You may have a religious tradition or you may not. Whether you are believer, practitioner, agnostic, atheist, humanist, or however you define your spiritual or ethical framework, freedom of religion matters. Almost without doubt somewhere in your ancestry, perhaps recent or perhaps centuries ago, you have an ancestor who experienced religious intolerance. Perhaps they even endured persecuted for the practice of their religion (or a refusal to practice a religion). Freedom of religion isn’t actually about religion. It is about civil liberties, particularly liberty of conscience. My own family of Irish Catholics, Welsh Quakers, Reformed Dutch, English Unitarians, and others has a number of such stories. This is one of them.
This is one of a series of diaries on DKOS organized by the Religious Freedom Day group in the lead up to Religious Freedom Day, recognized each January 16th. Progressives are reclaiming the legacy of religious liberty as articulated and championed by Thomas Jefferson in the 1770s. Freedom of conscience is one of the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, which should be examined, honored, and celebrated by ALL Americans.
Prelude: Quakers in East Jersey
In 1669, Edward FitzRandolph and his wife Elizabeth Blossom – along with several of their adult married children – relocated from Barnstable Massachusetts to the tiny remote village of Piscataway in the colony of East Jersey. Edward had come to the colonies from England as a child with his widowed mother. Elizabeth had been born in Leiden, Holland during the period when the Pilgrims (yes, those Pilgrims) sojourned in that tolerant country while in exile from England before immigrating to Plymouth Colony.
Already by definition “dissenters” and therefore religious refugees from their childhood, why were the FitzRandolphs compelled to leave New England? Edward was an independent thinker, and came to an Anabaptist position. His children adopted the controversial ideas of the Religious Society of Friends, almost immediately known as Quakers.
It is perhaps easy to understand why the Friends were looked upon with scorn and suspicion by their Puritan neighbors and the civil/religious authorities. Friends rejected baptism. Attendance at Quaker Meeting was optional and apparently often lax. “Discipline” among Friends generally consisted of encouragement to do better. There was gender equality. There were no ministers to impose orthodoxy. There was no orthodoxy to impose. The Friends held that each individual had equal access to the Light and therefore equal authority to interpret the Word for themselves. In fact, Friends held that individual religious experience trumped Scriptures. This was heresy.
The extended FitzRandolph family found Massachusetts increasingly inhospitable. Having been repeatedly fined and even tossed into the local gaol on occasion, it was time to move. They traded houses with settlers in Woodbridge and Piscataway who wished to return to Massachusetts. Why Middlesex County in East Jersey? There was already a significant Quaker presence there. Thanks to negotiations by William Penn and Scottish Quaker theologian Robert Barclay, Quaker principles were provided for in the charters of both West and East Jersey. Freedom of worship was extended to all, not just Quakers and other dissenters, and there was to be no establishment of a state religion,
Many will recognize the bones of this story. It is the one we are often taught in school: the persecution of the Friends in New England and William Penn’s commitment to establishing a refuge for not only his fellow Quakers, but for all religious dissenters. However, this isn’t actually a story about my Quaker ancestors or the persecution they suffered at the hands of the Puritans (although they will reappear at the end of the story). It’s about the brutal persecution of the Scottish Covenanters and how two, Anapel Gordon and George Brown, escaped to New Jersey,
Imprisoned & Banished
Anapel Gordon . Covenanter. Prisoner at Dunnottar and Leith. Banished to the Plantations, at Leith 18 August 1685. Transported from Leith on the Henry and Francis, master Richard Hutton, by George Scott of Pitlochie to East New Jersey 5 September 1685
George Brown, Prisoner at Glasgow, Dunnottar and Leith. Banished at Leith to East New Jersey 13 August 1685. Transported from Leith by George Scott of Pitlochie to East New Jersey August 1685.
This is the first record of Anapel Gordon and George Brown from the records of the Privy Council of Scotland. How did two young people come to be banished from their beloved Scotland?
It starts with a period called “The Killing Time” in Scotland – the 1680s.
The religious political wars of England and Scotland of the 17th century are complex and a story of brutal suppression on all sides. Eventually, Anapel Gordon and George Brown were caught up in the troubles. It is not clear if they were actual rebels, or if they were simply rounded up in the midst of the hysteria against the Covenanters. In the spring of 1685, during the bloody rebellion of the Earl of Argyll and its equally bloody repression by the Crown, one hundred and sixty seven Covenanters were seized and held in a great barrel-ceilinged vault in remote Dunnottar Castle. The prisoners included 122 men and 45 women associated with the anti-royalist movement. They had all refused to take the oath of allegiance to the new king, in particular the oath that proclaimed the king authority over their religion.
After months of imprisonment in the cellar, eventually the prisoners were give a final ultimatum. Take the oath and be freed, remain in jail, or be banished to the colonies. Thirty seven chose the oath. Hungry, weak, and sick, the remaining prisoners were marched to Leith Tolgate where they were re-examined by the courts. Most were banished to the colonies.
Could this prove beneficial to our refugees? These troubled times, particularly 1680s, had already seen a rise in inducements to entice Scottish settlers to the colonies. Settlers were provided 50 to 200 acres. To assist colonial settlement, Scottish courts increasingly imposed orders of banishment and transportation as punishment for crimes. George Scott, who fashioned himself as minor aristocrat, received a land grant from East Jersey’s Scottish proprietors. He negotiated for the release of approximately 100 imprisoned Covenanters at Leith into his care for transportation to the colony. Scott advanced payment for the passage of the refugees who could not pay and they, in turn, indentured themselves for several years of work.
George Brown and Anapel Gordon must have felt some relief to be under the protection of George Scott. He was himself a Covenanter and had been imprisoned for his beliefs. While Scott anticipated making money from the transportation scheme, his motivations must have included relief for his fellow religionists. And he was accompanying them on the journey and intended to settle in the colony.
The Henry and Francis sailed from Leith on Sept 5 of 1685 with 200 passengers. Some of them had left Scotland voluntarily. Many, like Anapel Gordan, left letters of protest maintaining that they were being transported against their will solely for adhering to their consciences. It was a harrowing journey. The captain and staff were unsympathetic and often refused to let the passengers worship, or took sport in throwing garbage upon them. There were other insults and cruelties. The food was so inadequate, it began to spoil a week out to sea. The seas were often bad during the fourteen week voyage. The ship was beset with pestilence and over 70 people died.
Even more tragic for the indentured Covenanters, their protector George Scott and his wife died at sea. Despite the fact that he had already been paid for their passage, The Dutch captain Richard Huttone and his son-in-law attempted a scheme to take possession of the servants, who were for all practical legal purposes property. He attempted to change course, with a plan to sell the occupants in Jamaica where he could obtain a better price. Fortunately, the wind was against him and he was forced to continue to New Jersey. Even at this point, before the passengers disembarked, Huttone attempted to coerce the servants to sign over indentures to him so that he might own their labor. The Covenanters revolted and refused. Although those indentured would have to serve out their short two to four year contracts, it would be on the original terms with the proprietors.
Rejected Yet Again
The demoralized Covenanters staggered into Perth Amboy. The Scots emigres believed they had reached their final destination. It was not to be. Amboy, although with a sizable Scottish presence, was an Anglican stronghold and was not welcoming. The refugees would find no comfort here. However, they were told that there was a community across the Raritan River which welcomed people of all faiths. And where, in fact, there was already a tiny Scots Presbyterian congregation among the diverse residents.
It was Woodbridge, the settlement of Friends itself barely fifteen years old. So the Refugees returned to their ship, gathered their meager belongings and rowed up the River to what they hoped would be their salvation. Here they were, indeed, welcome. “ … the inhabitants there were very kind to them. When they had information of the prisoners’ circumstances, they invited all who were able to travel to come and live with them, and sent horses for such as were not, and entertained them that winter freely and with much kindness.”
The two religious communities grew and prospered, not just side by side, but intimately intertwined. Within a generation,intermarriage was common, despite the fact that both sects officially discouraged marriage outside the faith. Such was not the case in Woodbridge.
Anapel Gordon soon married a widower, William Knox. Knox died within a few years. In 1693, Anapel married her fellow passenger George Brown, a tailor who had completed his indenture and who had received a 200 acre grant. They had five children together, as well as raising Knox’s two daughters from his first marriage and Anapel’s daughter by Knox. Her step-granddaughter and namesake Annapel Mootry married into the prominent Kinsey family of Quakers, and the couple raised their family in that tradition. The name continued down the family lines, as did intermarriage between the Quaker and Presbyterian families.