USA > Ohio > Miami County > West Milton > Centennial anniversary of West Branch Monthly Meeting of Friends, 1807-1907 > Part 2
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they came to Miami County, Ohio. His other son, William, about 1790, married Jane Jay, daughter of Joseph and Mary (Cothran) Jay. They remained in South Carolina several years later. Their removal cer- tificate from Bush River to Miami Monthly Meeting, Ohio, is dated 7 Mo. 27th, 1805. Perhaps they lived some years before that date in Washington County, Tennessee, where other members of the family had re- moved.
EMBREE. Two families, Moses and Margaret Em- bree, with eight children, born in years 1753-1773, and John and Mary Embree, with eight children, born in the years 1753-1772, are given in the Family Registry of Bush River Meeting. From the minutes of that meeting it is quite certain that the Embrees came from Exeter, Pennsylvania. In 1775, John and Mary Embree and family removed from Bush River to Wrightsboro Meeting, Georgia. In 1804, John and Mary brought their removal certificate from that meeting to Miami Monthly Meeting, Ohio, and their son, Amos, his wife, Sarah, and six children brought a certificate removing their rights of membership from Georgia to Miami Meeting. In the year 1806, Thomas and Esther Em- bree and their three children, and Isaac and Hannah (Ballinger) Embree and their four children brought their removal certificate from New Hope Monthly Meeting, Tennessee, to Miami Meeting. Thomas and Isaac were sons of Moses and Margaret, mentioned above, who were born in the years 1755 and 1762. Isaac Embree's family, and perhaps others of the name, settled in this county.
EVANS. Three families of this name belonged to Bush River Quarterly Meeting. The heads of the oldest of these were Robert and Rebekah Evans, par- ents of nine children, born in the years 1763 to 1783. All these but one who died in childhood, grew up and were married at Bush River Meeting, and perhaps all came to Ohio. The oldest child, Ann, born in 1763. married in 1784 Enoch Pearson, the preacher ; Martha, born in 1766, married David Jenkins in 1789 ; Rebekah, born in 1780, married in 1803 Isaac Haskett, and Jo- seph, born in 1773, married in 1798 Rachel McCool, daughter of Gabriel. He laid out the town of West Milton one hundred years ago. All these were prom- inent citizens in Miami County, Ohio, and in the West Branch Meetings. Robert, the father, died in South Carolina in about 1784.
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Another Evans family lived at Wrightsboro, Geor- gia. The parents of this were Joseph Evans (1749- 1828) and Esther Buffington (1751-1830). They were married in 1773 and were parents of twelve chil- dren, the youngest being Sallie, born in 1797, who married John Furnas in 1718. The removal certifi- cate for Joseph Evans and his wife Esther and chil- dren, Margaret, Robert, Mary, Aaron and Sallie, from Wrightsboro Monthly Meeting to Miami Monthly Meeting is dated 4 Mo. 6th, 1805, and received at Mia- mi Monthly Meeting 6 Mo. 12th, 1806. Robert and Joseph Evans were probably brothers, though I have not met with any records to prove it. The minutes of Bush River Monthly Meeting show that Robert Evans was one of its leading members for more than twenty years in its business affairs. He made at least one journey "as far as to Philadelphia in regard to his temporal affairs," which is pretty good proof that he was a native of Pennsylvania.
The head of the other Evans family at Bush River was Benjamin Evans, who came to South Carolina from near Philadelphia as a young man and married there about 1790. He came to Ohio with his family in 1803 and settled in Warren County, where he lived and died. It is not supposed that he was related to the other two families and certainly no near connection. He was a blacksmith by trade and the inventor of the screw augur.
FURNAS. John Furnas, born 1736, and Mary Wil- kinson, born 1742, in the north of England, were mar- ried at Friends' Meeting at Wigton, Cumberland Coun- ty, England, Third Month 24, 1762, and the same year emigrated to America, landing at Charleston, South Carolina, in the latter part of February, 1763. In a short time they located at Bush River, Newberry County, South Carolina, where they lived and died, he in 1777 and she in 1782. They were parents of seven children, five sons and two daughters, born in the years 1763-1775. All their children married in South Carolina and had children born there, and all but two retained their membership with the Friends. Five of them and their families re- ceived removal certificates from Bush River Monthly Meeting in 1804 and 1805 to Miami Monthly Meeting. and three of these, one son and two daughters, settled in Miami County, Ohio, and their families added thirty
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members to West Branch Monthly Meeting. Although John and Mary Furnas died rather young, a little more than forty years each, the children all lived to a fair age, the average of the seven being sixty-nine years and four months, a high average for a whole family.
HASKETT. Isaac and Joseph Haskett appear to have come to Bush River from eastern North Carolina. Isaac probably lived a while on the Wateree River at the Camden Meeting before coming to Bush River. Joseph remained there only a short time, receiving a removal certificate from Bush River Meeting to Center Monthly Meeting, North Carolina, in 1775. The family of Isaac and Lydia Haskett, two sons and seven daughters, born in the years 1765 to 1781, is given in the Bush River Family Registry. Isaac Haskett's name occurs often in the business of the meeting on committees requiring clearness and accuracy of judg- ment. His two sons, Thomas, born in 1766, and Isaac, born in 1777, both married in South Carolina ; Thomas married a daughter of Marmaduke Mills, and Isaac married, in 1803, Rebekah Evans, daughter of Isaac and Rebekah. Their removal certificate in coming to Ohio is dated 4 Mo. 26th, 1806, and was received at Miami Monthly Meeting I Mo. 8th, 1807, nine days before the opening of West Branch Monthly Meeting. They settled near West Milton, Ohio, and Thomas' family settled in Warren County, Ohio. Thomas and Isaac Haskett were carpenters and built the new meet- ing-house at Bush River which was finished about the beginning of the exodus of the Friends from South Carolina.
HOLLINGSWORTH. The early settlers of the name of Hollingsworth in Miami County, Ohio, were descend- ants of Valentine Hollingsworth, born in England about 1630, who died in the State of Delaware after 1710. In 1682, he, his wife Ann and seven children came to America from the Parish of Sego, County of Armagh, Ireland, and settled on a large plantation of nearly one thousand acres in New Castle County, Del- aware, five miles north-east of the present city of Wilmington. His son, Thomas Hollingsworth, born in Ireland, in 1661, died in Winchester, Virginia, in 1702-3, whither he had removed a few years be- fore. Thomas' son, Abraham, born in Delaware, 1686, died near Winchester, Virginia, in 1748. His son, George, the great-grandson of Valentine, the immi-
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grant, had a family of eleven children by two wives, nine sons and two daughters. In 1762, he sold his property near Winchester, Virginia, and all the family, except the son, Robert, went south and settled at Bush River, Newberry County, South Carolina. His oldest son, Joseph, born in 1735, went to South Carolina, a widower with two sons, where at Bush River Meet- ing, in Sixth Month, 1768, he married Margaret Ham- mer, a widow, daughter of John and Rachel Wright. They were the parents of ten children, but none of them on coming north, settled in Miami County, Ohio. Their second son, Isaac, was the father of Gulielma Hollingsworth, the mother of Joseph Gurney Can- non, present Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
Isaac Hollingsworth, 1739-1809, second son of George, also married a daughter of John and Rachel Wright, Susannah, 12 Mo. 12th, 1771, at Bush River Meeting. She was a prominent minister in the So- ciety of Friends, both in the South and after coming to Ohio, which they did in 1805. They had nine chil- dren, some of whom are ancestors of active members in the West Branch Meeting the last one hundred years. Their daughter Ruth, born in 1781, married John Pearson, born in 1776, son of Benjamin and Margaret (Evans) Pearson. John and Ruth were the great-grandparents of our worthy presiding officer, Dr. H. R. Pearson. Their daughter, Keziah, born in 1784, married Robert Pearson, born in 1771, brother of John. Both these marriages took place in South Carolina. Their youngest daughter, Susannah, born in 1788, mar- ried Elisha Jones, born in 1786, and they were grand- parents of Arena Kersey and William A. Jones, from whom we are to hear this afternoon on the program. The families of two other sons of George Hollings- worth settled in Miami County, James and Henry. Of Henry's seven children four married companions of the name of Coppock.
JAY. John Jay, 1752-1829, an early settler in Miami County, Ohio, was the son of William Jay, born in Maryland or Virginia about 1720. The first account we have of him he was living in Frederick County, Virginia, near Winchester. There, about 1743, he married Mary Vestal, daughter of William and Eliza- beth (Mercer) Vestal. The Vestal family came from Chester County, Pennsylvania, to the settlement of
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the Friends in the Shenandoah Valley, already men- tioned, about 1730. They were Friends, and it appears that their daughter's marriage to William Jay, who was not a member, caused her to lose her right. Wil- liam and Mary Jay had eight children, five sons and three daughters, born in the years 1744 to 1765. My father's account of these children to me almost a half century ago, as he remembered them in the order of their ages was: that James was a Baptist preacher ; William, the grandfather of Elijah Jay; Joseph, the father of Jane Elleman, wife of William Elleman : John his father ; Mary married Charles Patty ; Rachel married George Arnold; Lydia married James Mills ; and David, a very jovial and social man with young people, was a Methodist preacher, had a son John and emigrated to Alabama from South Carolina. None of these were members with the Friends in Virginia, though they no doubt grew up among them in the vicinity of Hopewell Meeting.
When the wave of southern emigration passed over that region, about 1770, this Jay family was carried along in it to Bush River, South Carolina. The three older sons seem to have married in Virginia, but they and their families were in the migration. It appears that soon after their removal to Bush River, the five younger children became members in the Society of Friends ; they are so enrolled in the Family Registry of that meeting. Unfortunately, the minutes of the meeting, prior to Fourth Month, 1772, are lost, and so we cannot learn the time or the way in which this came about. From the minutes of Hopewell Month- ly Meeting, Virginia, we learn that in the latter part of the year 1772, their mother, Mary Jay, formerly Vestal, gave there a paper concerning her outgoing in marriage, which was taken "as satisfaction," and she received a removal certificate of membership with the Friends to Bush River, South Carolina. In the Third Month, 1773, two of her children were married ac- cording to Friends' order in that meeting. John, on the 4th to Elizabeth Pugh (1755-1821), and Mary, born in 1755, on the IIth, to Charles Patty. In the marriage certificate of John Jay he is described as son of William Jay, deceased, and Mary Jay, from which it is evident that William Jay had died some time previous to that date and probably before the family left Virginia.
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Elizabeth Pugh, wife of John Jay, was daughter of Thomas Pugh, born in 1731 and Ann Wright, born in 1725, both natives of Pennsylvania. She was the granddaughter of Jesse Pugh, born 1711, who was the grandson of Ellis Pugh, born in 1656 in Wales, from whence in 1687, he came to the province of Penn- sylvania and died there in 1718. Ellis Pugh was an approved minister amongst the Friends, both in Wales. and in Pennsylvania, preaching in the Welsh language and was instrumental in gathering many of that na- tionality around Philadelphia into membership with the Friends. John and Elizabeth Pugh Jay were parents of eleven children, seven sons and four daugh- ters, born in South Carolina in the years 1773 to 1795. Three of them married at Bush River Meeting. In the first half of the year 1803. John Jay and family, including ten of his children, came to Warren County, Ohio. There he engaged in mercantile business at Waynesville, Ohio, for about five years. In that time, for the purpose of buying goods, he made two trips with his own five-horse team to Baltimore, Maryland, with produce from the new country. My father, Walter Denny Jay, went with him as companion and teamster. In the meantime he entered land in the south-west cor- ner of Monroe township, Miami County, Ohio, and when a home was prepared the family settled on this land. From the date of the certificate transferring their membership from Miami to West Branch this removal appears to have been in the autumn of 1808, and here in a few years nine of his eleven children with their families were settled around him, most of them on farms adjoining each other.
Grandfather John Jay's brother, William, "grand- father of Elijah Jay," also had eleven children from two marriages, seven sons and four daughters. The six children by his first wife all joined Friends in South Carolina, and the oldest one, Susannah Jay, of the second marriage. Four of these seven married in Friends Meeting in South Carolina ; James and Lay- ton Jay marrying two sisters, Jemimah and Elizabeth Mills, and the two daughters, Anna Jay ( 1765-1821), marrying in 1790 John Coppock, son of John and Abigail, and Susannah Jay ( 1778-1859), marrying in 1796 Benjamin Coppock (1772-1850), son of Joseph and Jane. The two oldest sons of William Jay, David, born in 1764, and James, born in 1766, on coming
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north, settled a while in Warren County, Ohio, then lived from 1822 to 1842 in the northern part of Wayne County, Indiana, at a meeting called Center, and then went to Henry County, Iowa, where many of their de- scendants still live.
JENKINS. In giving an account of the Friends of Bush River, Judge O'Neal says that David Jenkins came there about 1762, or possibly a few years earlier. Although we have no records telling us where he came from, there are certain facts which make it quite sure that he came from Pennsylvania. Possibly he had stopped for awhile at some of the Friends' Meetings by the way, it may be at Hopewell, Virginia, where some of the name are known to have lived later on. The family of David and Elizabeth Jenkins on the Bush River Family Registry consists of seven sons and two daughters, born in the years 1755 to 1776. The marriages of five of these sons, Isaac, born in 1757, David, born 1760, Thomas, 1762, Jesse, 1766, and Amos, 1769, and the daughter Elizabeth, born in 1772, were in the Friends' meeting at Bush River. The oldest son, William, born in 1755, did not marry ac- cording to the order of Friends, and there is no ac- count of the marriage of the other daughter, Mary, born 1764. The youngest child Enoch, born 1776, was unmarried when the family came to Ohio, 1805. Two of the sons, Isaac and David Jenkins, were very prom- inent in the business transactions of the meeting. Isaac died when about thirty years of age, leaving a son, David, perhaps an only child. David Jenkins, Jr., mar- ried Martha Evans, daughter of Robert and Rebekah in 1789. They had a family of eight children, two sons and six daughters, all born in South Carolina in the years 1790 to 1805. No name occurs oftener in the business of Bush River Monthly Meeting than that of David Jenkins. As there were two of the same name, father and son, both active in the business of the meeting, it is sometimes difficult to understand which one was intended. There were eight removal certificates issued by Bush River transferring the mem- bership of David Jenkins and his descendants in the years 1805 and 1806, four in each year, and these em- braced thirty-five persons. In coming to Ohio there were three David Jenkins, David, the father, David, his son, and David, his grandson, the son of Isaac, born about the year 1786. The marriage of this David
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Jenkins to Ann Russell was the first one that took place under West Branch Monthly Meeting, the marriage being in the Concord settlement, Monroe Township. He was afterward a leading citizen in that township, serving as Justice of the Peace nearly thirty years and was widely known as Squire Jenkins.
JONES. There were in the early times four families of the name of Jones in the limits of West Branch Quarterly Meeting. The first of these to settle there came from Georgia. Their ancestor in America was an emigrant to the Province of Pennsylvania in the time of William Penn. His wife is said to have been a sister of Sir Isaac Newton. His son, Francis Jones, married in Pennsylvania and must have been born about 1730 to 1735, as his oldest child was born in 1752. In his southern emigration we find that he lived for awhile at Cane Creek Meeting, North Carolina. The records of Bush River Monthly Meeting show that the removal certificates for Francis Jones, his wife and their twelve children from Cane Creek Meeting dated Ioth Mo. 3d. 1772, was received Ist Mo. 30th, 1773. This was before the opening of Wrightsboro Monthly Meeting and probably marks the time of their settle- ment in Georgia. Two other children were born in this family in Georgia, making fourteen in all. They remained in Georgia about thirty-two years. The re- moval certificates of Francis Jones and his son Samuel, wife and ten of his eleven children to Miami Monthly Meeting, Ohio, was dated in 1805. This son, Samuel Jones, about 1780, married Mary Mote, daughter of David and Dorcas ( Nichols) Mote. They settled near West Milton, Ohio, in 1805. They had seven sons and four daughters.
The head of a second family was Elisha Jones, who settled near West Milton, Ohio. He was the son of John and Margaret Jones. They were not members of the Friends. Elisha Jones was recorded a member by Bush River Monthly Meeting. 7 Mo. 31st, 1802. when he was sixteen years old. His removal certifi- cate from that Meeting to Miami Monthly Meeting. Ohio, is dated 12 Mo. 28th, 1805, and he married under sanction of Miami Monthly Meeting the next summer, Susannah Hollingsworth, youngest daughter of Isaac and Susannah Hollingsworth. This match is under- stood to have been made in South Carolina, but con- summated in Ohio.
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A third Jones family of Miami County is represented by two Wallace Joneses, father and son. Though coming to Ohio from Bush River settlement, South Carolina, they were not Friends. The father died in 1823. The son, born in South Carolina in 1773, mar- ried there about his twentieth year, Rachel Patty, daughter of James and Margaret ( Mote) Patty. They came to Ohio about 1806; they were parents of seven children, the most of whom were born in South Caro- lina. Wallace Jones, in his younger days, is described as being active and impulsive, but in later years after he joined the Friends, he was an example of sincerity and self restraint, though always original and somewhat eccentric in his ways. Wallace and Rachel Jones and their seven children joined the Friends at West Branch. in First Month, 1811. His wife, Rachel, dying in 1828, he had for a second wife Ruth ( Hollingsworth) Pear- son, widow of John Pearson. They both died in 1854.
The fourth line of the Jones name came from Deep Creek Monthly Meeting of the Friends, North Caro- lina, and has Abijah Jones as its representative. He was the son of Richard and Jemima Jones, was born in 1767, and in 1791 married Rachel Harris, daughter of Obadiah. They had a family of eight children, six of whom were born in North Carolina. He was a recorded minister among Friends and lived in Mont- gomery County, Ohio, at a meeting called Randolph, where also there were two other Jones families, sup- posed to be of the same line. Stephen, born 1792, and Francis, born 1797, both had large families there which are recorded in the Registry of Mill Creek Monthly Meeting, Ohio.
KELLY. Two brothers, Samuel and John Kelly, and their sister Abigail, from Kings County, Ireland, were living on the Wateree River, near Camden, South Carolina, as early as 1753. In 1762, Samuel Kelly and probably the others also, was at the Bush River settle- ment, being among the earliest Friends to settle there. Samuel Kelly's wife was Hannah Belton, of Queens County, Ireland. The Bush River records show that they had five children, born in the years 1758 to 1767. His daughter, Anna Kelly, married Hugh O'Neall, son of William and Mary, and their son, John Belton O'Neall, who was at his death in 1863, a judge of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, was the author of the "Annals of Newberry," mentioned above. John
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Kelly's wife was Mary Evans. They had six children that grew up and three that died in childhood. Their daughter, Anna Kelly, married Abijah O'Neall, brother of Hugh. He was born in 1762, in Frederick County, Virginia. He and his brother-in-law, Samuel Kelly, Jr., were the leaders in the exodus of the Friends from South Carolina : Abijah, with a company, coming to Ohio in 1799. Moses Kelly, the youngest son of John and Mary, born in 1783, married in South Carolina, in 1800, Mary Teague, daughter of Samuel and Re- becca. They came to Ohio in 1805 and lived in the limits of West Branch Quarterly Meeting about twenty years, when they moved to Western Indiana. Their grandson, Robert L. Kelly, is now president of Earl- ham College, Richmond, Ind. None of the descend- ants of Samuel Kelly, Sr., appear to have come north. He was one of the very few Friends, at Bush River, who suffered himself to be disowned rather than free his slaves. His brother John's family were strong in their opposition to slavery, Abijah O'Neall, his son- in-law, getting the Friends to leave there on account of slavery. Most of John Kelly's descendants settled in Warren County, Ohio.
Another Kelly family about West Milton was rep- resented by Samuel and Seth Kelly, who came from New England, as young men, bringing their right of membership with Friends from Smithfield Monthly Meeting, Rhode Island. Samuel, born in 1792, came in 1816 and Seth, born in 1794, came in 1822. They were great-grandsons of a Seth Kelly, born in Ireland in 1700, who came to America and settled in Eastern Massachusetts, where he died in 1758.
He is described as one of three brothers who came to America. If the Kelly ancestry were examined in Ireland, the South Carolina line and the Massachusetts line would probably be found to have a common origin, not many generations back.
MACY. Three families of the name of Macy settled in the limits of West Branch Quarterly Meeting. They were: Thomas Macy, son of Paul and Bethiah, born in Nantucket in 1765, and brought to Guilford County, North Carolina, by his parents in 1773 ; he married at Deep River Meeting, 1787, Anna Sweet, also born in Nantucket, and removed to East Tennessee in 1797, from whence he came to Ohio in 1807; second, his brother Paul Macy, born in Guilford County, North
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Carolina, 1780, and married in 1801, Eunice Macy, came to Ohio with his father in 1818; third, Stephen Macy, son of Enoch and Anna, born in Guilford County, North Carolina, 1778, married in North Caro- lina, Rebecca Barnard, and came to Ohio in 1808. These three men were of the sixth generation of the Macy family in America, being great-grandsons of a Thomas Macy, born in Nantucket in 1687 and who died there in 1759. This Thomas Macy was grandson of Thomas Macy, the immigrant from Salisbury, County of Wilts, England, where he was born in 1608, and who came to America between 1635 and 1640, and settled at Salisbury, now Amesbury, Massachusetts. Here he lived till 1659. In the fore-part of that year he was one of a company of ten stockholders who pur- chased the island of Nantucket as a place of residence and as a refuge from the bigotry and persecution of the Puritans in Massachusetts. In the autumn of that year, 1659, with his young family, accompanied by his trusty friend, Edward Starbuck, some years older than himself, and Isaac Coleman, a lad, he went to Nan- tucket from Salisbury in an open sailboat. They re- sided there through that winter, surrounded by three thousand Indians, who received them kindly and as- sisted them in getting a living by fishing and such other pursuits as they followed to sustain themselves. The ยท next summer they were joined by other families of the company and the colony increased and prospered. This Thomas Macy died in 1682, seventy-four years of age.
The early settlers of Nantucket were generally of the Baptist persuasion and in settling in Nantucket they sought a home where, unmolested, they might practise and enjoy their religious convictions. It was about forty years after the settlement of the island before it was visited by ministers of the Society of Friends. John Richardson, Thomas Story and Thomas Chalkley visited the island at different times and found there an honest-hearted people, willing to hear them and, when their judgments were convinced, ready to re- ceive the truths of the Gospel as they presented them. This soon led to the establishment of a Friends' Meet- ing on the island which took place in the year 1708. The first of the Macy name to join the Friends was John Macy, grandson of the immigrant Thomas Macy, and his wife, Judith (Worth) Macy. This was in 17II. This John Macy was born about 1675 and died in 1751. The maiden name of the mothers of Thomas,
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