Towards A History Of The Quaker Meeting At Newgarden County Carlow 1650 1730 Including Some New Methods For Analyzing Quaker Records

The author analyses and describes the manner in which the Newgarden Meeting evolved from circa 1650 to 1730, exploring a wide range of topics including the growth in membership, Meeting discipline, governance, socio-economic status, tithe assessment, record keeping, religious life, education and migration. A number of new approaches to the analysis of Quaker records are used to assess participation of members in Meeting governance and readers are introduced to a "Reconstitution Model" that incorporates and integrates all manner of Quaker records enabling researchers to estimate Meeting membership at any point in time as well as to explore many other aspects of Quaker life with reasonable confidence. The author demonstrates that the Meeting was essentially governed by the wealthiest Members and he offers a number of select biographies of the wealthy and Members of lesser socio-economic status for comparison.

This book describes the history of a humble family that migrated from England to Ireland in the mid 17th c and put down roots at Kilconnor, County Carlow. By the end of the century many members of the family had joined the Society of Friends and were part of the landed gentry. During the late 17th c and 18th c family members established themselves elsewhere in Ireland and later in Australia, England and New Zealand where they rose to prominence in a wide variety of roles, eventually abandoning Friends for the established church. Today the family is still held in high regard for its past and ongoing contributions to equestrian sports including horse racing, fox-hunting, polo and in this era, three day eventing. In Ireland, Solomon Watson established a well-known but doomed bank in Clonmel, County Tipperary. John Henry Watson of Ballydarton, County Carlow, master of the Carlow and Island hunt, started the Watsons’ association with hunting in which they became preeminent from the end of the 18th c. After serving in India, a later John Henry Watson helped develop the game of polo, and his Freebooters team won the first international polo match against the Americans. Corona Deane Lecky Watson is remembered with great affection for her exquisite cultivated gardens at Altamont, County Carlow, which she bequeathed to the Republic of Ireland. In recent times John Wilfred Watson represented Ireland in the Olympics, won silver in the world eventing championship and team gold in the Europeans. His son Samuel James Watson won a team silver in the same event in 2018. In England, John Boles Watson established theatres in the South-West, the Midlands and Wales, including the Theatre-Royal in Cheltenham, and in the 20th c John Arthur Fergus Watson became a reforming magistrate, prison visitor, campaigner on juvenile justice, author and president of the Royal Society of Chartered Surveyors. Alister George Douglas Watson was secretary of The Cambridge Apostles and friend of Keynes and Wittgenstein. During WWII he helped design millimetre radar and later became head of anti-submarine warfare research. Peter Wright, the author of ‘Spycatcher’ accused him of being ‘the fifth man’ although later evidence showed otherwise. In Australia, George John Watson, ‘the prince of starters’, developed the hunt in Victoria, ran a coaching business, bred horses, raced and helped found the Victorian Racing Club. His children were well-known sportsmen, adventurers and pioneers in Queensland and the Northern Territory. His cousin William Currie Watson, a popular sportsman, was a pioneer in Gippsland, Victoria, where he cleared 300-ft trees and dense scrub to create a dairy farm and help establish a thriving dairy industry. John Watson, another relative, shipped to New Zealand in 1843 where he was appointed magistrate for the wild frontier district of Akaroa on the South Island. Again, from the 19th c onwards, many family members served with distinction in the military, in India, South Africa, Europe and the middle east. The stories related in this book derive from meticulous research conducted by the authors who have utilied information provided by Watson descendants and from collections of diaries, photographs letters and other documents. The book is printed in colour with 578 pages of well referenced text, 262 illustrations, 30 tables and a comprehensive index. It includes genealogical charts for the various families, a colour code for each branch and an ID number for each individual.

Irish Quaker biographers have focused on ministers, the influential and wealthy; many biographies are also unstructured and selective, leaving gaps in the narrative. The current work uses the life and family of John Boles (1661-1731), a Quaker stalwart for 50 years, as a case study for the biographer, introducing the major sources and showing how they can be deployed to 'resurrect' the contributions of the anonymous Quaker majority. As the biography is developed, information is explored and analyzed to construct reliable genealogical charts; information is culled from Friends' records to document the contributions and failures of family members in the context of their Quaker meetings; land records are consulted to measure and assess their gradual accumulation of wealth and the historical context is discussed as a backdrop to their evolving socio-economic status - all topics essential for comprehensive Quaker biographies and family histories.

Payment of tithes was introduced into the Catholic Church more than a thousand years ago and from the very first the concept aroused resentment, debate and resistance amongst those who were supposed to pay the tithes. The tax was not abandoned when Catholicism fell on hard times during and following the reign of Henry VIII, overshadowed as it was in England and Ireland with the emergence of the Church of England and its Irish equivalent, the Church of Ireland. Indeed the tax was streamlined to the extent that it became a valuable source of income for the clergy and wealthy individuals (impropriators) who had bought or were granted the rights to collect tithes. The Quaker sect evolved from around 1650 and they were particularly vociferous in opposing the payment of tithes. A decade or so later, thanks to the Quaker community, we begin to collect details about tithes and the way they were collected that have survived to this day; Quakers kept meticulous records of the goods that were confiscated from them and their treatment by civil and religious the authorities. This book takes a close look at a selection of these records from one of their Meetings in Ireland. The purpose was to determine how they can be analysed, their veracity, reliability and ultimately whether and in what capacity they can be deployed by historians and genealogists. The author concludes that while there are some irritating limitations and difficulties associated with their use, the records are a particularly rich source of data that can be reliably utilised for a wide variety of purposes, including but not limited to, elucidation of social, economic, ecclesiastical and genealogical issues.

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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.