Welcome and
Introduction
Good morning.
Bus tour yesterday, saw the land on which George and Sarah lived and their
Quaker meetings. Keep those places in your mind today as we learn more.
Today, we will learn about George and his family, the history and context of
Bucks Co, and some Quaker history.
Perfect place to learn more about our Quaker heritage.
Welcome to our Zoom family members.
I want to set the stage: Prepare ourselves for this day.
“Settle in.”
“I am listening to a deeper way.
Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me.
Be still, they say. Watch and
listen. You are the result of the
love of thousands.” Linda Hogan,
Native American writer.
The love of thousands. A remarkable story that began in England, continued in
British America and the United States.
A story of births, marriages, deaths; migrating and settling; Quaker
belief and practice. Our ancestors worked hard, raised their families, and built
communities.
Today we focus on our original immigrant ancestor, George the Immigrant. And his
wife, Sarah.
In 1676, in a cottage in a small hamlet in the English countryside, a boy was
born to James and Isabel Haworth.
They named him George. There was
nothing particularly remarkable about this. He was not royalty nor did his
family belong to the landed gentry.
Yet, this baby boy, our George, grew up to be one of the early Quakers in
America and the original immigrant ancestor to thousands of Haworths in what is
now the United States. His descendants included a U.S. President (Herbert
Hoover) and a famous movie star (Rita Hayworth) among many other notables.
(Haworth furniture Co.)
But, as Abraham Lincoln said, the real doing of history is accomplished by the
great number of “plain people.” Most of our ancestors were just that, “plain
people.” They forged or followed major migration routes that took them to
Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas,
Missouri, California, and Oregon. In each place, some of these pioneers became
the settlers who cleared farms and built Quaker meetings and schools. They
responded to the issues of their day: religious persecution, slavery, westward
expansion, industrialization, and war. These “plain people” who did the work of
history are our people,
our family. The story is remarkable,
not because it’s unusual, but because it is OUR story, written by OUR people. We
are here because of them.
We are the result of the love of thousands, so let us watch and listen, and
perhaps feel something of their presence.
Zoom a year ago—his early life in England and trip to America.
So we pick up the story here.
George arrived in 1699 and took up residence in Bucks Co., where he lived the
rest of his life. So here we are.
Just one other note before
we start: It is impossible to talk
about the settling of British America without remembering that the background
story is the unsettling of the Native Tribes.
The people who lived here at the time the Europeans arrived were the
Lenni Lenape. Artifacts indicate
that humans arrived here about 12,000 years ago.
The most recent period, the Woodlands period from 1,000 BC until the
arrival of the Europeans in 1500, was a time of complex cultural and technical
organization. The Lenape lived in
autonomous bands, small groups that had enough people to carry out the communal
tasks of hunting, fishing, and farming as well as pottery and tool making.
They moved around seasonally, and we still use their paths.
They lived in pole and bark long houses.
They hunted and gathered for food, clothing and implements and farmed
beans, squash, ceremonial tobacco and corn (the biggest).
When William Penn set up his Holy Experiment in Pennsylvania, he intended
to live peacefully with the Lenape. He kept his word, but his successors did
not. The early Quakers followed
Penn’s example. By 1795, the local tribes had been moved to Indiana.
Today as we reflect on our family here, we might to do well to remember those people who cared for the land
before our ancestors did.
So we start this morning with William Penn, Quakers, and Bucks Co history. We
have 3 very knowledgeable and active Quakers with us today to lead us on this
journey as well as some family members. So let’s begin!