EXPANSION OF PENNSYLVANIA QUAKERISM.
We see, then, that the Irish Friends first located
in the original counties of Philadelphia and
Chester. Thence, with the expansion of the
Province, many of them joined the southward and
westward migrations of Friends, which during the
third and fourth decades of the eighteenth century
began from the Quaker strongholds of the original
settlements.
For three-quarters of a century one of these
wtreams of Quaker migration injected a new and
vigorous element into the quakerism of the South.
The movement reached the Monocacy region of
Maryland about 1725. Here it rested for a time,
and then crossed the Potoamc River and struck
Hopewell, north of what is now Winchester, in
Frederick County, Virginia, in 1732. In that
year a company of Friends from Pennsylvania,
under the leadership of Alexander Ross, an Irish
Friend, settled on a tract of 100,000 acres of land,
called Hopewell, on Opequan Creek, in the beautiful
Shenandoah Valley, obtaining a charter for the
land from the government of Virginia. A meeting
called Opequan, afterward Hopewell Monthly
Meeting, including the meetings of Hopewell and
Monocacy, in 1735. Among the Pennsylvania
Friends of Irish name whomade their way to
Hopewell we find the Kirks, Hollingsworths, Wilsons,
Greggs, Hiatts, and Steers.
About the same time with the founding of the
Hopewell settlement a branch of the same migration
moved from Maryland into Loudon and Fairfax
Counties, Virginia; thence to the southern
counties of that colony; and by 1743 it had gotten
as far as Carver's Creek in Bladen County, North
Carolina. During the next twenty years Friends
swarmed into the central sections of the latter
state and founded Cane Creek, New Garden, and
a large number of other monthly meetings. About
1760, the movement was once more on its way
southward, and by the time of the Revolution had
spent itself in the founding of a series of meetings
in South Carolina and Georgia.
By the end of the eighteenth century the southern
Friends had taken such a firm stand against
the institution of slavery, that they were no longer
able to come into economic competition with their
neighbours who utilized slave labour. Their situation
was rendered still more uncomfortable by the
hostile attitude assumed by these slave-holding
neighbours, and the passing of the century witnessed
a great exodus of the Society of the newly
opened free Northwest Territory. Thousands of
friends, including many of Irish name originally
from Pennsylvania, left their old homes to escape
the hated system, and following several routes
through Virginia and Kentucky, poured into the
new country.
The direct westward migration, reached Sadsbury, in
Kancaster County, about 1723. By 1727 it was on the
east bank of the Susquehanna, where it halted for a decade;
then with the close of the Cresap War it moved
in full force upon York County. Here its westward
course was checked for a time by the great
barriers of the South Mountain and the Allegheny
ranges, and by the French occupation of the westward
country, and the movement was deflected
southward into maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas;
but with the close of the French and Indian
War, at the Peace of Paris in 1763, the rich alluvial
lands of the Monongahela Valley or Redstone
Region in Western Valley had now come into possession
of the English, were thrown open to settlement,
and once more the tide of migration was westward
bound.
Fromthe original York County the migration
passed to points in the Cumberland Valley, most
detachments moving through Shippensburg.
Here the migration divided. One branch, taking
the less mountainous and, for a time at least, the
more popular route, proceeded down the Cumberland
Valley into Maryland and then followed
the devious course of the valley of the Potomac to
Fort Cumberland; thence, advancing along the
line of march of the ill-fated Braddock, it crossed
the great ridge of the Alleghenies, and passing
again into Pennsylvania made its way over Laurel
Hill through Beesontown, to Redstone Old Fort,
later Brownsville, on the Mononaghela, where it
was diffused over the valley of that river. The
other branch, crossing an almost continuous series
of mountain ridges, advanced directly westward
along the old military road from Shippensburg by
way of Fort Littleton and Bedford to Redstone,
where the two branches were again united.
So far as known, the first Friend to settle in the
redstone region was Henry Beeson, who removed
from Berkely County, Virginia, in 1768, and became
the founder of Beesontown, now Uniontown.
He was soon joined by other Friends
from Virginia, Maryland, and a little later by those
from the eastern part of Pennsylvania; and by
1773, when the ministers John Parrrish and
Zebulon Heston, on their return from a mission to the
Ohio Indiians, visited the region, several small
Quaker settlements had been made. In1776,
report was made to Warrington and Fairfax
Quarterly Meeting that about eighteen families
"have removed from different parts of this &
the neighbouring Provinces & settled over the
Allighania Mountains"; but the War of the
Revolution having now begun in earnest the work
of settlement was greatly retarded.
In this same year of 1776, the British commander
at Detroit began to incite the Indians to attack the
frontier of Pennsylvania, and the assaults of the
red men upon Wheeling and the following year caused
such alarm among the settlers that alrge numbers,
including some Friends, returned to their former
homes. Later in this year the Quarterly
Meeting was informed "that many of thr Families
of Friends settled there have removed back to
the Meetings from whence they went and they
were much dispersed."
After the victories of George Rogers Clark in
1778-79, and the subjugation of the indians, the
Redstone settlers feared attack no longer,and
many of those who had fled now returned; but
the remainder of the war period was marked by
few accessions of emigrants, a census of the
Friends in these sections in 1780 showing only
seventeen families or about one hundred and fifty
persons. The close of active hostilities, however,
witnessed a great inpouring of immigrants along
the two routes. In 1782, a meeting for worship
and a preparative meeting were established at
Westland, about six miles west of Redstone Fort.
By 1785, the Quaker population had so increased
that another meeting for worship was erected at
Redstone, and these two meetings were formed
into a monthly meeting called Westland. Other
meetings soon followed, and in 1793 a new monthly
meeting called Redstone was organized.
By the opening of the nineteenth century the
Friends became infected more strongly than ever
with the prevailing spirit of migration, and again
we find them on the westward march. A stream
of migration more powerful than any of the preceding,
arising to considerable extent from new
sources in eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and
even New York, now flowed in a steady current
through the two well-worn channels to the gateway
of the Redstone region, where, gathering new
strength, it moved to the River Ohio and spread out
over the broad and fertile plains of the Old Northwest.
here, mingling with the great stream of
Quakers from the South, it gave rise to many new
meetings, almost if not equaling in number those
of the Atlantic seaboard, and became an important
factor in the formation and development of the
great commonwealths of the Mississippi Valley.
