Quaker Families

Our Quaker ancestry was recently in the news when Iraqi hostage Quaker Tom Fox was found executed March 11, 2006. He was from Hopewell Centre Clear Brook, Virginia which is the 1759 Meeting House where George FALLIS attended in 1764 and we can speculate that father Thomas FALLIS who died before 1756 probably attended and may be buried in the unmarked gravesites beside the church. Interesting to note the Quaker religion was started by George Fox in 1647 England, perhaps Tom Fox is his distant relative?

Quaker Meetings in the Lower Shenandoah Valley and elsewhere nice list includes Ohio.

Local Quaker MeetingHouses and Sites in counties around Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio.

From the Hopewell Meeting History web page:

"Just east of the meetinghouse is a graveyard enclosed by a limestone wall. The headstone with the oldest marking is dated 1807 although a number of unmarked stones identify the location of earlier gravesites. The wall around the graveyard was built in 1870 by W.D. Lee. His initials and the date are on one of the graveyard wall stones. The graveyard is approximately one acre in size. Following the custom of Friends, records were faithfully kept from the time of the establishment of the Meeting. All of these records have been preserved with the exception of the first twenty-five years. The records for the years 1734 to 1759 were lost in a fire that destroyed the house of William Jolliffe in 1759."

I have read statements that as many as 25% of the early Colonial families were Quaker at one time. Quaker's were some of the earliest settlers of the British Colonies in North America. Many came at the behest of William Penn and some researchers claim the FALLIS Immigrant family came at the behest of William Penn. So far I can find nothing to confirm this as no FALLIS has been found in existing ship records.

Quaker records do show George FALLIS son of my first known Thomas FOLLIS was a Quaker and many of his descendants were Quaker as late as 1960 when Watt FALLIS wrote his FALLIS Family Genealogy 1658-1960 and was an official in the national Quaker organization. Many of George FALLIS descendants are found in Quaker records in Ohio in Clinton and Warren Counties next to my FALLIS family in Greene County, Ohio.

Early Quakers were dominant in 1600's Long Island, New York where my FOREMAN Family lived and where they lived in Monmouth County, New Jersey. When the Quaker's left New Jersey for the Frederick, Virginia area my FOREMAN's were part of the group and I suspect my FOLLIS families came with them as they were in Burlington County, New Jersey a Quaker dominated area in 1731 when they bought land in Monmouth County, New Jersey. The Hopewell Quaker Church was started in 1734 near Frederick, Virginia. It burned down in 1759 and I can only assume the records would have confirmed our FOLLIS as Quaker. Part of the 1759 church still stands to this day.

Mary WOOLEY wife of Thomas FOREMAN
Thomas FOLLIS Family

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