The Friends’ Migration: Social Origins

Every year from 1681 to 1686, more than a thousand English emigrants arrived in West Jersey and Pennsylvania. The annual numbers were roughly the same as in the Puritan migration to Massachusetts, and not unlike the movement to Virginia. But the social origins of the Delaware settlers differed from those of other colonists.

The Friends’ migration was not as much of a family affair as in New England, but more so than in Virginia. In Pennsylvania, two early immigrant registers show that the proportion who arrived in nuclear families was 39 percent in Philadelphia, and 58 percent in Bucks County. In that respect, the movement to the Delaware was intermediate between migrations to Massachusetts and the Chesapeake.¹

As to social rank, the same sources show that Pennsylvania’s immigrants tended to be men and women of humble origin, who came from the lower middling ranks of English society. Their social status was similar to that of English Quakers in general.²

Bishop Sheldon observed in 1669 that most Quakers were “very mean, the best scarce worth the title of Yeomen.”³ This opinion, shorn of its pejoratives, was true in one sense and false in another. In registers of immigration kept for the counties of Bucks and Philadelphia, only a few people called themselves yeomen, and not one described himself as a gentleman. Most were husbandmen, craftsmen, laborers and servants. Bishop Sheldon was correct in thinking that very few Quakers were high-born, but he was mistaken in his belief that they were mostly of “the meanest sort”—a common error of perception among Anglican clergy who were the Quakers’ most impassioned enemies.⁴

Marriage registers kept by Friends in both England and Pennsylvania showed similar patterns of social rank. In rural neighborhoods, most male Quakers called themselves husbandmen. A majority in urban areas tended to describe themselves as manual workers, artisans, tradesmen and small shopkeepers of various kinds. In the marriage records of Philadelphia, for example, only one man in ninety called himself a gentleman, and only one a laborer. The rest were mainly craftsmen, tradesmen and merchants.⁵

Welsh Quakers who came to Pennsylvania appear to have been of higher social rank than their English brethren—or at least these Welshmen thought of themselves in more exalted terms. Of 163 emigrants from Merioneth, 14 (8.5%) called themselves gentlemen, and 42 (26%) described themselves as yeomen. But most gave no rank or occupation; probably the majority were husbandmen or laborers. Few appear to have been artisans.⁶

Altogether, this evidence confirms the carefully balanced conclusion of historian Frederick Tolles that the majority of immigrants to Pennsylvania were “persons in moderate or humble circumstances, some of them on the edge of destitution.” Even the leaders were of comparatively modest beginnings. Here was a pattern very different from Massachusetts and Virginia.⁷

This difference in social origins was partly due to the structure of migration to the Quaker colonies. Meetings of Friends in England subsidized the passage of at least a few poor families. Thus, when Richard Torr asked for money to carry his family to America, the Yorkshire Quarterly Meeting agreed that “he only sojourns here in the city of York & scarce owned as members any Meeting in this County, yet in pity to them this meeting is willing to give 40 shillings. … He is only to have it if he goes, and not for any other purpose.”⁸ The Chester Quarterly Meeting in 1699 paid £8.12.2, “the charge of Barbara Janney & her daughter’s passage into Pennsylvania with other expences.” This support was not undertaken on a large scale. But it provided passage money for at least a few Quakers who must otherwise have stayed home.⁹

Other Quakers were supported by private arrangements with individual friends. A case in point was the Quaker servant girl Jane Hoskins whose passage to Pennsylvania in 1712 was paid by another Friend:

One Robert Dane, Welchman with his wife and two daughers, were going to settle in Philadelphia; a friend told me of their going, and went with me to them. We soon agreed, that he should pay my passage and wait until I could earn the money on the other side of the water, for which he accepted my promise without note or bond, or being bound in indenture.¹⁰

The Quaker founders of Pennsylvania showed no hostility to servants, such as had existed among the leaders of Massachusetts Bay. As a consequence, people too poor to pay their own way came in larger numbers to the Delaware than to New England.

The social filter of the Friends’ migration also tended to screen out English elites, mainly because Quaker principles had little appeal to families of high rank. An exception serves to illustrate the rule. The rich and well-born English Quaker Mary Penington described the tension that existed between her rank and her religion. She wrote:

One night as I lay in my Bed it was said in me, “Be not hasty to join with these people called Quakers.” For many months I was under some exercise of Mind, not that I disputed against the Doctrines they held, but I set myself against taking up the cross to the language, fashions, customs and honours of the world—for indeed my station and connections in life made it very hard.¹¹

William Penn was often reprimanded by other English gentlemen for mixing with Quakers. In 1671 Sir John Robinson told him:

I vow Mr. Penn I am sorry for you. You are an ingenious gentleman, all the world must … allow you that, and you have a plentiful estate. Why should you render yourself unhappy by associating with such a simple people?

To this complaint, Penn answered that he favored “honestly simple” people above the “ingeniously wicked.” In the Friends’ migration, he found the company that he preferred to keep.¹²