I think a lot of Quakers moved around from place to place to help spread the Quaker message by establishing Quaker communities.  My Hawley family followed the Quaker trail from being run out of the country into Canada for being Loyalists during the Revolutionary War (ie:  they refused to fight the British or anyone else for that matter) and then went where they were needed and wound up in Iowa and then Georgia and Florida.    Sandy --- On Sat, 4/4/09, Chris Dickinson <[email protected]> wrote: From: Chris Dickinson <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Q-R] My PA Quaker Lines & Question on Irish Quakers' History To: [email protected] Date: Saturday, April 4, 2009, 8:37 PM Kim wrote: <snip> > I wonder if anyone can fill in the > historical context of the English Quakers who moved to Ireland and > then to PA within a few generations. I've heard stories that they were > in Cromwell's army and given land taken from the Irish, then became > convinced Quakers in Ireland. <snip> Hmm. I suspect, but don't know, that this is a hypothesis that won't stand up to testing. My gut feeling is that internally convinced Quakers would be far fewer in number than Quakers who moved to Ireland from the rest of the British Isles. > I've also heard they moved from England > to Ireland due to persecution. <snip> No doubt there were Quakers who moved to Ireland in the seventeenth century to escape 'persecution', but no doubt people moved for other reasons too. Had the principal motive been to escape persecution, Quaker meetings within the rest of Britain wouldn't have remained so large. Bear in mind that the move to Ireland was, at least for those who cames from western Scotland/England and Wales, not the 'burning your boats' experience that a move to PA was. Dublin, which had a large Quaker community, was within easy reach of English ports like Bristol, Liverpool and Whitehaven - indeed, easier to get to than London. And big Irish meetings like Mountmellick and Edenderry were closer to Dublin (70 miles?) than Bristol is from London (100 miles?). Many Quakers will have been in regular communication with their families and friends back home, and many will have travelled regularly across the Irish Sea. Chris ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message