The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1897-08-31

taking the oath" we're regarded as
very horrible things.
Your correspondent had a chat with
DIR. Stephens b. Weeks, who knows
more about the Quakers than any man
I'm North Carolina. He says the ear
liest record in this state is in 1877. 1t is
In q vault at New Garden, where they
have their greatest meeting house."
1n the written record above referred
70 New Garden is spoken OF, and it is
said to be in Roam" county, DR..
Weeks says there are two elements in
North CarOlina-the native and the for
eign. The native element lived east Of
b line now drawn by the Atlantic
Coast Line from Washington, D. c.,
south. The Quakers Of Virginia were
Of the same type as those of North
Carolina. Those in Southampton
Nansemond and Isle of Wight coun-
ties and those in the neighboring coun-
ties in North Carolina, P~asquotank
and Perquimans, were Of the native
stock. They were the descendants Of
h converts made by Edmundson and
Fox in 1872. There are also Quakers in
Northampton county who moved over
from Virginia. There were Quakers in
TarbOro and in Hyde, Carteret and
Jones counties, but they have disap-
peared. There are still meetings near
GOldsboro. The first records in the
east are in 1917 in Perquimans county,
in h part now HEREFORD. DR.. Weeks
says the Quakers now living west of
the Atlantic Coast Line are mainly de-
scendants of emigrants from Pennsyl-
vania. These came over with Penn at
the end of the seventeenth century. A
generation remained in Pennsylvania
and the next moved to Maryland and
northern Virginia. Then they followed
the foo hills of the Blue Ridge south
ward and founded Lynchburg. One of
their leaders was Lynch, from whom
strange to say, came the term lynch
law"
The first meeting of Quakers in mid
die North Carolina was at Cane Creek,
about 1851. This was fifty-two years
after the meetings in ~PasquOtank be-
gan. Then came New Garden, which
is nov their stronghold, in 1854. Other
Quakers passed to South Carolina and
in ITO they reached Georgia. The war
of the revolution DETECTED their migra-
ton to the west and this movement
west was fostered and increased by
slavery. They first liberated their own
slaves n then sought to escape from
the influence of slavery by migration.
The movement from North Carolina
began about 1900. From Jones county
SAA~ oAS AASSNAL6 '" 6IOup VI
congregational removed in a body in
1903. From other meetings they went
or in families, and the descend
ants of these North Carolina Quakers
are found all over the middle west and
In the same way all the
meetings in South Carolina and Geor-
gia were broken up, their representa-
tives going to Ohio INC Indiana. So
complete are the Quaker records that
it is possible to trace the migration of
certain families through all their sue
cessive removals from Pennsylvania
through Maryland and Virginia to
North Carolina, thence to South Caro-
lima or Georgia, thence to Ohio and In
diana, n thence to the Pacific The
North Carolina yearly meeting is
the mother of some of the strongest
yearly meetings in the west. George
w. Julian, the free soil' candidate
for vice president in 1852, was the son
of a Randolph county Quaker, and
Osborn, a Chatham county
Quaker, was the first man ain the world
to demand unconditional and immedi-
ate emancipation Of slaves. Quaker
is delightfully."- told by DR..
Weeks in his well prepared work
Southern Quakers and Slavery"
In the written record of Pasquo-
tank meeting, first alluded to, there
constant references to 1.-The Perqui-
meeting" which was yet older.
F. A. OLDS.