Quaker Starkey, Hutton, King, Jackson, Fredd and Lightfoot familes of Ulster and Pennsylvania

Question

The Ireland Quaker team and the Quakers project have been looking at profiles of Quakers members of whose families emigrated from Ireland to Pennsylvania. The latest set of families to crop up are the descendants and relatives of Nicholas Starkey.

Nicholas Starkey is shown with no credible sources as having been born in Lancashire. There are some entries for him in the minutes, which need to be chased up.

His daughter Catherine who married John Fredd is shown with good sources as having been born in Belturbet, county Cavan.

Her sister Mary is shown as marrying Thomas Jackson. However the Ulster Quaker minutes clearly show that Thomas Jackson married Sarah, not Mary, Starkey. The profile of Mary (who should be Sarah) states that the Jackson and Starkey families were members of the Oldcastle Quaker meeting. (Oldcastle is in county Meath.) It seems clear that Thomas Jackson moved from Cavan to Meath or Westmeath; the Starkeys need some checking There were Quaker Nicholas Starkeys in Westmeath from the 1660s and in Ulster from rather later. Without some investigation it is far from clear that they were the same person. Thomas Jackson's profile biography has some confused comments about his relationship with the Lightfoot family; this was via his second, not his first wife.

Another child of Nicholas Starkey was Sarah Starkey who married Thomas Hutton. (Thomas has a duplicate Thomas Hutton who needs to be merged. This will add two other daughters to the family both of whom appear in their father's will.) This Sarah was plainly not the same person who married Thomas Jackson. Fortunately, the Quaker minutes clearly specify that Thomas Hutton married Susanna Starkey. Sarah (who should be Susanna)'s profile contains some detailed statements about her birth and death which seem plausible, but which are not supported by sources. The couple most probably married in county Cavan like her sister Mary. (The Quaker provincial meeting which they informed of their intention to marry was held in Ballyhagen, but there is nothing to say that they married there.) The dates and places of birth of the Hutton children look implausible (Carlow 1689, Cavan 1690, Armagh 1700) and need checking.

There is also a Quaker minute from the Ulster province dated 1692 relating to the marriage of Rachel Starkey and Merrick King. Interestingly the minute discusses making enquiries 'in Dublin and elsewhere' suggesting that one of the two came within the compass of the Dublin meeting. Other than this marriage, the first appearance of Merrick King in the records is for sufferings in county Meath (not Westmeath) and indeed in the parish of Oldcastle. The very next entry in the sufferings was for Nicholas Starkey. This needs more investigation, but strongly suggests that Merrick King married Rachel Starkey before his subsequent marriage to Mary Starr. This is supported by the excellent Jackson genealogy which shows in full the removal certificate of Ann and Isaac Jackson from Oldcastle dated 1696 signed by Merrick and Rachel King. Our profile currently shows Merrick King dying in Pennsylvania in 1750 aged about 68, citing Myers' 'Immigration...' and the Jackson papers, neither of which has any information about this. The profile also cites Pennsylvania probate records which do indeed show the administration of the estate of a Merrick King who had died intestate. However, these documents, clearly describe the deceased as Merrick King Jn - a rather unlikely description for someone we have as aged 68 and who must in fact have been older still if he had first married in 1692 - ie probably born c 1666, so aged 84 in 1750.

We have the profile of another Merrick King born in Ireland in February 1712/13. As my colleague Paul Hancock has noted, the name cannot be a coincidence; this person's father was very probably the brother of Merrick King above. Surely he is much more likely to have been described as Merrick King jnr in 1750.

Unfortunately there are very few surviving birth, death or marriage records for these people and there don't seem to be many wills or similar either. I plan to look through the Quaker minutes and sufferings and see whether I can find wills, probate records or deeds for confirmation, but I think that the main changes required are already clear.

I will add notes linking to this post on all the profiles concerned. Reasoned comments on this analysis would be very welcome.

Comments

My comments on the profile of John Fredd may be relevant more broadly.

The records (which are better for him and his wife than for other members of his wife's family) show that they moved from Belturbet, co Cavan to Dublin to escape the dangers in the north of the war of two kings,1689-1691. in 1692 they moved again, in their case to county Carlow.

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Thank you for the work including 8th great grand uncle Thomas Jackson.

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I have had a first go at the profile of John Fredd as mentioned above. I hope that his family's movements will through light on the movements of the other related families.

Answer 1

Thank you for doing this research.  I have not worked on this branch of my tree for quite a while.  As I'm sure you know, the "Jr." appended to the name of Merrick King did not describe his age but rather distinguished him from a Merrick King Sr.

Comments

I would be interested in comments on this, as practice in Britain/Ireland is quite different from that in the US now, and I am not sure what the practice in Pennsylvania at the time would have been.

Of course, I know of people like Sammy Davis Jnr who remained junior until he died. This has never happened in Britain or Ireland, where Merrick King came from. (Nor have we ever used terms like IIIrd for anyone other than kings.)

In the Irish Quaker records that I specialise in, someone will often be called junior to distinguish him or her from someone, usually a relative, with the same name alive at the same time. A few years later, the same person is often called senior when the previous senior has died and a new junior has come on the scene.

My assumption is that Quakers in 18th century Pennsylvania would have used terms like junior in the same way as their Irish brothers, sisters, parents, uncles and aunts and indeed in the same way that they themselves would have used the terms before they emigrated.

Does anyone have direct experience of this?

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someone will often be called junior to distinguish him or her from someone, usually a relative, with the same name alive at the same time. A few years later, the same person is often called senior when the previous senior has died and a new junior has come on the scene.

This was the practice in the early colonies. I'm not quite sure when it became common for a Jr to retain that suffix throughout their entire life.

Answer 2

I have finished some more analysis of the family of Nicholas Starkey and that of another Irish Quaker Starkey family alive at the same time and presented the results in a freespace page.

The analysis gives us some more information about Nicholas Starkey's life, although still only small glimpses. It allows us to identify a wife Katherine, probably the mother of his children, and a further child, a son John who died unmarried in Dublin in 1695.

We can see how Nicholas Starkey moved at least twice, first for reasons that are not clear and then probably as a result of the war. We can begin to estimate that Nicholas Starkey died in 1704 or 1705 and that he might have been born (very roughly) in about 1630.