Life and Travels of a Southern Quaker Minister

78 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION Entertainment Committee of Friends' Historical Association Henry V. Gummere, Chairman Mary S. AllenAlbert Cook Myers Frances B. G. BransonWalter F. Price Linda W. CorsonMary T. Sullivan Lydia F. GummereGeorge Vaux Edith W. HallMary James Vaux George N. HighleyEdward Woolman Rayner W. KelseyLilian W. Woolman Catharine Morris Wright Birmingham Local Committee Isaac A. Passmore, Chairman Florence P. BattinSamuel Forsythe Wayne L. BattinJennie L. Michener Ellen F. CopeJesse L. Michener Joseph CopeLewis Michener Emlen DarlingtonMarguerite Michener Horace F. DarlingtonPhilip Price Jennie DarlingtonRuth E. Price Mary P. DarlingtonWilliam B. Rhoads Annie T. EldridgeHugh E. Steele Jonathan EldridgeHannah E. Worrell Anna ForsytheJoseph W. Worrell LIFE AND TRAVELS OF A SOUTHERN QUAKER MINISTER By Norman Penney, LL.D. The following narrative of " one of the most remarkable woman preachers that American Friends have produced " has been compiled from an account of Charity Cook, prepared in 1901 by Eli Jay, a professor of Earlham College, Indiana ; and also from references in various biographies of Friends. A manuscript copy of the Jay narrative was presented recently to Earlham College and a copy has been placed in Friends Library in London. A SOUTHERN QUAKER MINISTER79 Charity Cook was born in 1745, one of the family of seven sons and nine daughters of John and Rachel (Wells) Wright, and the place of her birth appears to have been within the limits of Fairfax Monthly Meeting in Maryland, but, in or before 1749, the family removed to Carver's Creek Monthly Meeting in the eastern part of North Carolina, and later to Bush River, South Carolina. The grandparents, James and Mary Wright, of Pennsylvania, located, about 1730, in Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley, and were pioneers in the settlement in 1735 of Hopewell Monthly Meeting, near Winchester, Virginia. John Wright, Charity's father, became the patriarchal head of Bush River Meeting. It is said 1 that " before his death, he assembled his sons, his sons' wives, his daughters, his daughters' husbands, his grandchildren, and their respective wives and husbands, and his great-grandchildren and that when all were assembled they numbered one hundred and forty-four." Charity Wright married Isaac Cook (born 1743) in the early part of the year 1763. Isaac Cook was a son of Thomas Cook, who was born in England in 1704. Isaac and Charity Cook's ten children were born within the district of Bush River, South Carolina . They were Joseph, Sarah, Rachel, Thomas, Mary, Charity, Ruth, Wright, Isaac, and Susannah, born between 1763 and 1783. Apparently all these children passed safely through the perils of childhood, then so disastrous, and married—seven of them within Bush River Monthly Meeting. Bush River Monthly Meeting was set up in 1770, but the records of its minutes, that have been preserved, do not begin till Fourth Month, 1772.2 In the Twelfth Month of that year David Jenkins and David Mote were appointed " to inquire into the lives and conversation of the ministering Friends of this Meeting, viz. Jonathan Taylor, Mary Pearson, and Charity Cook, in order to recommend them to the Quarterly Meeting [of Bush River] if 1 Judge O'Neall, Annals of Newberry County, South Carolina. 2 The Friends who settled in this district and formed the Monthly Meetings of Bush River and Cane Creek had migrated from Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Bush River was situated a few miles out of the present town of Newberry. The minutes of Bush River Monthly Meeting are extant to 1795 only. 80 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION they find nothing to obstruct." Doubtless, as a result, Charity Cook became an approved Minister, and thus began the long years of her ministry, numbering nearly fifty, of which, from here and there, we have been able to reconstruct something of her ministerial pilgrimage. In Tenth Month, 1776, Charity Cook and Mary Pearson set off to pay a visit to Friends in Wrightsborough Monthly Meeting, Georgia, a district about a hundred miles distant, the former leaving her two-months old baby, Ruth, to the care of others. Ten months later the two Friends set out on another visit, probably of considerable importance, judging by the care with which a certificate was prepared ; two men were...