America's First Recorded Quaker Communities

America's First Recorded Quaker Communities Kenneth L. Carroll* In 2002 Friends celebrated the 350th anniversary of the beginning of Quakerism in Britain. Throughout 2004 Irish Friends held a number of events commemorating the 350th anniversary ofthe coming ofQuakerism to Ireland. Quakerism first appeared on the American mainland in 1 656, so that 2006 marks the 350th anniversary ofthe earliest Quaker communities along the Atlantic coast. Where and in what order did these first American Quaker communities appear? Some years ago Quaker History presented an exchange ofviews on the location ofAmerica's earliest Quaker community. Part ofthe difference of opinion stemmed from what the title "Virginia" meant at the middle ofthe 1650s. Inmy 1996 article "America's First Quakers-Where, When, andBy Whom?" I discussed the testimony ofcartographers who in 1612 saw all of the British-claimed American mainland as belonging to an area known as "Virginia."1 After the New England Company was established and settlements were erected there, the northern area was "hived off and was then called "New England"—leaving the whole region from the Hudson River southward to Cape Fear in North Carolina under the name of "Virginia." This was still the situation throughout the 1650s.2 The generic name "Virginia" throughout the 1650s included not only the present states of Virginia and Maryland, but also additional areas to the north and south of those two regions. Examples from Quaker documents show this usage still held true throughout the 1650s and into the 1660s, noting 1660-1662 references to "Maryland in Virginia" as well as John Perrot's 1660 reference to the "Continent ofVirginia." To those examples we should add one as late as 1 673 dealing withFox's visitto America, where James Lancaster's account ofFox's travels is described as "made inVirginia [in] that part called Maryland."3 Cf. Carroll, "America's First Quakers," 5 1 , for these references which show that "Virginia" was still seen as the larger region in which Maryland was located; George Fox, The Journal ofGeorge Fox, a revised edition by John L. Nickalls (Cambridge: The University Press, 1952), 639, for this passage which shows that as late as 1673 some Quakers still thought of"Virginia" as a region which included Maryland. Nowhere in any ofthe many 1 650s and 1660s maps which I saw or in any of the early Quaker documents is the term "olde Virginia" (which to me "smacks" of an antiquarian addition or reproduction) to be found. * Kenneth L. Carroll, Professor Emeritus in Religious Studies, Southern Methodist University, is President of the Friends Historical Association (USA) and former President of the Friends Historical Society (U.K.). On June 24, 2004, he gave the Irish Yearly Meeting Historical Lecture "William Edmundson, Ireland's First Quaker." 42Quaker History It is therefore important to recognize that any Quaker reference to "Virginia" alone in 1 656- 1 657 (whether it deals with "the Friend who went to Virginia," "the Friends who returned from Virginia," the "oppressed seed in Virginia," "books for Virginia," etc.) might deal with either Maryland or Virginia or possibly some other area outside the present bounds of those two regions. It is not possible, therefore, to insist that the name "Virginia" by itself meant only the present-day Commonwealth area. Other facts and/or evidence are needed to make a positive identification ofthat region within the larger area of"Virginia" where "America's First Quakers" were to be found. In both my "America's First Quakers" and my earlier "Elizabeth Harris, The Founder of American Quakerism"4, 1 argued for Maryland as the first place on the American mainland where there is recorded evidence of an established Quaker community. The 1657/8 letter from Robert Clarkson of Severn in Maryland to Elizabeth Harris back in England informs her of all that has taken place in Maryland since her departure some months earlier (probably in the spring of 1657): many ofthose she convinced still gather together for worship; the books she sent to the area have been distributed throughout a number of areas on the Western Shore (West River, South River, Broad Neck, Severn, and "where Charles Balye lives") as well as Kent Island on Maryland's Eastern...