Quaker Teacher Esther Biddle Rhoads

1978 Detroit Free Press A year before her death.

A follow up post from The Early Quaker Lines

From the Wardwell and Biddle line Esther Biddle Rhoads (1896-1979) daughter of Edward Garrett Rhoads (1863-1926) and Margaret Ely Paxon (1871-1949) granddaughter of Jonathan Rhoads (1830-1914) and Rebecca Garrett (1830-1905) daughter of Thomas Garrett (1809-1888) and Francis Biddle (1803-1873)  (BIDDLE Lineage: John, Owen, John, John, William and Lydia) NOTE: William Biddle (1806-1887) married Elizabeth Cresson Garrett (1806-1881), brother of Thomas Garrett--which I will cover in another post

The Society of Friends records and research show that the RHOADS and GARRETT families were prominent members of the Quaker community as well. The GARRETT family famed Abolitionists, I posted some photos and newspaper clips below. 

Esther's Education: Bachelor of Science, Earlham College, 1921. Doctor of Humane Letters, Earlham College, 1960. Doctor of Laws, Drexel Institute of Technology, 1962.  

Esther was a teacher and the head of the Friends Girls' School in Tokyo for over 50 years. She was also of great importance in work with Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia and with the American Friends Service, to assist Japanese-Americans affected by the War Relocation Act. 

Obit Esther Biddle Rhoads

Esther's Gr Grandparents Thomas Garrett (1809-1888) and Francis Biddle (1803-1873)

Garrett Family: Rebecca Garrett (1830-1905) daughter of Thomas Garrett (1809-1888) and Francis Biddle (1803-1873) wife of mother Jonathan Rhodes. 

Esther's great grandfather, Thomas Garrett (1809-1888) husband of Francis Biddle (1803-1873) He was the son of Philip Garrett 1780-1851 and Rebecca Cresson.  Thomas was "Station Master On The Underground Railroad "

Garrett Family Tree Historical Society and Pennsylvania Archives

  

Esther Biddle Passport 1920

 

Swarthmore, Quaker Meeting Records. Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.

1914 Jonathan Rhoads Obit, grandfather to Esther Biddle Rhoads

• Pennsylvania USGenWeb Archives 
• Sketch of Owen Biddle, to which is Added A Short Account of the Parke Family, Together with a List of His Descendants
• Esther B. Rhoads papers, ca. 1895-ca. 1979 - Ms, Coll. 1153 - Haverford College Special Collections and her Papers https://library.haverford.edu/finding-aids/files/950-156.pdf and
• http://library.haverford.edu/file-id-890

Quaker Merchant Jonathan Dickinson

God's Protecting Providence written by Jonathan Dickinson (1663–1722) wealthy Quaker merchant and first published by the Society of Friends in Philadelphia in 1699 recounts the experiences of Dickinson's travels with his wife ans son, a family member Benjamin Allen, and Quaker missionary Robert Barrow on the ship Reformation commanded by Captain Joseph Kirle. A journey from West Indies to Philadelphia ended up in a hurricane and Florida. "The diary gives one of the first and most detailed accounts of early Florida. It discusses seventeenth-century plants, animals, and Spanish missions or "churches". More importantly, the journal describes the now-extinct local tribes he encountered along Florida's east coast, including the local Jaega, Ais, and Timucua tribes in central and north Florida, and the Apalachee in the Panhandle." (John R. Reis, The Life and Times of Jonathan Dickinson) 

Jonathan Dickinson, son of Captain Francis Dickinson (1632-1704) and Margaret Crook. He married Mary Gail, sister of Colonel John Gale of Jamaica in Philadelphia. More information on family in The Papers of William Penn, Volume 4: 1701-1718, Volume 4

He was Member of the Colonial Assembly: Philadelphia County, 1710-1711, 1716-1717, 1718-1720; Philadelphia City, 1717-1718, 1720-1721. Affiliation: Quaker, Pro-Proprietary. And was elected  Mayor.
As Speaker, Dickinson lead the Assembly as issues over Pennsylvania’s proprietorship were addressed after the death of William Penn. He owned one of the first carriages in the city.

As described by John R. Reis, in "The Life and Times of Jonathan Dickinson," "The mood of the natives changed constantly from friendship to hostility, keeping the crew of the Reformation on edge and fearing for their lives. One native shoved a fistful of sand into baby Jonathan's mouth when they first came ashore. But at another time, a native woman nursed baby Jonathan when his mother no longer had milk. At one point, the natives placed knives to the throats of the Dickinson party-but yet not long after, Jonathan was invited to the Indian chief's hut. There, he dined on boiled fish on a palmetto leaf. At times the natives were rough. At one point, they stripped the survivors of most of their clothes. But later, the natives would sit quietly listening to the Quakers read from the Bible." 

Photo from Early Visions of Florida erected in 1961 by Florida Board of Parks and Historic Memorials with Jonathan Dickinson Chapter D.A.R. 

The Tampa Tribune Sunday May 8 1988

The Wreck of the Reformation
Florida's coast was a deadly place for seventeenth-century castaways. Amy Turner Bushnell HUMANITIES, January/February 2013, Volume 34, Number 1

Jonathan Dickinson's journal, first published in 1699, is a harrowing narrative of shipwreck and captivity on a stretch of Florida’s Atlantic coast well outside of Spanish control and seldom seen by any English speaker, much less a Quaker merchant from Jamaica. The journey is the subject for an audio moment on the website of the Florida Humanities Council’s Viva Florida program, marking the five hundredth anniversary of Ponce de León’s arrival.

Dickinson sailed from Port Royal, Jamaica, on September 2, 1696, on the barkentine Reformation, bound for Philadelphia. With him were his wife and baby son, a kinsman, a Quaker missionary, eleven slaves including a child named Cajoe, and nine mariners. The voyage was ill fated: The ship fell out of convoy, the shipmaster broke his leg, and an Indian slave girl fell ill and died.

After a month of waiting at sea, a storm caught them in the Bahama Channel. Hencoops blew open and filled with seabirds, sheep and hogs washed overboard, and early in the morning of October 3, the vessel ran aground. Dickinson got his people and baggage ashore and out of the rain under a tent of spars and sails. They were soon sighted. Two men in breechclouts of woven grass ran up, snatched the tobacco and pipes that Dickinson held out, and, “making a snuffing noise,” ran away.

Although only one of them spoke Spanish, the twenty-four castaways agreed to say that they were headed toward St. Augustine, 230 miles to the north. To reach the Spanish settlement, they had to cross the territories of four hunting and gathering peoples: the Jaega, Santaluz, Ais, and Surruque. The Wild Coast was not part of Spanish Florida.

The Jaega who came to salvage the wreck ordered the party to unlock their chests, trunks, and boxes. The chief took the money; the warriors divided the clothes, including some that the party was wearing. At the town of Jobe, several miles away, they were given a meal of fish and set to work repairing locks and mending tears, while the chief ’s wife dandled and nursed the Dickinsons’ baby, Jonathan. In the distance they could see the smoke of a great fire, the burning Reformation.

Although warned that the Santaluces would kill them, the group started northward. When night fell they built a fire on the beach and buried themselves in the sand to escape the sand flies and mosquitoes. At daybreak on the second morning, a group of Santaluces with bows and arrows fell upon them, crying “Nickaleer, Nickaleer,” their word for English people. Those in breeches were shaken out of them. Mary Dickinson had her clothes torn from her body and her hair-lace yanked from her head. The walk to the town of Santaluz was a gauntlet of stones, blows, and menacing weapons. At the council house, the castaways were ordered to lie on the floor, nasty with garbage and swarming with scorpions and large, hairy spiders. Unaccountably, an hour later they were brought Indian clothing and a meal of clams, fish, and palm berries. That night they were hurried along to Ais territory, past the wreck of a smaller ship, the Nantwich, lost in the same storm.

The old chief of Ais washed Mary Dickinson’s feet, injured by sunburn and the hot sand. He promised to take his Spanish “comrades” to St. Augustine as soon as he could collect his share of the salvaged cargo, but not the seven Nickaleers from the Nantwich. Food ran short in Ais while the old chief was away, and Jonathan later confessed that when he and Mary thought that they might die and their child be brought up a savage, “it wounded us deep.”

On the twelfth of November, a piragua came in sight and out stepped Captain Sebastián López with a squad of soldiers and the old chief, whom he had met along the way. No longer able to pretend that they were Spaniards, the Jamaicans begged López to escort them to St. Augustine. He agreed to see them as far as the Surruque border, but he had no extra rations. To feed themselves for a two-week trek they had nothing but a bagful of stolen berries.

The weather was turning cold, and they were without blankets or warm clothes. On one terrible day, November 23, five members of the party, including little Cajoe, died on the beach of exposure. As the survivors neared St. Augustine, they took shelter in three successive sentinel houses. The sentinels could not feed them and had no boats to spare, but once they were safely inside the capital, the townspeople lodged, clothed, and fed them, and the governor kindly arranged for them to travel up to Charleston, where they could take ship for Pennsylvania.

No one who experienced the wreck of the Reformation would ever forget it. So that others could profit from their sufferings, the Quaker Meeting in Philadelphia published Dickinson’s account as God’s Protecting Providence. In the next 170 years it would be reprinted sixteen times in English and three times each in Dutch and German, long after Creek and Carolinian slave raiders had depopulated the Wild Coast and the mission provinces of Spanish Florida. 

Palm Beach 1965 DAR

• Gillingham, Harrold E. “Notes and Documents: The Estate of Jonathan Dickinson (1663-1722).” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 59, no. 4, 1935, pp. 420–429. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20086941.
• University of Florida John Dickinson's Journal  http://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/UF/00/06/73/37/00001/dickinson_journal.pdf
• MAP https://www.geographicus.com/P/AntiqueMap/ReystogtJamaika-dickinson-1706
• A History of the People Called Quakers: From Their First Rise to the Present Time. Compiled from Authentic Records, and from the Writings of that People, Volume 3 John Gough
  Robert Jackson, Meath Street., 1789 - Society of Friends
•  Early Visions of Florida 
• “Suffering of the Shipwrecked Quakers,” by Frederik de Coste. In True Tales of Old St. Augustine, pp. 31-35, Great Outdoors Publishing Company, St. Petersburg, Fla., and the St. Augustine Historical Society, 1966.

 

Salem Quaker Meeting House Controversy

What is the real skinny on the Quaker Meeting House in Salem MA? Love to hear your comments! A picture taken by John Phelan of Lexington MA

Photo from article  Horse and Carriage Days in Salem by Donna Seger

From The Genealogical Quarterly Magazine Volume 2 1901
Also appeared in Putnam's Monthly Historical Magazine and Magazine of New England History

Two years ago the editor of this magazine, in a very moderately worded article, called attention to the error perpetuated by the officials of The Essex Institute by the exhibition of a small structure claimed by them to be the original first meeting-house at Salem. Facts, easily accessible, taken from the town records,, were presented, showing not only how the error first originated, but also why the building so carefully preserved could not be what it was claimed to be. The Institute has distributed thousands of little booklets purporting to give a description of the "relic" and of the original meet1ng-house. It was even proposed to include this sham relic in the add1tion to the Institute building which is contemplated.

The exposure was met with unjust comments by the president of the institution and his supporters, which culminated in a personal attack upon the good faith of Hon. Abner Cheney Goodell (pictured above), one of the vice-presidents, whose name had been used, in an unauthorized manner,as a support to the claim that the Institute had preserved the original building. Mr. Goodell retaliated in an address read to the directors of the Institute, published later in pamphlet form, not only clearing himself from all suspicion of bad faith,but showing conclusively that he had been foremost in opposing the theory when it was first set up; that he never signed, and could not have signed, not being a member of the committee, the statement which has done service so many years, to substantiate the false character of the building. Moreover, he pointed out and made evident to any one who would follow the evidence presented, that Mr. Rantoul, now president of the society, was at the time the statement first saw light acting-editor of the Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, and consequently responsible for the misuse of Mr. Goodell's name. Various additional facts, showing the impossibility of the building so carefully preserved being the old meeting-house, were also presented, obtained largely from notes furnished Mr. Goodell by the author of the "Enquiry into the Authenticity of the First Meeting-house."

The result of the controversy was the appointment by the directors of the Institute, of a committee to look into the question. Although two years have passed no report has been made, but it is said, upon excellent authority, that Mr. Sidney Perley (Pictured), who was employed by the committee to search the records for evidence, has completed his task and has arrived at a conclusion coinciding with that advanced in this magazine two years ago, that is, that the building preserved by the Institute is not in any way connected with the first meeting-house at Salem.
In this number we present two views, one representing the building as it now stands, and which has passed all these years for the original meeting-house partially restored. Opposite is presented a view of the building as it was when first discovered and before the restoration. It is to be hoped that the Institute will publish the finding of the special committee. It may be said in passing that the suggestion that this building is the first meeting-house of the Friends is quite as largely theory as the former and now exploded claim. The investigations made by the writer two years ago have convinced him that not only was the first meeting-house erected at a date much earlier than claimed for this substitution, but that it was all that one would expect a place of worship of a so intensely religious people to be. As to its use for secular purposes there can be little doubt, nor that it was roomy, nearly square, and not unlike in shape the types which were persisted in for nearly a century. Against its walls were built shops; it was the rallying place of the watch; it was the centre of the life of the settlement; and it was in every respect worthy of a town which for a time hoped to be the seat of government.

By James H. Emmerton the building was then standing on the land of David Nichols now Proctor Street, off of Boston Street. The original of this sketch went to the family of Mr. John Robinson, of Salem, but a duplicate, the gift of Dr. Emmerton, has been in the possession of the Institute since 1869.

The "cow-shed" As It Now Appears. From a photograph by Frank Cousins. 

At Odds: My Puritan and Quaker Heritage

A submission by Laura George from her blog, The Great Ancestral Hunt, about the Southwick Family of Salem, Mass. The Southwick family had close relations with the Phelps family in Salem.

I've been moved my many stories of my ancestors but none more so than that of Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick and two of their children, son Daniel and daughter Provided who lived in Salem, Massachusetts.

Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick of  England were members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in a very puritanical Salem. They were persecuted, fined, whipped, thrown in prison and eventually banished for not following the Puritan ways. They were my 9th Great Grandparents (and 8th great grandparents of Winston Churchill and Richard Nixon, my second cousins, 8 generations removed) and their daughter, Provided, my 8th Great Grandmother. To find out the horrors your family members went through is gut-wrenching. What I find utterly unbelievable is that the Puritans, who left England because of religious persecution became persecutors themselves and many Quakers suffered terribly as a result. Even more shocking to me was to find out that the person who passed judgement on them was my own 9th Great Grandfather, Puritan and first Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Endicott:

"According to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, "Under his authority the colony of Massachusetts Bay made rapid progress, and except in the matter of religious intolerance in which he showed great bigotry and harshness, particularly towards the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)" (including religious executions), "his rule was just and praiseworthy. Of him Edward Eggleston says: A strange mixture of rashness, pious zeal, genial manners, hot temper, and harsh bigotry, his extravagances supply the condiment of humour to a very serious history; it is perhaps the principal debt posterity owes him."

Quaker Trial, 17th Century

Because of the unfair treatment of their parents, having bear witness to the repeated lashings and imprisonments, Daniel and Provided decided not to participate in a church that was so persecuting and for this they were fined ten pounds each even though it was known they would not be able to pay. The Governor then issued an order in the General Court of Boston that Daniel and Provided would be sold as slaves to any English nation at Virgina or Barbados.  

This image shows my 9th great grandfather, Governor John Endicott attempting to sell my 8th great grandmother, Provided Southwick into slavery. The writing below the image reads:
"The attempted sale into slavery of Daniel and Provided Southwick, son of Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick by Gov. Endicott and his minions, for being Quakers." I wanted to know more and after several days of research I came upon the book:
"Genealogy of the Descendants of Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick of Salem Mass. The Original Emigrants, and the Ancestors of the Families Who Have Since Borne His Name (1881)

I've discovered that books on family Genealogy such as this one don't come cheap! In fact, some can be selling for hundreds of dollars! But, this book was totally worth the purchase as I uncovered so much more than what I had found previously. It included Historical Extracts such as this one: "Lawrence, Cassandra and their son Josiah were imprisoned at Boston for being Quakers and were kept there twenty weeks on a charge of violating a law enacted while they were in prison."

Quaker Meeting House, 17th Century

Eventually all Quakers were banned from setting foot in Massachusetts under "pain of death" although several risked imprisonment and even death by hanging in order to continue their ministry. Lawrence and Cassandra were banished and fled to Shelter Island, Long Island Sound, New York where Nathaniel Sylvester, the island's first white settler gave shelter to them and many other Quakers. Another except from the Southwick Genealogy book reads: "Lawrence and wife Cassandra went to Shelter Island, Long Island Sound, being banished under pain of death in 1659, and died there in the spring of 1660 from privation and exposure; his wife died three days after him."
It was really sad to discover that they died of starvation and exposure. Even though they weren't family members that I knew in the physical sense, they were still my grandparents, whose blood flows through my veins. I still had an ache in my heart for the way they died which seems completely unfair and unnecessary.
Yesterday, as I was sitting on my patio in the morning sun, sipping my favorite brand of coffee and enjoying the views over the lake, I thought about Lawrence, Cassandra and Provided and how this day, this moment of enjoyment is a result of all my ancestors, on both sides of my tree. Those who suffered humiliation and persecution, those that fought and died in war, those who endured hardships in the new lands and on the open prairies. Those that gave me life, protected me and loved me. I honor all of them by continuing my research, telling their stories and keeping memories alive.