#84 - Westbury, Long Island, NY 1869: Beard or No Beard?

 1869 Beards at the Apex

1869 Westbury Friends Meetinghouse

It was the way to wear your hair in the US: between 1850 and 1901 all of my male ancestors who were young men during the Civil War (AND who were American & whose photo I have) wore beards.
The photo above is a1896 photo of some of the Westbury Friends at the Westbury (Long Island, NY) Meetinghouse.
I first saw in at the Westbury Historical Society.  [You might want to see if you have an ancestor pictured here]. 

Then I noticed it in my cousin's house--she lives in the same house our great grandmother (Bertha Hauxhurst) lived (in PA) after she was married. Bertha's father is in the above photo, as are many of Bertha's relatives.

In the 1990s an elderly relative on Long Island (Esther Hicks) provided an enormous amount of information, including the key to the photograph. 

Both the key and the names to each circled number is provided below.

Back to Beards:
When I looked closely at the photo, I saw fewer than half the men have beards, some seem to have whiskers, and there might even be a mustache in this group. 
I would guess though the Quakers here have in part adopted the fashion of the day (some have 'trendy' stove pipe hats), that they seemed to resist the beard largely. I wonder if it may have been because they were conscientious objectors to war (even if they agreed with the Union)?
I don't know. But, it was fun to examine more closely each face in the photo as I could see some of their expressions. 

Key to Westbury Friends Meeting Members - See Names below

Westbury Quaker Meeting 1869  

Note: # 33 and #39 are unnamed, not recognized. There is a 35 & a 35A to compensate a numbering error.

1 Wm E Hauxhurst - No beard -  (my gr gr grandfather)

2 Wm Hewlett - No
3 Wm Mudge - Whiskers or Beard
4 Isaac Rushmore -No
5 Benjamin Hicks (Manhasset) - No
6 Stephen Rushmore - No
7 Charles F Titus - No
8 Wm T. Cock - No
9 John S. Hicks - Whiskers or Beard
10 James Titus - No
11 Joseph Post - No
12 Lewis Valentine -No
13 Edmond Seaman -No
14 Edward Willets - No 
15 Henry Titus - No
16 Stephen R. Hicks - No 
17 Howard Rushmore - No
18 Hannah Keese
19 Lydia Townsend
20 Henry T. Willets - Beard or whiskers
21 Samuel Keese - No
22 John Keese - No
23 Anna Valentine
24 Edward Rushmore -No 
25 Hannah B. Titus
26 Daughter of Benj. Hicks
27 Daughter of Benj. Hicks
28 Mary W. Seaman
29 Mary Jane Willits
30 Thomas Hicks - No
31 Jacob Hicks - No 
32 William Henry Willits - No
33 --N/A
34 James Post -No
35 John Valentine - No
35A Sidney Pratt -No
36 Benjamin Hicks (Roslyn) - No
37 Mary P. Titus
38 Sarah A. Willets
39 ---
40 Mary F. Titus
41 Phebe Post
42 Amy Keese
43 Esther or Hannah Willets
44 Caroline H. Hicks
45 Charity Hawxhurst
46 John D Hicks - No
47 Jane Titus
48 Annie C. Titus
49 Phebe Barnes (Purchase)
50 Hannah B. Cock
51 Hannah U. Hicks
52 Rachel Post
53 Marietta Willets
54 Joseph Hicks - Yes, nice beard!
55 Elmina Post
56 Mary W. Post
57 Annie T. Willets
58 Frederick E. Willits - No Beard but does he have a mustache??
 

---

Sources
Photo: MB Walmer Collection (by way of Bertha Hauxhurst) - photo

Key: from Esther Hicks (Emory) B 1903 D. 2004 (age 101). Daughter of Henry Hicks & Caroline Jackson. Wife of John M  G Emory. Esther Hicks Emory corresponded with Margaret Tilton Walmer and provided the "key" which she had gotten from a sister. 

#53 Long Line of Pedigree Collapse - Long Island Quakers

Long Island Quakers and Pedigree Collapse

Part 1

My great grandmother was born in Westbury, Nassau County, NY. Her father was William E Hawxhurst (May 1838 -Feb 1908) farmer and surveyor, son of Ephraim Cock Hawxhurst (1793-1859) and Charity Titus (1802-1877) 

Wm E Hawxhurst

Her mother was Marianna Hicks, daughter of Isaac Hicks (Aug 1815-Mar 1900) and Mary Fry Willis (Jan 1817-Feb 1898).
Both families descended, without straying, from the longest line of Quakers who settled Long Island. [In case your wondering, Marianna’s grandfather, Isaac Hicks, helped fund a cousin, Elias Hicks, in his ministry as a Public Friend early in the 1800s]

Marianna (Hicks) Hawxhurst

A Long Line.
~Imagine you were born and raised on an island with a tiny population.  

~ Imagine that for religious reasons you married only people in your religion & you were prohibited you from marrying outside your religion.  

~ Imagine moving this island, with acres and acres of rich farm land, surrounded by wonderful fishing opportunities, so it adjoins the most powerful & prosperous city of the Western Hemisphere.

This explains who these Ancestral Long Island Quakers were.

How Did They Preserve Community?

My Long Island Quakers married safe people, most often collateral cousins (cousins of cousins).

Their repeated and extensive remarrying in a small geographic area led a LONG LINE of “pedigree collapse.” 

When researching when I need to add (yet another) “Titus” or “Hicks” or “Willis” always I pray for dates and /or parents’ names to get the right person.

Here are the last names of my ancestors going back to the earliest English settlers on Long Island which appear in this (largely) Quaker family tree:

Hicks, Willis, Fry, Rushmore, Doughty, Powell, Kirby, Allen, Alsop, Birdsall, Bowne, Washburn, Carman, Carpenter, Cock(e), Cole(s), Cornell, Doughty, Eme/ory, Feeke (Feake), Haight, Hallet, Hauxhurst (Hawxhurst), Hallowell, Loines, Jackson, Moore, Mott, Noble, Oakley, Pearsall, Powell, Reddock, Rodman, Rushmore, Seaman, Seaman, Sering, Smith, [Spicer, Tilton], Titus, Townsend, Underhill, Valentine, Williams, Willet, Willets, Wood, Wright

When I see historical document on Long Island from 1850 or earlier, I can bet my mother’s family has a common ancestor. The difficulty is making the right attribution (which Thomas Powell was this?) 

Part 2

I cannot get away from the long arms of the Long Island Quakers. 

Case in point: Spicer & Tilton.

These names appear in my mother’s FATHER’s lineage. I used to consider them the “Pennsylvania” group. I was wrong. Just a tiny bit of digging and I found out that they came from New Jersey, moving to PA after the Civil War. Oops.

SPICER TILTON

My mother’s father’s family was mostly from New Jersey. But—New Jersey isn’t far from Long Island. It’s here where we reconnect the two ends of my mother’s family.

--Spicer and Tilton began on Long Island

Susannah Spicer was the daughter of Thomas Spicer. 

She was born in Long Island (Flushing), and married Henry Brazier. Susannah (Spicer) Brazier and Henry Brazier remained on Long Island.

Their daughter, Rebecca Brazier, married Peter Tilton (son of John Tilton and Mary Pearsall—there is another Ancient Name of Long Island).

--Brazier-Tilton Move

Rebecca (Brazier) Tilton and Peter Tilton moved to Monmouth, New Jersey. (They were still Quakers).

--Tiltons in New Jersey; and back again.

This Tilton line remained in the New Jersey area (and remained Quaker) at least until 

William Henry Tilton (B. 9 May 1820 Monmouth Co, NJ) and his wife Sarah A Conover (B 12 Aug 1831 of Monmouth Co NJ; D. 5 Jul 1895 in Brooklyn, NY).

They moved to Brooklyn, sometime before 1850 (US Fed. Census).

--Off to Pennsylvania

From mid-1800s the Tiltons lived in Brooklyn, then Henry Addison Tilton and his wife and family moved to Pittsburgh PA.  Since then the Tilton family claimed Pennsylvania as their own. 

--Ultimate Irony

It was ironic for me that I should find out that the Tiltons of Pennsylvania had first settled down in the New World on Long Island, NY.

My mother’s father (Chas Tilton) died in 1987 and was not a Quaker.  Might he be shocked to find out he and his wife had this in common: Long Island, NY and Quakerism?

#19 - Phebe Willets (Mott) (Dodge)- Female Preacher when before Women were Equal - part 1 of 2

Phebe Willets, Female  Preacher Before Women were Equal (part 1/2)

I almost missed this ancestor because I made the mistake of focusing on the male names.
Beginning with my mother's side, the first names go backwards like this: Elizabeth (my grandmother)-Bertha-Marianna-Mary-John-Samuel-Elizabeth-Phebe Willets (Mott) (Dodge). Or, the visual:
  
Phebe Willets was born in 1699, and died in 1782 in her 83rd year, having lived through the transition from Dutch to English control of New York, the French & Indian War, and dying right before the end of the Revolutionary  War.

She married "late" (in her 30s) Adam Mott (who was much older) and they had 3 children [including my ancestor Elizabeth Mott]. Adam died when her youngest was a toddler. Phebe remarried (Tristam Dodge), he also predeceased her.
Long Island Quakers began meeting before Penn's: about 25 years before William Penn's settlement in Pennsylvania & about 20 years before Burlington, New Jersey in 1657.

By the late 1600s, when Phebe Willets was born, there were more Friends Meetings (Quaker equivalent of churches) in Queens County-which then included some towns also in what is now Nassau County-than Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed or Anglican churches. 

Not only that, but the Quakers exerted influence that was disproportionate to their numbers, and their influence lasted into the early 1800s. 

Quakers were especially noted for recognizing women as equal and valued members. They spearheaded much of what we call Gender Equality. 

From what I have read, the Quaker values, heritage and ways of thinking and behavior, helped give women the strength to organize for female suffrage.   Did you know that at the First Woman's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848, the main organizers were Quakers or former Quaker--except one (Elizabeth Cady Stanton)? [They were: Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann M'Clintock, Jane Hunt=Quakers; Martha Coffin Wright=Quaker,but disowned for marrying out of unity; and the non-Quaker=Elizabeth Cady Stanton].

Women & Preaching
Even today, the recognizable names of ministers and preachers are usually males.  Most denominations don’t recognize women as leaders in the church (called ordination). 

The Society of Friends began differently. Since the beginning of Quakerism in the 1600s, starting with Margaret (Askew) Fell of England  (who wrote the book,“Women’s Speaking Justified: a Scripture-Based Argument for Women’s Ministry”) women in Quakerism were preachers. I guess that set the pace.
"They practiced greater equality for women centuries before most other religious groups--women Quaker ministers and missionaries came to Long Island, and women ministers from Long Island traveled to preach and exhort."(Women in Long Island's Past: A History of Eminent Ladies and Everyday Lives, by Natalie A Naylor).

This, at a time when women didn't vote or even speak in public meetings. And they DID NOT PREACH.
Quakers in the American colonies recognized many “official preachers” (for more, see Daughters of Light by Rebecca Larson, and Strangers & Pilgrims-Female Preaching in America by Catherine A Brekus).
A preacher was distinct from being moved to speak in a typical Quaker meeting where either sex may speak--preachers were specially recognized:

Explanation from Carol Faulkner

Phebe Willets stood out to me because she was recognized by her Long Island Meeting as a preacher. Phebe not only preached, but she traveled and preached. That suggests she was in some kind of demand by other meetings.

Before you think Phebe was speaking about gender equality, think again. All preachers were recognized as having a special gift which was rooted in faith, not in the outcomes of the faith. Gender equality was an outcome of their faith.

"their vindication of women’s right to preach was always secondary to their faith in biblical revelation. 
They were biblical rather than secular feminists and based their claims of female equality on the grounds of scriptural revelation. 
Female preachers were too conservative in their theology for women’s rights activists but too radical to be remembered by evangelicals.”  (Strangers and Pilgrims - Female Preachers in America by Catherine A Brekus)

Phebe Willets, it seems, was one of those women ministers. She expanded her field when she traveled as companion minister with Susanna Morris and Mary Weston in 1752 -1753 to meetings in England.

Knowing Quakerism & a bit of Quaker history, I agree with Larson when she asserts that female freedoms helped to bolster the hand of women involved in the nascent women's rights movements:

From "Daughters of Light" by Rebecca Larson

This post is Part 1 of 2 about her because Phebe will appear in the follwing post for (once again) setting the pace for her fellow Quakers--and they set pace for New York at the time. 

Phebe Willets Mott or Phebe Willets Dodge appears over and over histories of the 1700s, I am so glad I followed this line. I'll have to continue to keep an eye on other my female lines now and then!

from appendix of female preachers "Daughters of Light" by Larson