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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47
Gc 974.8 B82w 1199558
M. L.
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01150 4021
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1
"THERE ARE SOME TOPICS OF LOCAL HISTORY WHICH ARE PURELY LOCAL AND NOTHING ELSE, AND THERE ARE THOSE WHICH, WHILE NO LESS IMPORTANT TO THE HISTORY OF THE LOCALITY, ARE ALSO OF SIGNIFICANCE WITH RESPECT TO THE LARGER ONE OF THE NATION."
John Franklin Jameson, Ph.D., LL.D.
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1
WELSH
SETTLEMENT
OF
PENSYLVANIA
MERION WELSH FRIENDS' MEETING HOUSE, "BUILT 1695."
WELSH SETTLEMENT
OF
PENSYLVANIA
1
BY CHARLES H. BROWNING
PHILADELPHIA WILLIAM J. CAMPBELL 1912
1199558
To the memory of SAMUEL JONES LEVICE,
a minister among Friends for forty-five years; "a man of strong and earnest convictions; deeply interested in public affairs, both national and local; active in the work of organizing charities, and an enthusiastic laborer for the abolition of slavery,"
are dedicated
these annals of the pioneer Welsh Friends of Pensylvania, from many of whom he was descended.
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CONTENTS.
Arranging Welsh settlement 11- 29
Welsh land companies 33- 42
Thomas and Jones' land patent 45- 59
Merion adventurers 63- 78
Families and lands of first arrivals 79- 92
Families and lands of second arrivals 95-138
Lloyd and Davies' land patent
141-161
John Bevan's land patent 163-173
John and Wynne's land patent 175-193
Lewis David's land patent 195-203
Richard Thomas' land patent 207-212
Richard David's land patent 213-248
Welsh planters and servants 249-276
Welsh Friends' pedigrees 279-302 Annals of the Welsh settlers 305-324
Welsh Tract affairs 327-416
Welsh Tract townships
419-493
Merion, Haverford and Radnor 497-589
Appendix
591-597
Index
599
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PICTURES AND MAPS.
Merion Meeting House Frontispiece Map of the Thomas and Jones tract, in 1683-4 31
Merion Meeting House 43
Location of Merion Meeting's land, 1695-1804
60
A section of Holme's Map of Pa., (circa 1688)
124
A section of Scull & Heap's Map of Pa., 1750
162
A section of Read's Map of Pa.
174
Locations of first Meeting Houses
194
Haverford tp., (1690), east part
204
Haverford tp., (1690), west part 232
Friends going to Haverford Mo. Mtg. 304
Thomas & Jones' tract, circa, 1700 376
Holme's Map of the Welsh Tract
416
The Thomas and Jones tract about 1850 494
Merion Meeting House 498
Recent survey of Merion Meeting land
560
Merion Meeting House
561
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1
WELSH QUAKER EMIGRATION TO PENSYLVANIA
WELSH SETTLEMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA
FRIENDS IN WALES
In Pensylvania, there is no more ancient public building preserved, that is so intimately associated with the settle- ment of the State, in its provincial period, than the Merion Meeting House, a stone-built house of God. It is one of the very few remaining links suggesting the days of Wil- liam Penn, and it is the oldest.
The march of public improvement and progress is pass- ing, leaving it the same House, growing older, but not de- caying, of hallowed memories, which was the first perma- nent place for public religious meetings of the first settlers of the region in which it stands, ever an interesting relict of days long passed, of early colonial, or provincial times and customs of the greatest of the American common- wealths.
Its oldest part, completed in the year 1695, as its date- stone tells, the possible successor of a more modest and unpretentious Meeting House, stands as a firm, rock-built, permanent land-mark, in Lower Merion township, Mont- gomery county, at the intersection of Montgomery avenue, and Meeting House Road, a short distance from the city line.
'Twas on one of those
"Fair First-day mornings, Steeped in summer calm,"
that I made my first visit to this Friends' Meeting. Any day it is worth more than the time you will spend on a visit
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WELSH SETTLEMENT OF PENSYLVANIA
there, "for conscience sake," if not out of interest, or cu- riosity.
You will find a large, double iron gate, just west of the picturesque and quaint "General Wayne Inn, Established in 1704," that yields to pressure, for it's never locked, and ad- mits you to a clean, rolled gravel driveway leading upwards through a well kept lawn to the old building, past the usual shelter for horses, for the merciful are merciful to their beasts, shaded by tall sycamore, or buttonwood trees, na- tive to the soil, ancient you may see, for their girths are near twenty feet, which have witnessed the passing to wor- ship, or to mourn, of many generations of Friends.
You will find that the Meeting House seems to stand on a natural elevation, but the ground is really only a part of the level fields about it, and that it is the bounding roadbeds that here have been cut down to a plane which gives it the apparent elevation. The lawn about the old building has a luxurious growth of clover, and is sufficiently shaded by trees not so old as those you have passed under, and, on the whole, is a restful spot, "far from the madding crowd," that has been enjoyed by thousands in days gone by, and is likely to be for longer, for there is never any lack of funds to keep the place in perfect condition and beauty.
This lawn on which the old house stands, to one side, is of the shape of a triangle, being bounded on two sides by the intersecting public roads, while the third, or base, may be said, rests on an end of the rectangularly spaced grave yard. All about the property is a strong, stone retaining wall, which it was necessary to build when the public roads were cut down and leveled, topped with an iron fence, which gives the grounds a park-like appearance, and, with the Meeting House, makes it notable in this locality, to the thousands motoring and driving on the adjacent avenues.
Outwardly you will find the Meeting House attractive in appearance for it has some architecturally distinctive marks and features, absent in the usually plain, unpreten-
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ARRANGING WELSH SETTLEMENT
tious Friends' Meeting Houses, which suggests that its builders were men of refined taste, who could design and erect a meeting house at once plain and unassuming, but at the same time attractive to the senses. Yet, withal, it is a little modest stone building that has withstood the elements for over two centuries. and so will probably remain to the end, an accommodation for all of its congregations, a quaint and charming bit of colonial architecture, with its three gables, and as a whole, a remarkable one, for it is the only Friends' Meeting House erected into the shape of a T, or of a "tau cross," the "crux commissa," which latter design is so incongruous with Friends' taste, it must be considered an accident that this Friends' Meeting House was built cru- ciform.
In a general description, the Meeting House faces the South, and the transept, east and west, a gable pointing towards three of the chief points of the compass. In the western gable end of the transept may be seen a small stone, set into the wall, above a window, with the legend:
BUILT 1695 REPAIRED 1829
And on the lintel of the window in the Eastern gable may be seen the engraved date, "1829." Of these dates, and what they indicate, will be told further on.
A generous "front-door" on the South side of what may be presumed to be the stem of the cross, opens on a covered wooden stoop, and two side doors are sheltered by the stiff hoods common to the Meeting House of early construction.
Anciently, this may have been an ideal spot for a Friends' Meeting House, but now it seems better adapted for a mis- sion, since its nearest neighbors are a tavern, "where they sell liquor," but a quiet, orderly place, and not unlike the
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WELSH SETTLEMENT OF PENSYLVANIA
road-houses of England, and a popular race track. But to maintain the religious atmosphere, its third neighbor is the great convent house and estate of the Sisters of Mercy, a teaching order. Between the walls of the convent grave yard, where Sisters are buried, and the Meeting House, lays the "Friends' Ground," the grave yard of the Merion Meeting, protected from trespass by a stone wall, sur- mounted by an iron fence.
Passing through its ever open iron gates, unheeding the weather beaten warning, "All Trespassing Forbidden," and going up the long, straight gravel walk, bisecting the grounds, where
"Round about, the old Friends sleep, Grave women, earnest men,"
you may notice that innovation has reached this long-time secluded spot, as it has other Meetings' grave yards, for there are inscribed stones marking graves, something the Founders and early members of this Meeting would not have tolerated. However, these cannot be classed as tomb- stones, or monuments, for they are little, modest affairs, never taller than two feet which superceded equally low head and foot boards to the graves, and' for this reason many have sank as if ashamed, so that the grass hides them, and the simple legends they bear are difficult to read. There are only about 200 graves thus marked, which is but a small percentage of the thousands of people here interred, one above the other, in two centuries, and, singular to re- late, one-third of the stones tell they are in loving remem- brance of people who died over eighty years of age, thus evidencing, as claimed, that "Quaker habits promote lon- gevity." These modest grave-stones tell the barest details of the departed; only their names and span of life, engraved on the upper edge, in the strata, and for this reason are soon rendered unreadable by the elements of the weather.
As the majority of the stones tell of Friends who died after 1830, it may be presumed it was about that decade of
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ARRANGING WELSH SETTLEMENT
the last century, shortly after the Society became divided into two branches, generally known as "orthodox" and "Hicksites," and the latter Friends, who, however, do not recognize this appellation, calling themselves simply "Friends," got control of this Meeting, they being more lib- eral in their views of such matters, when non-Friends, but descendents of members of the Society, began to be buried here, and the taste and desire for marble marking stones prevailed, for the stones recording earlier decease may have been erected long subsequent to the event, since they do not have the appearance of more age than their neighbors of later dates, and there are several that tell of deaths in the last decade of the 18th century.
And it is also notable that such members of the Friends' families who served as soldiers in the Civil War, are buried here, and bear the little marker-flags placed by the loving hands of their living companions, the members of the So- ciety of the Grand Army of the Republic on Memorial Day.
This spot, hallowed by dear and sad memories, may in a few years be in the midst of a dense population, the over- flow from the city, but now, of a summer's day, only the far-off ring of a blacksmith's hammer, or the occasional tap of the convent bell, or the quick rush of an "auto," is the only commotion that disturbs its continual calm.
In some respects, this may be like a hundred other Friends' Meeting Houses, which called for the lines from the Quaker poet, John Russell Hayes:
"I love the old Meeting Houses,-how my heart Goes out to these dear, silent homes of prayer,
With all their quietude and rustic charm;
Their loved associations and pathetic solitude;
Their tranquil and pathetic solitude; Their hallowed Memories!"
But the old Merion Meeting, and its house has enough personality to make it distinguishable.
No picture of the neighborhood, in which this ancient House stands, can be painted better by the pen, to compare
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WELSH SETTLEMENT OF PENSYLVANIA
its site with what it was in the extreme past, than the com- mercial statement, the land in its vicinity, which was bought from Penn for only five pence an acre, is now being sold for more than five thousand dollars an acre, and a mile beyond, at Wynnewood and at Ardmore, for fifteen thou- sand dollars an acre! Which means, the inhabitants of Penn's "City of Brotherly Love," once miles away, and whose buildings could be counted on the fingers of one hand when the Welsh Quakers pitched their tents here, have brought it into sight of the door of the old Meeting House, and have thus enhanced the value of the land about it. The suburban population surrounds it; villages have grown-up about it ; it has become accessible by steam and electric cars, and by well-kept avenues, this ancient, vine-grown old stone Meeting House, to which Friends for years came afoot and horse-back, along the bridle-paths and lanes through the wild woods, but whose descendants now roll up to meetings in luxurious limousines.
This Merion Meeting House, as it stands, was not only the first place of public worship erected for the original settlers of the territory west of the Schuylkill river, dis- tant from the limit of the proposed city of Philadelphia, and just without its present bounds, by the Welsh Friends, who began to remove here in the summer of 1682, but the first · public house of worship or church building put up in the Commonwealth, and, as may be seen hereafter, it was also the first "town hall' erected in it. And I understand it was the first permanent Meeting House for Friends erected in America.
The story of the experiences of the earliest Welsh settlers in "Merioneth Town," or "Merion Town," as the district in which this Meeting House stands, was at first called, in honor of the shire in Wales from which its first settlers came, or Merion township, as it came officially to be desig- nated, and of the "towns" of "Harfod," or Haverford, and Radnor, continguous to it, from the year of first settlement,
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ARRANGING WELSH SETTLEMENT
1682, will be told by their extant letters written to friends at "home," has none of the thrilling tales of hardship and adventure, of "battle, murder and sudden death," that em- bellishes, and saddens those of the first comers into Virginia and New England, a half-century earlier, nor those of the pioneers of the Cumberland Valley, the Valley of Virginia, or of Kentucky, when beginning the "winning of the West," a half-century later. Nor did these Friends-"those devil- driven heretics," as the Rev. Cotton Mather, of New Eng- land, called the Quakers in his "Magnalia,"-have to suffer from the "sharp laws" of Massachusetts, and New Eng- land Puritan intolerance, and any there who did, soon found their way to Pennsylvania.
Writing of these early days, with his facile pen in his "Quaker School Boy," Friend Isaac Sharpless says, "It was a venture, as all emigration is, but the results were happy. There was none of the suffering of Massachusetts and Vir- ginia. The wise arrangement of Penn had made the red- men more than friends. The Quaker home, and children, were left in perfect security, while the adult attended Quar- terly Meeting."
And the Welsh Friends were hardly forerunners even in the land, for the way had long been made clear for their peaceful entrance into their purchased lands, and many were able to be seated at the very first on old "Indian fields," and on clearings made by their predecessors, the Swedes, Dutch and early English, who came up here from the old settlements on the lower Delaware. But as these choice spots were, as we may see, soon claimed by Penn as his pri- vate property, their tenure of them was brief. That Penn appreciated them highly may be seen from his letter of 16, 8mo. 1683, to the Free Society of Traders in Pensylva- nia, in which he says, "There are also very good peaches, and in great quantities, not an Indian plantation without them, they make a pleasant drink," hence the "insidious punch" of peach brandy and honey.
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WELSH SETTLEMENT OF PENSYLVANIA
The Delaware river country had been opened for fifty- odd years to settlers, on both of its lower banks, and consid- erable land was being cultivated and farmed, in peace, with- out fear, though not comfort possibly, as we understand it, when the Welsh Friends removed to Penn's new province, where he "would found a free colony for all mankind that shall go thither," as his land-sale advertisements stated. Therefore, the story of their first years in America is al- most devoid of especial interest in respect to what makes that of older colonies here so prominent.
Yet, although it may be only that of domesticity-simply the transfer of "home" across the sea, from one peaceful site to another, with only discomforts incidental to removal and travel, and re-establishment, to enliven it, theirs is the story of active participation in the founding of the Common- wealth of Pensylvania.
They had longed
"For a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade,"
and they certainly were accommodated, these Welsh of English nationality, but their settling in Pensylvania was not a complete severance from "home," to which kin and ancestors still bound them for several generations.
Although, like the Swedes of the "South River country," and the Dutch of New Netherlands, the Welsh of the Schuyl- kill, who, however, ceased coming over in any great number after the "sufferings" were stopped in their native land, or when they learned that Penn had not kept to his promises to the early colonists, as will be explained hereafter; were engulfed, disappearing as a separate race in a few years, in the great flood of English to our shores, and lost their iden- tity, and Welsh characteristics, swallowed up by the cos- mopolitan development of our country, and even the use of their distinctive tongue. * The moral influence and teachings
*The Welsh language may have been understood, spoken and writ- ten and read and preferred by the Welsh Quakers generally in Pen-
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ARRANGING WELSH SETTLEMENT
the Welsh members of the religious Society of Friends, "the people vulgarly called Quakers," with their Cymric blood, an industrious, hardy race, were instilled into the commu- nity of strangers which grew up about them, and in which they were finally absorbed, grown into the fibre and woof of our great nation, for, there is hardly a present-day family of any prominence, or social pretentions, in Pensylvania, or in the "West," having colonial ancestry, that cannot claim, with truth, an ancestor among the early Welsh Friends of this Commonwealth, and they are proud in being able to do so for reasons that may appear hereafter. į In this connection the late Dr. Levick said in a public address, "The early Welsh settlers of Philadelphia, and its vicinity, belonged to a race which has left its impress, in a very marked manner, on the character of its descendants to the present day."
sylvania, for, as will appear, they desired, and expected that the civil affairs of the whole Welsh Tract would be determined by officers and juries "of our language." But English was the prevailing lan- guage with the Welsh Quakers in the "Haverford and Merion towns," as the earliest settlers therein were of the upper, educated class of Wales, and were often at London, and among the English. But in Radnor Township there were many Welsh who did not understand English, for, as late as in 1707, the Welsh Episcopalians then peti- tioned the Bishop of London to send them a rector who could read and speak both Welsh and English. They were the founders of the P. E. Church of St. Davids. In other parts, and in the Gwynedd settlement, however, the Welsh language and customs obtained dis- tinctively for many years, and many of the wills, and documents issued by the people of the latter section were in the Welsh tongue, as, for instance, as late as 1712, the subscription paper passed around, for collecting funds to rebuild the Gwynedd Meeting House, in which House ministers had to speak alternately in Welsh and English, in the same address.
#The Welsh origin for the Pensylvania families of Adams, Apthorp, Arnold, Bevan, Cadwalader, David, Davies, Evans, Ellis, Edwards, Foulke, Floyd, Griffith, Guinn, Gwynne, Hughs, Humphreys, Howell, Hewes, Henry, Harry, Jones, John, Lloyd, Lewis, Morris, Morgan, Owen, Price, Powell, Paul, Penn, Pugh, Richards, Rice, Reese, Rob- erts, Thomas, Williams, Wynne, etc., can easily be imagined.
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WELSH SETTLEMENT OF PENSYLVANIA
And Mr. Benjamin H. Smith, in an interesting article in a recent number of the magazine of the Historical Society of Pensylvania, concerning the lands in Merion of the first coming Welshmen, whose sturdy honesty and integrity he recognized, says, "they were prominent and respected citi- zens in their own country," and "those who came to Pen- sylvania took a leading part in the development of the new colony, and many of their descendants have borne distin- guished names in literature, science, and public affairs."
Before entering into sketches of the Founders of the Friends' Merion Meeting, and of their Meeting House, and of the people prominently connected with it in its earliest years, and of its present-day members, and the same, inci- dentally, of the other meetings composing the Haverford or Radnor Monthly Meeting, it should not be uninteresting to review some of the events leading up to its establishing as introductory to them.
Immediately after William Penn was in full possession of the Royal Grant for the territory in America, then named, and so written for fifty years subsequently in public doc- uments, and frequently in preserved private letters of the Quakers, "Pensylvania," he began to advertise, and can- vass for purchasers and settlers for it. He first began his efforts within the Society of Friends, of which he was a prominent minister, and well known to thousands, advertis- ing his province as an ideal asylum, or home, for them, with life there everything they might desire, appealing especially to those who were unhappy and dissatisfied, for various reasons, more or less serious, with their conditions in life.
Though it is unnecessary to bring to mind the many, many "sufferings" experienced by the Friends when the "church people" must have studied Collier's "Art of Inge- niously Tormenting," because of dislike to military duties; objections to paying tithes to support the "Established Church," their piety, and especially their public worship, a matter that was positively forbidden by acts of parlia-
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ARRANGING WELSH SETTLEMENT
ment, one of these edicts to suppress "seditious conventi- cles," however, it is proper to mention here, as in it are the names of Welshmen who removed to Pensylvania, or the fathers of others.
This particular "edict" is dated 20 of May, 1675, and is signed by Humphey Hughes and John Wynne, constables. But it is not the notice that these Welshmen "met unlaw- fully under pretence of religion," and that the constables were ordered to "levy on them by way of distress," but it is the list of names given in the schedule, accompanying it, of those on whom they were to levy the fines, that is of inter- est.
"The names of those that unlawfully met together att Llwyn y Braner, within ye parish of Llanvaur, upon ye 16th day of May, being Sunday, 1675. Oathes being made they were present formerly in unlawful meetings within three months.
"First conviction on the oathes of Owen D'd, and Thomas Jones.
"Second conviction, and warrant of arrest for the Double fine, on oath of Robert Evans."
(Each of these following was fined ten shillings.)
"John David John, and his wife, of Cilltalgarth.
Hugh Roberts, and his wife, of the same place.
Cadwalader Thomas, of the same place.
Robert David, of the same place.
Robert Owen, of Vron Gôch.
Elin Owen, of the same.
John Thomas ap Hugh, of Llaythgywm.
John ap Edward, of Nanlleidiog.
Evan Edwards, of Cynlas.
Peter Owen, of Bettws y Coed.
Robert John, of Pen maen.
Margaret John, of same place.
Hugh John Thomas, of Nanlleidiog.
His sonne and daughter.
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WELSH SETTLEMENT OF PENSYLVANIA
Litter Thomas, of Llandervel.
Jane Morris, of Pen maen.
Edward Griffith, of Llaetgwm.
Edward Reese, of Llantgervel.
John James, of the same.
William Morgan, of Llanecill.
Owen David, of Cilttalgarth.
John William, of the same place.
Anne, verch David, widow, of Pen maen."
This schedule, with the order, is preserved among the mass of MSS. which the wife and widow of John Thomas brought over here in 1683, now in possession of Lewis Jones Levick, Esqr., of Bala, (Philadelphia), who inherited them. It came into John's possession while serving as constable, and he endorsed on it:
"Evan Owen ye son of a widow called Gainor, whose late husband was Owen ap Evan, of Vron Goch, was convicted by oatlı to be present at a meeting, though but 9 or 10 years. old."
Penn's advertisements of his American possessions (he was his own sales-agent), readily appealed to Friends of every race, but the very first to take advantage of his gen- erous and alluring offers, which he well knew how to make attractive, for he had had only recently some valuable expe- rience in getting settlers for West Jersey when attending to Friend Billing's embarrassed estate there, and which sug- gested to him the scheme of having a great American ter- ritory for himself, and selling it out, giving him a perma- nent income in quit-rents, were the Friends in Wales.
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