding members of the Yonge Street Quaker community.
[1] Christopher Densmore and Albert Schrauwers, eds., “The Best Man for Settling New Country …”: The Journal of Timothy Rogers (Toronto: CFHA, 2000). The map of Lake Champlain, Vermont and the genealogical table in this post are from the introduction of The Journal of Timothy Rogers.
[2] Rogers was the clerk for the Proprietors of Ferrisburg, a position that involved “buying and selling of thousands of acres of land, overseeing the settlement of the town of Ferrisburg and the city of Vergennes.” He was also the clerk of the Proprietors of the town of Hungerford. Overall, he was “a highly successful entrepreneur and one of the leading citizens of Ferrisburg.” Christopher Densmore, “Timothy Rogers: The Story he Wanted to Tell,” Canadian Quaker History Journal 65(2000): 3.
[3] Qtd, in Robynne Rogers Healey From Quaker to Upper Canadian: Faith and Community among Yonge Street Friends, 1801-–1850 (MQUP, 2006), 40–41.
[4] “The Journal of Wing Rogers,” in Densmore and Schruawers, eds., The Journal of Timothy Rogers, 139.
[5] “The Journal of Wing Rogers,” 138. Original spelling corrected.
“The Best Man for Settling New Country…”: The Journal of Timothy Rogers Edited by Christopher Densmore and Albert Schrauwers
This guest post is contributed by Albert Schrauwers and includes his reflections on editing Timothy Rogers’ journal alongside Christopher Densmore. Rogers’ journal can be found here:http://www.cfha.info/journalrogers.pdf
Photo of Timothy Rogers’ journal
Timothy Rogers is a subject of perennial interest to genealogists and historians, and I welcome this opportunity to broaden its availability. Rogers’s Journal contains a riveting narrative of his spiritual development and (unsuccessful) attempts at the ministry; his travels across the north-eastern states to Maine, Nova Scotia and PEI in service of the ministry; and his role in opening new Quaker settlements in Vermont, Newmarket, and Pickering. It is the most extensive first-person narrative of an early nineteenth century Quaker pioneer outside the manuscripts of David Willson, leader of the Children of Peace. It is thus of interest to Quaker and local historians in both Canada and the US, and to a very large number of descendants (including those who went on to create Rogers Communications).
Timothy Rogers’s Journal was published by CFHA twenty years ago, the product of years of careful preparation. The choice of Rogers’s Journal seemed obvious at the time. As a major source of historical and genealogical information, it was the single largest subject of interest to visitors of the Dorland Room. The journal itself, however, was in a fragile state and could not withstand heavy usage. The Yearly Meeting had decided not to allow the Archives of Ontario to microfilm its collection, but lacked the resources to do so itself. Producing an easily accessible copy was a pressing need.
Producing the journal was a complicated matter. Making a photocopy of the fragile journal from which the transcription could be made without damaging it was only the first step. Decisions also needed to be made as to how the transcription would be made. Rogers had little formal education, used erratic spelling and no punctuation. A copy of a page and its direct transcription were given in the published journal to indicate the actual tenor of his writing. It was decided, however, to make the journal as accessible as possible to a modern audience by following modern orthographic conventions. In doing so, some valuable information was lost. It was clear, for example, that Rogers spelled phonetically, hence the original journal conveyed his pronunciation and speaking style. Given the spiritual journey that Rogers recorded, it was also considered important to highlight to modern (perhaps secular) readers how grounded the journal was in biblical references. This entailed adding quotation marks to biblical passages, and providing footnoted citations. Further extensive footnotes were added drawing on Monthly Meeting minutes and secondary sources that clarified references made by Rogers; two appendices, containing journals by his descendant Wing Rogers, and fellow traveller, Joshua Evans, were included for the same reason. The preparation of the transcription was thus a long, laborious process.
As the copyright for the journal itself (as opposed to the transcription) was retained by the Yearly Meeting, it was decided that CFHA would self-publish the result, giving Friends greater control over it use. Unfortunately, we lacked the means of promoting it as it deserved. Dissemination on the web will at last make the work generally available, and further evidence the impact of early Quakers on Canadian history.
We recently received a genealogy question in regard to the ancestry of Thomas William Henry Young Bunnell (1860 – 1896) from Susan Bunnell.
Thomas Young Bunnell listed his birthplace as Toronto and Ontario on two documents, but on his death notice his place of birth is left blank. In another document, he lists his parents as Henry and Hannah Bunnel. The Bunnell/Bonnell family appear to be active in the Yonge Street Monthly Meeting (this includes Henry and Margaret Bonnell and their children). However, there is no birth record for Thomas in Ontario and no mention of him in any census until 1891 (after his marriage to Ellen Guard in 1888).
Susan Bunnell has suggested that perhaps Thomas came to Canada through the British Home Child Program and was adopted into the Bunnell family, as she found a record of a Thomas Young entering Canada at the age of 14.
Do you have any information about Thomas Young Bunnell or the Bunnell/Bonnell family?
The Canadian Quaker Highlight series features the stories of Friends whose lives are part of the Canadian Quaker experience.
Anna (Engeltie, or ‘Angelica’) Solmes was born in Dutchess County, New York, in 1774.[1] Anna immigrated to Upper Canada in the late 1790s after her marriage to Jacob Cronk. Jacob Cronk, alongside his father Abraham, had already spent a number of years in Upper Canada before his marriage to Anna. Historian Margaret McBurney recalls, “In order to finance a trip to the United States to bring back his bride, young Jacob had to sell part of his land and spend the winter working in Adolphustown cutting cordwood for four dollars a month plus board.”[2]
Anna and Jacob quickly integrated themselves into their nearest Quaker meeting. Jacob was accepted by the Adolphustown Monthly meeting in 1798, and Anna a year later. The couple’s dedication to their faith was strong. Anna became an elder in 1804, and by 1807, Anna and Jacob began hosting an indulged meeting in their Sophiasburgh home. This meeting later became the Green Point Preparative Meeting in 1811. The couple also hosted a number of travelling Quaker ministers, including Rufus Hall in 1798, Elias Hicks in 1803, and Phoebe Roberts in 1821. During her travels, Roberts described the Cronk family as “valuable friends,” noting they were “very wealthy people and appeared to live in much harmony.”[3]
Anna’s active involvement in the Upper Canadian meetings is evident throughout meeting minutes. Anna was a regular attendee of the Canada Half-Yearly Meeting from its inception in 1810 and was often chosen to attend the New York Yearly Meeting as a representative. Her presence is peppered throughout meeting minutes as part of numerous committees formed to look into schools, troubling issues, establishing new meetings, and visiting members.
Like many nineteenth-century women, Anna experienced significant heartbreak in her life. Anna and Jacob were vocal proponents of the Hicksite faction during the 1828 Orthodox-Hicksite schism that affected Quaker meetings across North America. The Orthodox West Lake Monthly Meeting minutes accused Anna of being “instrumental in setting up separate meetings in conformity with Elias Hicks,” and allegedly “pushing the half years meeting clerks, and afterwards denying it in the face of the monthly meeting.”[4] Already in her mid-fifties, Anna suffered through the devastating separation of a community she had been actively involved in for over thirty years. A decade later, Anna’s only son Samuel died in 1841. Samuel left behind his wife Eliza and his own young son.
Anna’s Quaker faith remained a central tenet in her life. In the Hicksite West Lake Monthly Meeting, Anna continued on as an overseer and elder, even travelling on a religious visit with Margaret Brewer in 1836 to Friends in Philadelphia and New York.[5] Anna was active in the West Lake meeting into her old age, and was last recorded as an elder in 1860, just three years before she died at the age of eighty-nine.
A photo of the Cronk home in Sophiasburgh (photo found in Margaret McBurney’s Homesteads, 54).
[1] Information on Anna Solmes and her family can be found in the Herbert Clarence Burleigh Fonds, folder 2324, box 12.2, file 5.
[2] Margaret McBurney, Homesteads: Early Buildings and Families from Kingston to Toronto (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 52.
[3] Leslie R. Gray, ed. “Phoebe Roberts’ Diary of A Quaker Missionary Journey to Upper Canada.” Ontario History 42 (1950): 24.
[4] West Lake Monthly Meeting Women (Orthodox) 1828-1851 (C-4-1), 15 January 1829.
[5] West Lake Monthly Meeting Women (Hicksite) 1825-1851 (H-11-5) 18 May 1836.
Randy Saylor has supported CFHA in many ways. He initiated the CFHA website and served many years as webmaster. He also initiated in Canada collaborative internet transcription of Quaker minute books, a project he continues to administer. A Quaker descendant himself, Randy has spent decades researching and writing about diverse aspects of Quaker experience. To assist other researchers, some years ago Randy compiled a guide to understanding the structure and availability of Quaker records. Who better than to provide a virtual presentation on the subject to the Quinte branch of Ontario Ancestry this past weekend?
Over 80 participants logged in on June 20th to the presentation. Randy first acquainted the viewers with the hierarchal structure of Quaker meetings and the interlocking nature of their records which results. This provides viewers a good sense of how records of activity related to membership, marriage or disownment. For example, records can originate in a smaller local “Preparative” meeting and then advance upward to then also appear in subsequent records of the “Monthly’” meeting and on, in some cases, to the “Quarterly”, “Half-Yearly”, and Yearly meeting sessions respectively. Likewise, the written decisions, financial requirements, epistles, and amendments to the book of Discipline moved the other way through the successive superior meetings back down to the local Preparative meeting, being duly recorded at every stage. These records were supplemented by those of communications such as certificates of removal, that were exchanged directly between meetings. The net effect has been a boon to researchers as some aspects of the historical information may be preserved somewhere in the document chain even if a particular minute book may have been lost or destroyed.
Randy made use of various charts of the historical meetings under the care of New York Yearly Meeting and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to show how extensive the Quaker presence had been in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Arthur Dorland charts of initial to early 20th century meetings in Canada were used to show the numerous meetings which existed in the greater Quinte area. These were in a band extending from Adolphustown in the east through Prince Edward County to Cold Creek meeting (present day Wooler Monthly Meeting), the only surviving meeting, in the west.
Randy was able to draw upon his own family history to illustrate some aspects of Quaker practice and principles. His Quaker ancestor Jemima Hubbs was disowned from her local meeting when she “married out” to captain Charles Saylor. Such “going out of the good order of our Society” could be remedied by providing the meeting with a written acknowledgement of error. Like many other Quaker women in like circumstances, Jemima provided the requisite letter and was restored into membership.
Randy provided a tour of the CFHA website, including the many searchable transcriptions of local Quaker minute books available on the site. Participants were also provided access to Randy’s recently updated Quaker research guide. This useful aid to researchers is available on the CFHA website.
The presentation was illustrated with some 20 slides in a PowerPoint format. The PowerPoint and text of the presentation has been posted on the Quinte branch website and can be accessed here: https://vimeo.com/431945751/f2828d0745
The Toronto Quaker Meeting continues to be an active meeting to this day. More about the history of the meeting can be found on the first page of the transcription.
The minutes themselves provide a wealth of information for researchers and genealogists alike. Visitors were welcomed and certificates of membership accepted from meetings in England (Newcastle, London, and Norwich), Ireland (Lisburn and Dublin), and across the United States (Kansas, New York, Iowa, and Indiana).
The following insight into the minutes has been provided by CFHA co-chair, Gordon Thompson:
The latest minute book to be transcribed is that of the Toronto Monthly Meeting (orthodox) 1893-1902. To readers familiar with transcriptions of the 1860s or earlier, the tone and shift in principles away from the primacy of the personal ‘inner light’ to one based on salvation and acknowledgement of sin will be jarring. This minute book commences a little more than ten years after the Orthodox/Conservative split, and it appears the Orthodox meeting continues to reverberate and rebound away from the traditional founding Quaker precepts. Researchers will find an abundance of family names and like references. Please note that this is the earliest minute book of any of the early Toronto meetings that is known to have been preserved and available for microfilming and transcription.
Our thanks and appreciation go out to Carman Foster once again for his transcription from images of the original text, and to Randy Saylor for researching and writing the detailed introductory notes. Thanks are also due to Jane Sweet, a member of the Toronto Monthly Meeting Library Committee, for tracking down Toronto Monthly Meeting library sources.
Friends’ Meeting House at 28 Pembroke St., Toronto. The Toronto Preparative Meeting purchased this meeting house in 1881 and it was in use until 1902. Photo is courtesy of the Toronto Public Library.
Plaque of the Dunkerron Quaker cemetery. Image from LostCemeteries.blogpost.com.
Friends gather to worship in their Meeting Houses. They do Meeting business there and obviously socialize. Although members may live some distance away, they are said to come from their Meeting, in this case from Tecumseth Preparative Meeting.
Researchers might prefer the Lot and Concession of a family, where births and deaths occur. What we learn from this document is that Friends set their sights on the Meeting House. Weddings happen here, and social life revolves around the pulse of Quaker worship as much as of the seasons. Indeed, Joseph John Kiteley is appointed “to dig graves,” a measure of permanence.
Preparative Meetings are devolved from Monthly Meetings. As the minutes show, the MM has considerable authority and is equally devolved from the Yearly Meeting and so on, even to the Philadelphia YM or the London YM. These levels of organization produce Minutes, Directives, Devotional Tracts, Assessments and a set of querulous Queries, which are a study in themselves. All of these elements are seen and revealed in the Minutes.
Much else can be deduced (and, with caution, inferred).
In the Tecumseth Minutes [TPM] evidence is available to link with the larger history of the area, add specifics to government documents and confirm family connections and history. Equally the minutes are a stark, often awkwardly formal documentation, too sparse to be a genealogical goldmine.
Here is a sample of what can be gleaned both personal and general from these pages.
TPM is a spin off from Yonge Street Monthly Meeting. Two members are appointed to attend the MM “and to report.” TPM would meet on Wednesdays, the time apparently designated by MM as 10:00AM. This schedule is not held rigidly, as the reading will show.
Here is the geographic difficulty Tecumseth representatives faced. Three possible routes to Meeting can be seen. The shortest route is to take highway 9 south of Dunkerron east to Yonge Street and south a piece to the Meeting House. That counts as some 18 kilometres, which takes 22 minutes as the car drives. Horse and buggy are another matter, as is the realization that Friends were living in 19th century conditions. If you have Googled the map, the presence of the Pottageville Swamp looms. It bestrides the easy route to Meeting. A more southerly passage on the Lloydtown line to Kettleby is no more promising. In winter, the route would be possible, but several instances in the minutes show that “impassible roads” and Simcoe County’s well-documented spring blizzards and floods make the shortest route adrift or a quagmire. That most roads throughout Ontario were a quagmire is well understood.
The north route makes sense when conditions required, but it is 22 kilometres at least. North on 27 is Bondhead, the Post Office, where a traveler would go east on 88 and find the bridge at Bradford over the Holland River down to Holland Landing, where Yonge Street begins, and thence to Newmarket and the Meeting House. Sunday is a good time to travel and evenings paced by a prime horse or team would be pleasant.
The isolation is real for this small community of Friends. The minutes show them under long-term leadership but an ever-diminishing membership. The self census of 1871 and 1875, the only detailed reports recorded, show a heavy drop in members. From 106 the complement falls to 44. One wonders to where and why 62 Friends left the fold. Yet their urge to carry on is poignant.
Assessment reports show a dedication to local needs and to principles of a global calling. Cash amounts are collected on a progressive basis, it appears, and suggest a frugal but growing economy.
By the 1890s the minutes become spotty, meetings are not held, representatives more often do not make it to MM. The Men’s and Women’s meetings combine and switch to Sunday meetings.
And then the Minutes stop.
More directly and personally, figures show up. Peter Doyle stands out almost until his death in 1888. His land is used for the cemetery and the Meeting House. His firstborn is buried there as is his first wife, Phoebe Minn, before the House is built. Peter is “in care of the House” institutionally. He seems to hold out for his $12 fee for service, with the Committee charged with “finding a Friend to care for the House” taking as long as three months to reappoint Peter. The fourteenth time Peter is faced with the care of the house, the decision is deferred eight times until Peter is removed and Jacob Doyle is appointed. Peter is 82 years old.
As his name fades away, another long-time caretaker is found. Jacob Doyle, already established as Clerk, takes on the role at $6 per annum, or “50 cents per month” as he must have preferred.
Jacob is the only lived child of Peter and Phoebe. His story goes beyond the Minutes and is recorded as a bachelor of dedication, wealth and generosity.
There are a number of Hughes men who contribute to the community. Amos Hughes teams with Peter Doyle regularly as representatives of TPM to MM. His name disappears suddenly, as does his presence on the census. Has he returned to Pelham or even New York? Then, Samuel Hughes appears on the record.
In addition, new members are installed as their requests are recorded.
Here a simple wisdom is shown. Rookies are welcomed and in a moment are teamed with veterans to represent TPM at MM. Commitment is strengthened and a new member is introduced to the larger parent Meeting. The six new members recorded between 1873 to 1888 is sparse growth indeed. They, of course, represent families, but the dwindling character of the experiment is felt.
As a last reflection, the case of Henry Doyle is curious. Henry is the 6th of Peter’s five boys and two girls. Rachel Haight, of American stock from the Haights of Pickering Township by Duffin’s Creek, marries Peter at MM in 1836 and carries on the frontier tradition with energy and success.
Their first born, John Haight Doyle moves to Pilkington Township near Elora, and breaks the bush there. Margaret [Doyle] Wilson researched her great-grandfather and notes that he became Methodist. Elora was well away from his co-religionists. The need for a religious community placed them in the hands of the burgeoning, evangelical Methodists, where John is active. His first born, John Alan, becomes a Minister in the Great North West, covering the Prairie region.
Henry stays in Tecumseth Township to take over the homestead and the adjacent farm. He shows in the minutes as a mature adult, active as Clerk, on committees, representative to MM, organizing various assessments, even caring for the House and a repair project. The Homestead is parts of Lots 24 and 23, Concession 3 Tecumseth. Immediately south on Lot 23 Concession 2 another Irish family is settled.
James Manning is the son of Joseph, an Anglo-Irishman who was “a pay master of the forces in Ireland” and a Methodist. Now there’s an incentive to emigrate, as the Pale becomes unsafe after the Great Rebellion of 1798. James is an Evangelical Wesleyan Methodist preacher with energy. He builds the Dunkerron Methodist community, represents the church in General Conference and sends three sons into the ministry.
James has a daughter, Ann Jane, or “Annie”, who lives, as the farmers say, “within buggy distance.” Henry and Annie are married in 1875. Peter Doyle resisted the Hicksites. John has gone Methodist and Henry has married one. But Henry is not disowned. He carries on, showing frequently in the Minutes as active and an office holder. There is the curiosity. Certainly, Annie does not convert. She dies at 35 and is buried in the Dunkerron Methodist Cemetery beside the new red brick Methodist Church.
Henry marries again, ten years later, returning to an Orthodox Quaker family, with Jennie Lynd. Henry’s eldest, Manson Doyle, only ten when his mother is taken, is said by his daughter “to have broken his father’s heart” and became a Methodist Minister, although he married a West Lake MM Quaker, Augusta Belle Saylor. Manson journeyed west, as well, and became an energetic builder of Union, after which he became Youth Secretary of the United Church until age 75.
But Henry was never “disowned,” as so many Quakers were for “marrying out.” He is buried in the Tecumseth PM burial ground with Jennie Lynd. Nearby are Joseph and Peter and Rachel, representatives of the faithful Orthodoxy.
“Tecumseth Prep meet of Friends Held 7 mo 4th 1888: It was proposed & united with that this meeting be held in joint scession after this month.”
Simply, without flourish or regrets, the Meeting begins its final years, exactly 5 months after Peter’s death.
The Joint meetings carry on until 1898. Names such as Susannah, Delia, and Martha Ella Hughes appear as William Chantler and Margaret, the newer Friends, take on responsibility. By 1895 Annie Molison is in “care of the House” for $6 per annum. Henry’s last reference is 11-4-1885, although he is an energetic 37. Jacob Doyle remains active to the end.
A comparison to the Yonge Street MM minutes will build on these insights. Good stories never end.
Timothy became parents.Obadiah Wilde Rogers was the first of Sarah’s fourteen children. On average, she gave birth every twenty-four months between December 1776 and November 1802.
May 1782, she “had a very poor turn and never had a well day for two years.” Despite his wife’s poor health, Timothy continued to travel, embarking to the township of Ferrisburg, Vermont where he purchased land “about 40 miles beyond where there was any inhabitants” (Journal, 7).
