Hannah Baskel, a Quaker Woman by Gwen Bjorkman

1987 Winner: NGS

By Gwen Boyer Bjorkman
Printed here with permission.

Family-History Writing Contest
Hannah (Baskel) Phelps Phelps Hill:

A Quaker Woman and Her Offspring

It is usually difficult to document the lives of colonial women. As a category, they left few legal documents. Yet, through sundry records, it is possible to reconstruct the life of one remarkable woman—Hannah (Baskel) Phelps Phelps Hill. One does not read about Hannah in standard histories of early America, yet she held the first Quaker meeting in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in her home in Salem and later opened her home to the first Quaker meeting in the Albemarle settlement of Carolina. She was truly the Proverbs 31 lady. After all these years “her children [will now] rise up and bless her;... saying: ‘Many daughters have done nobly, But you excell them all!’ “‘ Despite her accomplishments, however, Hannah did not set out to be a noble heroine. She emerges in history as a young woman—human and alone, as far as family is concerned.

The search for Hannah began in the records that men have left to chronicle the past. Before 1652, she came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony from England. An undated deposition of one Jane Johnson provides the only record of Hannah’s maiden name, Baskel. It reveals that, at the time of the deposition, Hannah was the wife of Nicholas Phelps but at the date of “coming over in the ship,” she was in the company of his brother, Henry. The document also labels her a “strumpet.” Obviously, Hannah was a woman of independent mind, not much inclined to conform to the dictates of convention. This trait was to bring her blessings, scorn, and persecution:

Deposition of Jane Johnson: Saith yt: coming Ovr in the ship with Henry Phelps & Hannah the now wife of Nich: Phelps: Henry Phelps going ashore the ship lying at the Downes: Hannah wept till shee made herselve sick because mr Fackner would not suffer her to goe ashore with Henry Phelps: & Henry came aboard late in the night, the next morning mr Falckner Chid Henry Phelps & Hannah & said was it not enough for y~V to let Hannah lay her head in yr lapp but must shee ly in ye Cabbin to & called Hannah Strumpet & this deponent saith farther yt she saw Henry Phelps ly in his Cabbin & Hannah Baskel the now wife of Nich Phelps came & lay down her head by him & pull her head up again often as he lay in his Cabbin: Y when he was smocking in the Cook roome tobacco Hannah tooke the pip out of his mouth, etc., etc.²

One Henry Phelps arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634 on the ship Hercules, under John Kiddey, Master. His destination was said to be Salem.³However, the Phelps family may have been in Salem before this date. It is known that Eleanor Phelps, mother of Henry and Nicholas Phelps, had married Thomas Trusler of Salem and that they were members of the first church in Salem in 1639.~ One historian holds that Trusler probably came to Salem in 1629, with a kiln for the burning of bricks and tiles was built, and that he continued this business until his death in 1654.~ There has been found no record of a previous wife or children for Trusler in Salem, so it is possible that Eleanor married him in England and came to the Bay Colony with him and her five Phelps children. Eleanor mentions in her 1655 will “the legacy bequeathed by my Late husband to his Daughter in England.”⁶Trusler’s will has been lost. The inventory of his estate has been preserved.⁷

What did Hannah find in her new home in Salem? She found independent-minded people who, like herself, were interested in change. She also found others who rigorously opposed any thought contrary to theirs. Since all political and social life was centered in the church, religion was the arena for the excitement of dissent. Roger Williams had a short pastorate in Salem, around 1634, before being banished to Rhode Island.⁸Robert Moulton, a Phelps neighbor, had been excommunicated from the Salem Church in 1637 for antinomian heresy during the Wheelwright controversy.⁹Between 1638 and 1650, nine people from Salem were tried at Quarterly Court for heretical opinions, and five of the nine were women. Lady Deborah Moody, a church member since 1640, was charged with Anabaptism in 1642; rather than recant, she moved to Long Island. Samuel Gorton was tried in Boston, jailed there, and sent to Rhode Island for his Separatist beliefs. Eleanor Trusler also was taken to court, in April 1644, for her Gortonist opinions, saying, “our teacher Mr. Norris taught the people lies.” Governor Winthrop was advised to bind her over to Boston Court as an example others might fear, lest “that heresie doeth spread which at length may prove dangerous.” At the Trusler trial, one Casandra Southwick testified that Eleanor “did question the government ever since she came.”’⁰This was Salem in Hannah’s day.

The shipboard romance alleged between Hannah and Henry Phelps did not result in their immediate marriage. Instead, Henry married (or had been married) to another woman, by whom he had a son, John (born about 1645),” while Hannah married his brother Nicholas. Historians have not always treated the latter kindly—he has been called “a weak man, and one whose back was crooked”’²but it can be argued that he had a strong spirit much akin to Hannah’s. They had two children (Jonathan, born about 1652, and Hannah, born about 1654) with whom they lived on the Trusler farm in “the woods” about five miles from the meeting house in Salem. Situated at the site of the modern town of West Peabody, the farm had been devised to Nicholas and Henry jointly, in 1655, by their mother.’³

It was in the late 1650s that the Phelps' became involved in Quakerism. The Society of Friends, or Quakers, had been founded in England in 1648 by George Fox; and its teachings were brought to Boston, in July 1656, by two female missionaries. However, it is believed that books and tracts by Fox and other Quakers might have been brought to the colony in earlier years. In 1657 William Marston, a Hampton-Salem boatman, was cited for having Quaker pamphlets in his possession.’⁴There is a passage in a letter written in 1656 from Barbados by Henry Fell, which provides the earliest mention of Quakerism in Salem:

In Plimouth patent.., there is a people not soe ridged as the others at Boston and there are great desires among them after the Truth. Some there are, as I hear, convinced who meet in silence at a place called Salem.’⁵

Another passage bearing on this Salem group is found in Cotton Mather’s Magnalia:

I can tell the world that the first Quakers that ever were in the world were certain fanaticks here in our town of Salem, who held forth almost all the fancies and whimsies which a few years after were broached by them that were so called in England, with whom yet none of ours had the least communication.’⁶

In 1657, the invasion of Massachusetts by Quakers began when visiting Friends from England landed in Boston Harbor and were immediately imprisoned. If the group at Salem had been meeting quietly for several years, they went public when—on Sunday, 27 June 1658—a meeting was held at the home of Nicholas and Hannah Phelps. This was the first Quaker meeting of record in the colony. Two visiting Friends at that meeting, William Brend and William Leddera, acknowledged that they were Quakers and were sent to prison with six Salem residents who were also in attendance. Nicholas and Hannah were fined.’⁷

Quaker meetings continued to be held regularly at the Phelps home, in defiance of the law. In September 1658, Samuel Shattock, Nicholas Phelps, and Joshua Buffum were arrested and sentenced by the court to prison, where Nicholas was “cruelly whipped” three times in five days for refusing to work. Within months, Nicholas and six neighbors were called before the court again. This time they were banished on pain of death, with two weeks being allowed to settle their affairs. It was at the end of May 1659 that Phelps and Shattock sailed for Barbados with the intention of continuing on to England to present the matter before parliament. However, because of the unsettled state of affairs in England, they were not to return until late l66l.’~

In the meanwhile, Hannah was left in Salem with the care of the farm and their two small children. The Quaker meetings continued to be held at her home, and she was fined every year from 1658 to 1663 for nonattendance at the Salem Church.’⁹In the fall of 1659, she with five others from Salem went to Boston to give comfort to two visiting Friends from England who had been sentenced to death for their faith and defiance of the laws of the colony. She and her group were arrested and imprisoned also. On 12 November, two weeks after the execution of the condemned Friends, the Salem party was brought forth to be sentenced for “adherence to the cursed sect of the Quakers” and “theire disorderly practices & vagabond like life in absenting themselves from their family relations and running from place to place without any just reason.” They were admonished, whipped, and sent home.²⁰

Upon Hannah’s return, her house and land were seized by the Salem Court in payment of the fines levied against her and Nicholas. Henry came to the rescue of his sister-in-law, arguing that the court could take only the half of the property belonging to Nicholas. He managed to obtain control of the entire farm and allowed Hannah and the children to remain there.²’ Did Henry now become interested in his sister-in-law, since his brother was in England, or did he now become interested in the Quaker teachings? There are no records of Henry’s being fined for Quaker leanings.

One thing is clear from the records: where Henry had once been a respected part of the community, he was now suspected. At the Quarte’rly Court of 26 June 1660, Major William Hawthorn was ordered to inquire after the misuse of John Phelps by his father:

Henry Phelps, of Salem, was complained of at the county court at Boston, July 31, 1660, for beating his son, John Phelps, and forcing him to work carrying dung and mending a hogshead on the Lord’s day, also for intimacy with his brother’s wife and for entertaining Quakers. It was ordered that John Phelps, the son, be given over to his uncle, Mr. Edmond Batter, to take care of him and place him out to some religious family as an apprentice, said Henry, the father, to pay to Mr. Batter what the boy’s grandmother left him, to be improved to said John Phelps’ best advantage. Said Henry Phelps was ordered to give bond for his good behavior until the next Salem court, and especially not to be found in the company of Nicholas Phelps’ wife, and to answer at that time concerning the entertaining of Quakers.²²

The testimony seems to imply that Henry Phelps was living with his brother’s wife and holding Quaker meetings. The charges were expressed even more bluntly at the November 1660 Quarterly Court:

Henry Phelps, being bound to this court to answer a complaint for keeping company or in the house with his brother’s wife, and appearing, was released of his bond. Upon further consideration and examination of some witnesses, which the court did not see meet for the present to bring forth in public [Was this when the deposition of Jane Johnson was taken?J, and the wife of Nicholas Phelps not appearing, said Phelps was bound to the next court at Salem. He was ordered meanwhile to keep from the company of his brother Nicholas Phelps’ wife.²³

Hannah had final say on the subject. At Salem Court, 28 June 1661, Thomas Flint and John Upton testified that, coming into Henry Phelps’s house on a Sabbath-day evening, they heard Hannah say that “Higgeson had sent out his wolves apace.” John Upton asked her if Mr. Higgeson sent the wolves amongst them to kill their creatures and she answered, “The bloodhounds, to catch the sheep and lambs.” She was sentenced to be fined or whipped, and one William Flint promised to pay the fine.²⁴

Political events soon eased the Phelps’s persecution—albeit slightly. The days of Cromwell and the Puritans were over in England in 1660. A new parliament proclaimed the banished Prince Charles as king, invited him to return from exile, and placed him on the throne of his father. As Charles II, he read—and sympathized with—the petition of those Quakers in England who had been banished from Massachusetts. That document contained a list of the sufferings of “the people called Quakers,” and Number 15 stated, “One inhabitant of Salem, since banished on pain of death, had one-half of his house and land seized.”²⁵On 9 September 1661, Charles II issued an order to the Bay Colony to cease the persecution of Quakers and appointed Samuel Shattock to bear the “King’s Missive” to Boston.²’ No mention was made of Nicholas Phelps’s return at that time, although the historian Perley claimed~”they returned together, but Mr. Phelps, being weak in body after some time died.”²⁷ It is known that Nicholas and Hannah were together again in Salem by June 1662 when, at the Quarterly Court, “Nicholas Phelpes and his wife.., were presented for frequent absence from meeting on the Sabbath Day.”²⁸Hannah was fined alone in 1663.²⁹

On 18 July 1664, Henry Phelps sold the property that he and his brother had inherited from their mother in 1655;3o and he, Hannah, and the children left Massachusetts. Many of their friends had departed already for Long Island or Rhode Island, but some had journeyed to far-off Carolina, where a new settlement was beginning on Albemarle Sound. It was the latter colony to which Henry and Hannah headed. Presumably they married in a Quaker meeting before setting off by ship, with what possessions they had left.

In 1660 or earlier, a few Virginians had crossed into the Albemarle region, then called Chowan. By charters of 1663 and 1665, Charles II granted to eight proprietors a tract of land which was to lie between the present states of Virginia and Florida, a vast tract that was named Carolina, and the colony which had already sprung up there was designated Albemarle County. Another settlement was begun at Cape Fear in 1664 by a group from Barbados and New England; their area became the county of Clarendon. By 1664, however, the latter group had deserted the Cape and moved to

Fittingly, the first record found of Hannah in Carolina spotlights her religious activities. In 1653 one William Edmundson converted to Quakerism in England; and from 1661 he was recognized as leader of the Irish Quakers. He first visited America with George Fox as a traveling Friend in 1672. While Fox went to New England, Edmundson traversed Virginia; about the first of May, 1672, he ventured down into Carolina. Two Friends from Virginia accompanied him as guides but became lost, saying they had “gone past the place where we intended.” Edmundson found a path that “brought us to the place where we intended, viz. Henry Phillips’ [Phelps] House by Albemarle river.

It is Edmundson who accounts for the life of Henry and Hannah during the years in which legal records are silent. “He [Phelps] and his wife had been convinced of the truth in New England, and came there to live, who having not seen a Friend for seven years before, they wept for joy to see us.”³³ Some scholars have interpreted this passage in Edmundson’s journal to mean that Henry and Hannah were the only Quaker family in Albemarle in 1672.~~ However, evidence does exist of another couple: Christopher and Hannah (Rednap) Nicholson who had become Quakers and had been persecuted in Massachusetts. The Nicholson's had arrived in Albemarle Sound, probably by 1663, and were neighbors of Henry and Hannah Phelps. It is also known that Isaac and Damaris (Shattuck) Page came to Albemarle from Salem, after both had been fined as Quakers.³⁵

Edmundson’s journal also reveals that the first recorded Quaker meeting in Albemarle was held at the Phelps’ home, just as the first recorded Quaker meeting at Salem had been sponsored by Nicholas and Hannah. Edmundson said, “it being on a first day morning when we got there... I desired them, to send to the people there-away to come to a meeting about the middle of the day.”³⁶Hannah opened her home yet again to the “Lord’s testimony,” as brought by the visiting Friends. Following the visit of Edmundson, Fox himself came to Albemarle in November 1672, stopping first at Joseph Scott’s home by Perquimans River, where he held a meeting, and then “we passed by water four miles to Henry Phillips’ [Phelps] house” and held a meeting there.³⁷

Edmundson returned to Albemarle in 1676, and again the faithful Hannah appears in his journal:

We took our journey through the wilderness, and in two days came well to Carolina, first to James Hall’s [Hill’s] house, who went from Ireland to Virginia with his family. His wife died there, and he had married the widow Phillips [Phelps] at Carolina, and lived there; but he had not heard that I was in those parts of the world. When I came into the house, I saw only a woman servant; I asked for her master. She said he was sick. I asked for her mistress, she said she was gone abroad.. so I went into the room, where he was laid on the bed, sick of an ague with his face to the wall. I called him by his name, and said no more; he turned himself, and looked earnestly at me a pretty time, and was amazed; at last he asked if that was William? I said yes.³

Between Edmundson’s journeys of 1672 and 1676, Henry died and Hannah married James Hill. James was probably a convert of Edmundson in Ireland or in Virginia, since they knew each other by first name. In November 1676, the Lords Proprietors had issued commissions to men designated as deputies in Albemarle. James Hill, Esq., was deputy of the Duke of Albemarle.³⁹During Culpeper’s Rebellion in 1677, Hill helped one Thomas Miller escape and a guard of soldiers was put at his house. Promptly on his return from Virginia, he, along with Francis Jones and Christopher Nicholson, was arrested/’~ Hannah Phelps Hill was again in the thick of conflict.

The Quakers drew up a “Remonstrance” to the proprietors protesting their treatment, outlining the above acts, and declaring they were “a peaceable people.” It was signed on 13 September 1679 by twenty-one Quakers, including Jones and Nicholson, together with Joseph Scott, Isaac Page, and Jonathan Phelps, son of Nicholas and Hannah. Under their signatures, it was written that most of the subscribers “have been Inhabitants in Carolina since the years 1663 and 1664.~~4I The Quakers had not been persecuted in Carolina previous to this time, but it is recorded in the minutes of Perquimans Monthly Meeting that about the fourth or fifth month of 1680, nine Friends were fined and put into prison for refusing to bear arms in the muster field. Among those nine were five of the signers of the 1679 remonstrance—including Jonathan Phelps and Samuel Hill, son of James.⁴²

Hannah’s devotion to religion did not prompt her to neglect her family, however. She appears again in court records to champion the cause of her grandchildren. In the intervening years, her daughter Hannah had twice wed—first to James Perisho and second, in 1679, to George Castleton.⁴³On 30 March 1680, it was ordered by the Lords Proprietors that one hundred acres of land be laid out, for “James Perishaws Orphants,” for the transportation of two persons, namely their parents “James and Hannah Perishaw.”” However, complications arose involving this second husband, Castleton; and Hannah Phelps Hill went to court to protect her grandson’s property. The first hint of the family troubles appear in the court records of October 1685:

Whereas George Castleton hath absented himself from the County and Imbezled the estate belonging to the Orphans of James Perisho deceased, It is therefore ordered that no person or persons buy any cattle belonging to the said Orphans or any part of the estate of the said Castleton and that Jonathan Phelps gather the come and measure the same and deliver the one half to Hannah Castleton and secure the other half till further order.⁴⁵

Castleton apparently returned to the county, and problems continued. In October 1687 the court ordered that Hannah Castleton the wife of George Castleton do repaire home to her husband and live with him and that if she departs from him any more it is ordered that the majestrates doe forthwith use such means as may cause her to live with her husband.”

The younger Hannah apparently did not live long past this point; she is not mentioned as attending the wedding of her daughter on 5 August 1689, although the grandmother Hannah did. In October of that year, the older Hannah appeared in court, concerned for the welfare of Hannah, Jr.’s son by her first husband:

At a Court Holden for the precinct of Pequimins at the house of Mary Scot on the first Monday being the 7th. of October 1689 ... Hannah Hill Grandmother to James Perishaw hath petitioned this Court to have the managment of the stock belonginge to the sd. James Perishaw, It is therefore Ordered that after the last of this instant October the sd. Hannah Hill take into her custodie the Stock belonginge to James Perishaw, and manage the same for the childs Care, putting in security for the same.⁴⁷

For his proprietary land rights, Hannah’s son Jonathan took out a patent in 1684, covering four hundred acres near Robert Wilson on the west side of the Perquimans River. In his will written in 1688, he gave this four hundred acres (where he then lived) to his son Samuel.⁴⁸In 1692, Robert Wilson and John Lilly, executors of Jonathan Phelps, went to court to divide the property. The suit was continued in 1693, when Hannah Hill petitioned for “hur Halfe of ye plantation”; and it was ordered that “Shee be posesed with it.⁴⁹This patent was renewed by Samuel Phelps as son and heir in 1695.

All of Albemarle’s early land records have not survived. However, it is commonly accepted in the history of Perquimans County that the land Henry Phelps lived on, when Edmundson paid him the visit in 1672, was the land on the narrows of the Perquimans River that was granted to his grandson, Jonathan Phelps, in 1694—and that part of this grant became the town Hertford.⁵¹ This should be partly true. It was Hannah Phelps’s grandson, Jonathan Phelps, who became owner of the property; but without recorded wills or deeds, the details of the property’s transfer are cloudy. Since Hannah was the only one of the original family still living in 1694, it was she who proved rights for fifteen persons transported into the county of Albemarle. They were:

Henry Phelps [her 2nd husband], Hanah his Wife [herself], John Phelps [Henry’s son],

Jonathan Phelps [her son], Hanah Phelps junr [her daughter], Robt. Pane, James Hill [her

3rd husband], Saml. Hill [son of James Hill], Mary Hill, Nathanl. Spivey and his wife

Judith, John Spivey, Sarah Spivey, Anne Spivey, [and] Jonathan Phelps his freedom.⁵²

This document implies one other situation not otherwise documented by extant records: After the death of Nicholas, Hannah’s son by him was apparently bound to his uncle—and her second husband—Henry. Once Jonathan’s servitude expired, in North Carolina, he was eligible for his own grant.⁵³

The fifteen rights named in the foregoing document amounted to 750 acres. At the time of the survey in 1694, Hannah assigned the first six rights to her grandson, Jonathan Phelps, who was then seven years old; eight rights to her grandson, Samuel Phelps, age ten; and the last right to Robert Wilson, the executor of the estate of her son Jonathan.

Hannah, who outlived her three husbands and her two children, had now provided for her grandchildren. She had seen the establishment of the Quaker meetings and Quaker life in Albemarle. A 1709 letter of Mr. Gordon, a Church of England missionary, stated that the Quakers then numbered “about the tenth part of the inhabitants” of Carolina. And in Perquimans Precinct, he said, they “are very numerous, extremely ignorant, insufferably proud and ambitious, and consequently ungovernable.”⁵⁴It is because she was proud, ambitious, and ungovernable that one is now able to document the life of Hannah and her children.

GENEALOGICAL SUMMARY: THREE GENERATIONS

1. Hannah¹Baskel was probably born in England before 1630 and died, probably in Perquimans County, North Carolina, after 1695. She married, first, at Salem, Massachusetts, circa 1650, to Nicholas Phelps, who died before 1664 when she married, second, to his brother, Henry Phelps—they being sons of Eleanor [—?—] Phelps Trusler by an unidentified husband. Hannah married, third, in Perquimans between 1672 and 1676, to James Hill, who had at least one son, Samuel, by a previous marriage. Hannah may have married, fourth, at Perquimans Quarterly Meeting, to Joseph Smith, on 7 March 1695/96.

Children of Nicholas and Hannah (Baskel) Phelps were as follows:

+ 2 i. Jonathan²Phelps, born about 1652 at Salem.

+ ~ ii. Hannah Phelps, born about 1654 at Salem.

2. Jonathan²Phelps (Hannah’) was born about 1652 at Salem and died in Perquimans County, 21 February 1688/89.56 He married at Perquimans, about 1674, to Hannah [—? ]. She married, secondly, at Perquimans, on “last of March 1690,” to John Lilly, by whom she had two children born at Perquimans: Sarah (15 June 1691) and Hannah (29 September 1694). Hannah Phelps Lilly died 15 February 1700/01 and John Lilly died 17 July 1701, both at Perquimans.⁵⁷Most of the early Quaker meetings were held at the house of Jonathan Phelps. The Monthly Meeting was established at his house in 1683.58

Children of Jonathan and Hanna [—? ] Phelps, born at Perquimans County, were as follows:⁵⁹

    ~     i. Sarah³Phelps, born 15 January 1676; died before 1688.
    ~    ii. Elizabeth Phelps, born 2 April 1679.
     6    iii. Jonathan Phelps, born 6 November 1681; died before 1687.
+   7   iv. Samuel Phelps, born 6 August 1684.
+   8    v. Jonathan Phelps, born 13 April 1687.

3. Hannah²Phelps (Hannah’) was born about 1654 at Salem and probably died in Perquimans between 1687 and 1689, before the marriage of her daughter Eleanor. She married, first, at Perquimans, about 1672, to James Perisho, who was born about 1645, possibly in France, and died at Perquimans on 29 March 1678.60 She married, second, at Perquimans, on 13th [—1 1679/80, to George Castleton, son of George and Mary Castleton of New Castle on Tyne, England.⁶’

Family tradition holds that James [Jacques?] Perisho was born in Brittany, France, and was a sailor who was shipwrecked and landed at Edenton, Albemarle Sound.⁶²As James “Perrishaw,” he was claimed as a headright by Thomas Carteret on 29 March 1680, for proprietary rights recorded in 1694.63

The Perisho and Castleton land grants were on the Perquimans River, south of the Jonathan Phelps grant.⁶⁴

Children of James and Hannah (Phelps) Perisho, both born in Perquimans, were as follows⁶⁵:

+ ~ i. Eleanor³Perisho, born 18 December 1673.

+ 10 ii. James Perisho, born 25 November 1676.

The one child of George and Hannah (Phelps) Castleton, born in Perquimans, was⁶⁶

11 i. Hannah Castleton, born 13 March 1679.

7. Samuel³Phelps (Jonathan², Hannah’) was born 6 August 1684 in Perquimans and died there between April and July 1728.67 He married at Perquimans, about 1705, to Hannah [ J. In 1701 he and James Chesen petitioned the court for a share in the crop made that year at John Lilly’s, saying that they had lived with Lilly [his stepfather] until he died. Samuel was awarded a full share and Chesen was given a half share.⁶⁸By an act of the assembly in 1715, Samuel was appointed a vestryman in the established church; and in 1724 he was appointed justice of the peace for the precinct of Perquimans.⁶⁹

Children of Samuel and Hannah [ ] Phelps, all born in Perquimans County, were as follows:⁷⁰

12 i. Samuel⁴Phelps, born 17 “Deeember November 1706—7”, died young.

13 ii. Jonathan Phelps, died young.

   14     iii. John Phelps, born 13 January 17 16/17; died young.
   15     iv. William Phelps, died April 1752, Perquimans County, without issue.⁷¹
   16     v. James Phelps, died young.⁷²

8. Jonathan³Phelps (Jonathan², Hannah’) was born 13 April 1687, in Perquimans, and died there between December and January 1732/33.” He married at Perquimans Monthly Meeting, 16 12m [February] 1720, to Elizabeth Toms.⁷⁴She was the daught₉r of Francis Toms and Margaret (Bogue) Lawrence, who had been married “at a Meeting At ye sd. Lawrancees Hows ye 8 day of Jun Anno 1696.”” Elizabeth married, second, at Perquimans in 1734, to Zachariah Nixon, Jr.⁷⁶ In her ~will, dated 16 February 1769, Elizabeth Nixon names three grandchildren: Jonathan Phelps [son of Henry] and Benjamin and Dorothy Phelps [children of Jonathan].”

Children of Jonathan and Elizabeth (Toms) Phelps, born in Perquimans, were as follows:⁷⁸

   17     i. Henry⁴Phelps, born 5 March 1724/25; married 3 6m [August] 1748, Margaret Newby; died 1752, Perquimans County.⁷⁹She married, second, 3 lOin [October] 1753, to Joseph Outland. SO

   18    ii. Elizabeth Phelps, born 29 August 1728 [overwritten 1729]; married 6 11 in [January] 1747, to John Symons; married, second, 5 lOin [December] 1750, to Joseph Anderson; died in Perquimans.’¹
   19    iii. Jonathan Phelps, born 28 12m [February] 1730/31; married 5 October 1750, Dorothy Jordan; died 1759, Perquimans.’²She married, second, 4 April 1762, to John Skinner.’³
   20   iv. Mourning Phelps, born 10 in [December] 1732; married 4 2in [April] 1750, to Mark Newby; died in Perquimans.’⁴

9. Eleanor³Perisho (Hannah Phelps², Hannah’) was born 18 December 1673, in Perquimans and died there after 1722. She married at the Perquimans Monthly Meeting held at Jonathan Phelps’s “old plantation” on 5 6m [August] 1689, to William Bogue.⁸⁵Bogue was probably born in Virginia and died at Perquimans between December 1720 and April 1721 ~86

Children of William and Eleanor (Perisho) Bogue, all born in Perquimans, were as follows:⁸⁷

   21     i. Hannah⁴Bogue, born 26 December 1690/91; died young.

   22    ii. Elizabeth Bogue, married 17 lOin [December] 1719, to Jacob Hill, Perquimans.

   23    iii. William Bogue, born 8 December 1696; married 15 12m [February] 1727, to Sarah Duke; died 6 in [March] 1745, Perquimans.⁹
   24   iv. Eleanor Bogue, born 26 February 1701/02; died young.

   25    v. Robert Bogue, born 1702/03; married 4 8in [October] 1738, to Rachel Pearson; died 1786/88, Jones County, North Carolina.~

   26   vi. Josiah Bogue, born 21 March 1707/08; married 3 un [January] 1732, to Deborah Nicholson; died between March and July 1752, in Perquinans.⁹¹
   27   vii. Jean Bogue.

   28 viii. Myrian Bogue, born 11 March 1716/17; married 3 8n [October] 1739, to Gideon Bundy. She died 14 3m [March] 1762, and he on 17 2n [February] 1762, both in Pasquotank.’²
   29    ix. Rachel Bogue, married 12 4n [June] 1733—34, to Peter Pearson, Perquinans.”

10. James³Perisho (Hannah Phelps², Hannah’) was born 25 November

1676 in Perquimans and died there before 1731.~~ He married there on 18

February 1696/97, to Mary Morgan (daughter of James Morgan and Jane Knew, who were married in “Mary Land the 12th of October 1673,” according to the Perquimans Precinct Register⁹⁵).

Children of James and Mary (Morgan) Perisho, born in Perquimans, were· as follows:⁹⁶

   30     i. Jane⁴Perisho, born 12 December 1697.

   31    ii. James Perisho, born 2 March 1700/01; married about 1722 to Sarah [—?—]; and died 1744, in Perquimans.⁹⁷
   32    iii. John Perisho, born 4 November 1703; married Jean [—?—]; died between 12n [February] 1755 and April 1759, in Perquimans.”

   33   iv. Joseph Perisho, born about 1705; married 5 August 1742, to Deborah Wood; died between November 1762 and April 1763, in Perquimans. She married, second, 21 December 1763, to Thomas Nichols.”

   34    v. Joshua Perisho, born about 1710; married first, Elizabeth [—?——]; married second, 145n [May] 1755, to Rachel Small; married, third, 144n [April] 1763, Marian (Morris) Trueblood; died 22 4n [April] 1797, in Pasquotank.^1~

NOTES AND REFERENCES

‘4425—132nd Avenue SE, Bellevue, WA 98006. The writer would like to thank her fellow Phelps researchers, Dorothy Hardin Massey, Thelma Larison Murphy, Virginia Parmenter, and Clifford M. Hardin, for their assistance and encouragement.

1. Proverbs 31:28—29, New American Standard Bible.

2. George F. Dow and Mary Tresher, eds., Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County,

Massachusetts, 1 636—1 692, 9 vols. (Salem: Essex Institute, 1911—75), 1:267—68 [hereinafter Quarterly

Courts of Essex]; “Ipswich Court Records and Files,” Sidney Perley, ed., Essex Antiquarian 10 (January 1906): 37.

3. Charles Edwards Banks, The Planters of the Commonwealth (Boston: Houghton Muffin Co., 1930),

107—08; Carl Boyer, Shtp Passenger Lists: National and New England (1600—182S) (Newhall, Cal.: Carl Boyer, 1977), 144.

4. Richard D. Pierce, ed., Records of the First Church in Salem. Massachusetts, 1629—1736 (Salem:

Essex Institute, 1974), 9.

5. Sidney Perley, The History of Salem. Massachusetts, 3 vols. (Salem: Sidney Perley, 1924—27),

1:320—21.

6. Perley, “Ipswich Court Records,” Essex Antiquarian 6 (July 1902): 111—12; George F. Dow, ed. The Probate Records of Essex County, Massachusetts, 3 vols. (Salem: Essex Institute, 1916—20), 1:211—12.

7. Dow, Probate Records of Essex, 1:183—84; Perley, “Ipswich Court Records,” Essex Antiquarian 5 (October—December 1901): 192.

8. Rufus M. Jones, The Quakers in the American Colonies (1911; reprinted New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1966), 64—65.

9. Christine Alice Young, From ‘Good Order’ to Glorious Revoluttow Salem, Massachusetts, 1626— 1689 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1980), 27—28; Ernest W. Baughinan, “Excommunications and Banishments from the First Church in Salem and the Town of Salem, 1629—1680,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 113 (April 1977): 9 1—92; Kai T. Erikson, Wayward Puritans. A Study in the Sociology of Deviance (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1966), 91—92. Henry Phelps and Nicholas Phelps were witnesses to the will of Robert Moulton, Sr., dated 20 February 1654/55. Robert Moulton, Sr., and Robert Moulton, Jr., were witnesses to the will of Eleanor Trusler on 15 February 1654/55. Perley, History of Salem, 1:320, proposes that Eleanor may have been a Moulton, since the inventory of Thomas Trusler mentions “one fame near fathr Moltons.” (Dow, Probate Records of Essex, 1:183—84, 2 10-12.) The inventory was taken 5 in [March] 1653/54, by Robt. Moulton, Sr., and Thomas Spooner. “Father” appears to be used as a term of respect in the Salem Town Records of 1637. Win. P. Upham, “Town Records of Salem 1634-1659,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 9 (January 1868): 48, reports: “It is agreed That ifath’ Molton & in’ Ed: [ arile appointed Auditors.”

10. Richard P. Gildrie, Salem, Massachusetts. 1626—1 683: A Covenant Community (Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1975), 78—83. Gildrie mistakenly said that Mrs. Trusler’s husband and children became Quakers (p. 80), but the first Quakers landed at Boston in July 1656, after the death of

Thomas Trusler in 1654. Jonathan M. Chu, Neighbors, Friends, or Madmen. The Purttan Adjustment to Quakerism in Seventeenth Century Massachusetts Bay (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985), 11, 35 and 52. Chu recognizes that it was “Nicholas Phelps whose mother, Ellen [sic] Truslar, was the celebrated dissident of the previous decade” in “Madmen and Friends: Quakers and the Puritan Adjustment to Religious Heterodoxy in Massachusetts Bay During the Seventeenth Century” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of Washington, 1978), 122. See also recommendation of John Endecott to Winthrop, “Winthrop Papers,” Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 4th ser. (Boston: The Society, 1863—65), 4:455—56; and “Salem Quarterly Court Records and Files,” Essex.Antiquarian 5 (January

11. Henry Phelps probably married a daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Batter Antrum. Elizabeth was a sister of Edmond Batter, who was a selectman and served two terms as deputy to the General Court. Batter and Antrum arrived in Salem in 1635 with a group from Wiltshire who were prominent in Salem affairs. “Mr. Batter” and his “brother Antrum” are mentioned in the town records of 1637; see Essex Institute Historical Collections 9 (January 1869): 43. In the settlement of the estate of Obadiah Antrum, son of Thomas and Elizabeth Batter Antrum, “John Phelps, son of Hen. Phelps, kinsman,” shares equally with “Hana, wife of Isaack Burnap, sister of the deceased.” The testimony mentions that Obadiah’s Uncle Edmond Batter had been an administrator of the estate of his father, Thomas Antrum; see Dow, Probate Records of Essex, 2:13—14. It appears that Edmond Batter was uncle to Obadiah Antrum, Hannah Antrum Burnap, and [—?—] Antrum Phelps (wife of Henry Phelps and mother of John).

12. George Bishop, New England Judged by the Spirit of the Lord (1661; reprinted, London, 1703), as quoted in Perley, History of Salem, 2:251.

13. Perley, History of Salem, 2:248; Dow, Probate Records of Essex, 1:211—12. In addition to sons Henry and Nicholas, who were to be Eleanor’s executors, her will of February 1654/55 named Henry’s son John and referred to (but did not name) the two children of Nicholas.

14. Sidney Perley, “Persecution of the Quakers in Essex County,” Essex Antiquarian 1 (September

1897): 135; William Sewel, The History of the Rise, Increase and Progress of the Christian People Called

Quakers, 3rd ed. (1774; reprinted, Philadelphia, Pa.: Friends’ Bookstore, 1856), 1:255; Nathaniel B.

Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England,

1628—1 686, 5 vols. in 6 parts (Boston: W. White, 1853—54), 4:pt.1:314 [hereinafter Records of Massachusetts Bay]; and Chu, “Madmen and Friends,” 122.

15. James Bowden, The History of the Society of Friends in America, 2 vols. (London: Charles Gilpin,

1850), 1:55.

16. Jones, Quakers in American Colonies, 64; David S. Lovejoy, Religious Enthusiasm in the New World (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1985), 122.

17. The court testimony in “Salem,” Essex Antiquarian 12 (January 1908): 72—77, seems to be that the Southwicks had entertained the visiting Quakers, but that the first meeting was held in the Phelps’s home.

See Perley, History of Salem, 2:244—48; Gildrie, Salem, Massachusetts, 133.

18. Bowden, History of the Society of Friends, 1:150-51, 162—63, 170-72; Perley, History of Salem,

2:254-57; Shurtleff, Records of Massachusetts Bay, 4: pt. 1: 367.

19, Erikson, Wayward Puritans, 118; Chu, Neighbors, Friends, or Madmen, 170.

20. Jones, Quakers in American Colonies, 80; Shurtleff, Records of Massachusetts Bay, 4: pt.1: 410-11; Perley, History of Salem, 2:260—62.

21, Perley, History of Salem, 2:257; Jones, Quakers in American Colonies, 92; Dow and Thresher, Quarterly Courts of Essex, 2:224.

22, Dow and Thresher, Quarterly Courts of Essex, 2:220, 261—62.

23. Ibid., 1:267-68; 2:261. The introduction (p. vii) explains: “Supplementing the record books kept by the clerks of the courts is a larger collection of original papers consisting of presentments, depositions upon almost every conceivable subject . . . connected with the various cases,” The undated deposition of Jane Johnson was not in the record books, but in these files.

24. Ibid., 2:314.

25, Jones, Quakers in American Colonies, 91—92.

26. John Greenleaf Whittier, The King’s Missive and Other Poems (Boston: Houghton Muffin Co.,

1881). James Duncan Phillips, Salem in the Seventeenth Century (Boston: Houghton Muffin Co., 1933), 199, says, “In a way it is entirely incorrect to talk of the whole episode as persecution ... because the court was only enforcing the laws,” Erikson, Wayward Puritans, refers to the “whole episode” as persecution on pp. 108-09, 114, 124, and 135, saying, “In late 1661 the Court received a letter from Charles II prohibiting the use of either corporal or capital punishment in cases involving the Quakers, and this announcement stopped the magistrates quite in their tracks.. . . The persecution of Quakers in Massachusetts Bay did not really end with the arrival of the King’s letter.., but from that moment the intensity of the struggle steadily diminished.”

27. George Fox, The Journal of George Fox, John L. Nickalls, ed. (rev. ed., Cambridge: University Press,

1952), 411—15; Jones, Quakers in American Colonies, 94; Perley, History of Salem, 257, 268—70.

28. Dow and Thresher, Quarterly Courts of Essex, 2:431—32.

29. Chu, Neighbors, Friends, or Madmen, 170. Dr. Chu has compiled interesting tables of the adult Quakers in Salem, 1658—70, and the fines assessed for those years.

30. Perley, History of Salem, 2:257; Sidney Perley, “The Woods, Salem, in 1700,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 51 (April 1915): 188; Essex County Courthouse Registry of Deeds, Salem, Massachusetts, Volumes 1—3, 1639—1658, LDS Film no. 866015: Deed Book 2:89, offers the following:

“memorandum, yt I Hanah Phelps, ye wife of Nicho: Phelps, lately deceased, whoe

sd Henry, doth by these presents surender up her thirds.” was joynt executor to ye

31. Mattie Erma Edwards Parker, ed., North Carolina Higher-Court Records. 1670—1696, vol. II, Colonial Records of North Carolina, 2d. ser. (Raleigh, NC.: State Department of Archives and History, 1968), pp. xv—xviii; William L. Saunders, ed., Colonial Records of North Carolina, 10 vols. (Raleigh, NC.:

State of North Carolina, 1886—90), l:ix—x.

32. William Edmundson, A Journal of the Life, Travels. Sufferings, and Labour of Love in the Work of the Ministry, of that Worthy Elder and Faithful Servant of Jesus Christ, William Edmundson (3rd ed., Dublin, Ireland: Christopher Bentham, 1820), 88—89.

33. Ibid.

34. Stephen B. Weeks, Southern Quakers and Slavery. A Study in Institutional History (Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins Press, 1896), 35.

35. Mary Weeks Lambeth, Memories and Records of Eastern North Carolina (Nashville?: Privately printed, 1957), 150-51. Saunders, Colonial Records of N.C.. 1:250-53; “Salem,” Essex Antiquarian 12 (January 1908): 74-75; Perley, History of Salem. 2:254.

36. Edmundson, Journal, 89.

37. Fox, Journal, 642—43.

38. Edmundson, Journal, 123—24.

39. Parker, NC. Higher-Court Records, II:xlvi; Robert J. Cain, ed., Records of the Executive Council.

1 664—1 734, vol. VIII, Colonial Records of North Carolina, 2d ser. (Raleigh, N.C.: Division of Archives and

History, 1984), 346.

40. Cain, Records of Executive Council, 356; Saunders, Colonial Records of N.C., 1:250.

41. Saunders, Colonial Records of N.C., 1:250-53.

42. Raymond A. Winslow, Jr., “Minutes of Perquimans Monthly Meeting 1680-1700,” Perquimans County Historical Society Year Book (Hertford, N.C., The Society, 1976), 5—6 [hereinafter “Perquimans Monthly Meeting”].

43. Weynette Parks Haun, Old Albemarle County. North Carolina, Perquimans Precinct. Births, Marriages. Deaths & Flesh Marks. 16S9 thru 1820 (Durham, N.C.: Weynette Parks Haun, 1980), 2 [hereinafter Perquimans Births].

44. Weynette Parks Haun, Old Albemarle County. North Carolina. Book of Land Warrants and Surveys. 1681—1706 (Durham: Weynette Parks Haun, 1984), 106—07 [hereinafter Albemarle Land Warrants]; Margaret M. Hofmann, Province of North Carolina. 1663—1729, Abstracts of Land Patents, (Weldon, NC.: Roanoke News Company, 1979), 27 [hereinafter N.C. Land Patents].

45. Parker, NC. Higher-Court Records, 11:363—64.

46. Ibid., 377.

47. Weynette Parks Haun, Old Albemarle County. North Carolina. Perquimans Precinct Court Minutes. 1688 thru 1738 (Durham: Weynette Parks Haun, 1980), 2 [hereinafter Perquimans Court].

48. Hofmann, NC. Land Patents, 24; North Carolina File No. SS, Will of Johnathon Phelps, Division of Archives and History, Raleigh.

49. Haun, Perquimans Court, 13, 17.

50. Haun, Albemarle Land Warrants, 118.

51. Raymond A. Winslow, Jr., “Perquimans County and the Society of Friends,” Perquimans County

Historical Society Year Book (Hertford, N.C., The Society, 1972), 1; Hofmann, NC. Land Patents, 9—10;

Walter Clark, ed., The State Records of North Carolina, 16 vols., numbered XI—XXVI (Winston and

Goldsboro, NC., State of North Carolina, 1895—1907), XXIII:484, XXV:367—69.

52. Haun, Albemarle Land Warrants, 25, 29.

53. Parker, N.C. Higher-Court Records, II:xxxiv.

54. Saunders, Colonial Records of NC., 1:711,713.

55. Winslow, “Perquimans Monthly Meeting,” 11—12; Haun, Perquimans Births, 38.

56. Haun, Perquimans Births, 19.

57. Ibid., S [marriage], 17, 23 [births], 35 [deaths].

58. Winslow, “Perquimans Monthly Meeting,” 6.

59. Haun, Perquimans Births, 9, 12—14.

60. Ibid, 21 [death]; File No. SS 874.2, p. 1, Council Minutes, Wills and Inventories, 1677—1701,

Division of Archives and History, Raleigh, reports “At a General Court held Nov. 1679: Geo. Castleton proved will of James Perisho of this county [Albemarle].”

61. Haun, Perquimans Births, 2 [marriage].

62. Eley E. Perisho, The Early History and Descendants of Joseph Perisho. James Perisho, Samuel Perisho (Streator, Ill., Eley E. Perisho, 1912), [10].

63. Haun, Albemarle Land Warrants, 14, 84.

64. Ibid. 106—07; Hofmann, N.C. Land Patents, 27; Mrs. Watson Winslow, History of Perquimans County.’ As Compiled From Records Found There and Elsewhere (1931; reprinted, Baltimore: Regional Publishing Company, 1974), see map after p. 488.

65. Haun, Perquimans Births, 10.

66. Ibid.

67. File No. SS, Will of Samuel Phelps, Division of Archives and History, Raleigh.

68. Haun, Per quimans Court, 32.

69. Winslow, History of Perquimans, 35; Cain, Records of Executive Council, 141, 537.

70. Haun, Perquimans Births, 33, 48.

71. File No. SS, Will of William Phelps, Division of Archives and History, Raleigh.

72. Deed Book F:278, Perquimans County.

73. File No. SS, Will of Jonathan Phelps, Division of Archives and History, Raleigh.

74. Thomas Worth Marshall, Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy by William Wade Hinshaw, Supplement to Volume I (Washington, D.C., Privately printed, 1948), 5.

75. Haun, Perquimans Births, 29 [birth], 38 [marriage].

76. Deed Book C: 160, Perquimans County.

77. File No. SS, Will of Elizabeth Nixon, Division of Archives and History, Raleigh.

78. Haun, Perquimans Births, 43; William Wade Hinshaw, Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy. Vol. I: North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Edwards Brothers, Inc., 1936),

906.

79. Hinshaw, Encyclopedia, 1:69 [liberated to marry]; File No. SS, Will of Henry Phelps, Division of Archives and History, Raleigh.

80. Hinshaw, Encyclopedia, 1:69 [reported married].

81. Ibid., 1:69, 75 [reported married].

82. Ibid., 69 [liberated to marry]; Inventory of Jonathan Phelps, 20 May 1759, Perquimans County Estates Records, 1714-1930, filed alphabetically in boxes, Division of Archives and History, Raleigh [hereinafter Perquimans Estates Records].

83. Haun, Perquimans Births, 63 [marriage].

84. Hinshaw, Encyclopedia, 1:69 [reported married].

85. Winslow, “Perquimans Monthly Meeting,” 15. Hannah Hill, grandmother of Eleanor Perisho, signed the marriage certificate.

86. File No. SS, Will of William Boge [Bogue], Division of Archives and History, Raleigh.

87. Haun, Per quimans Births, 16-17, 25, 29, 41,48.

88. Hinshaw, Encyclopedia, I:90d.

89. Miles White, Jr., Early Quaker Records in Virginia (1902—03; reprinted, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1977), 35 [marriage]; Hinshaw, Encyclopedia, 1:36 [death]; File No. SS, Will of William Bogue, State Department of Archives and History, Raleigh.

90. Hinshaw, Encyclopedia, 1:36 [marriage]; Will of Robert Bogue (original will and recorded copy in WB-A:74), Division of Archives and History, Raleigh.

91. Dorothy Gilbert Thorne, “New Data From Minutes of Perquimans Monthly Meeting (Quaker),

1729—1736,” The North Carolinian 3 (September 1957): 329 [liberated to marry]; Deed Book D:148, Perquimans County.

92. Hinshaw, Encyclopedia, 1:36 [marriage], 95 [deaths].

93. Thorne, “New Data from Minutes,” 329 [liberated to marry].

94. Deed Book C:43, Perquimans County.

95. Haun, Perquimans Births, 2, 38; Clifford M. Hardin, “New/Knew, a New Quaker Family,” The Quaker Yeomen 13 (October 1986): 8—9.

96. Haun, Perquimans Births, 27—28, 30.

97. Ibid., 68 [births of children]; Inventory of James Perisho, 2 January 1744, Perquimans Estate Records.

98. Hinshaw, Encyclopedia, 1:967.

99. Perquimans County Marriage Bonds, 1742—1868, filed alphabetically; and Will of Joseph Perisho (original will and recorded will in WB-C:43); both in Division of Archives and History, Raleigh.

100. Hinshaw, Encyclopedia, 1:113 [marriages and death].