PAXSON FAMILY
copyright MJP Grundy, 2002, 2007, and including any more recent changes
the Paxson logo[1] was designed by Martha Kelso Dunning Paxson
in which the 7 is her individual identification number, the i. is her place as eldest child, and the superscript 2 marks her as the second generation.
This web site intends to make available the most comprehensive and accurate information on the descendants of the Paxson brothers who emigrated from England to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1682. In addition, various collateral lines are being added from time to time as they are prepared.
We're still building . . . and refurbishing . . . and hope to continue enlarging and improving these pages for the next several decades. NOTE: These pages look best using Firefox or Mozilla as the browser.
If you are in too much of a rush to read the front matter, skip down to links to the actual data, which is arranged by generation. There is an alphabetical list of all individuals (of whom I know) born with the Paxson surname; this currently includes names through the sixth and most of the seventh generation. It does not include spouses, and it is not technically an index as it does not link to every mention of each individual. My data for the sixth, seventh, and eighth generations are incomplete.
See the Index of Collateral lines (most of which are still under construction) . . . .
The basic material was first published in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, Vol. 71, no. 3 (Sept. 1983) pp. 193-216, as "THE PAXSON BROTHERS OF COLONIAL PENNSYLVANIA: THREE GENERATIONS", By MARTHA JONET PAXSON GRUNDY.
Since then the material has been revised, corrected, and enlarged. As always with genealogy, it is a work in progress, and I would appreciate receiving corrections and additions in order to make this the most complete source for the Paxson family that is available in one place—or at least for the first five, six, or even seven generations in the new world. Eventually I hope to complete it through the seventh generation and perhaps overflow into the eighth and even into the ninth. I do not intend to include anyone who is currently living, unless that individual specifically asks to be named. However, there is always the possibility of publishing a book that contains recent descendants, so please consider yourself invited to contact me with your own specific twig on this larger Paxson tree.
Please send additions and corrections, preferably with citations to the original sources, to me at kwg "at" cwru.edu substituting @ for "at".
Among the passengers of the twenty-three ships that accompanied William Penn to his new colony in 1682 were the sons of James and Jane (Clerk) Paxton of Marsh Gibbon, Buckinghamshire. The parish records of St. Mary's Church there reflect the usual seventeenth-century disregard for consistency in spelling. The name appears from April 1640 to March 1678/9 as Paxon, Paxson, Packson, Packston, but most often as Paxton. In Pennsylvania, however, Friends' records show more consistency. The Woman's Monthly Meeting minutes of Middletown (Bucks County) spell the name Paxson except from 1762 through 1764, when the minutes were copied into the book by a particularly atrocious speller, and a few exceptions in the late 1790s. The Men's Monthly Meeting minutes from the beginning in 1684 to 1687 spell the family Paxton; from 1687 to 1691 the name appears Paxon, and from July 1691 on it is Paxson, the spelling which most descendants of the family have used ever since.[2] However, government documents and newspapers have continued to blithely mix Paxson, Paxton, and Paxon right down to the present time. It seems likely that anyone in the United States who spells his or her name Paxson rather than Paxton is probably descended from these Quaker brothers and their wives.
The numbering system used herein is that of the National Genealogical Society. Generations before immigration are lettered with the last generation in the old country designated with a superscript A, their parents being superscript B, grandparents superscript C, etc. Generations in the new world are numbered, the immigrants having a superscript 1, their children having superscript 2, and so on.
Each person born into a Paxson family is given a number, starting with the emigrant brothers (i.e. numbers 1 through 3 (poor Thomas, who died at sea, doesn't get a number since he didn't actually become an immigrant and left no descendants). The children of the eldest brother (Henry #1) are next numbered, 4 through 6, then the children of the next brother (William #2) receive numbers 7 through 12, and then the next (James #3), until that generation is complete. The third generation happens to begin with number 19. Each child, when first listed as the issue of its parents, has an Arabic numeral, as just explained, and a Roman numeral which numbers all the children of their father. So, for example, the oldest child of William (#2) is listed as:
7 i. Elizabeth2
Biographies of (mostly) males are given in numerical order. Links are provided to enable the reader to jump from the first mention of a Paxson as the child of his (or occasionally her) parents to the biographical entry. Children whose names are underscored and written in blue are linked to later biographies.
In the collateral lines, I do not make any attempt to follow the offspring of siblings. Generally only one line is tracked, although I try to give all the siblings (but not cousins) in each generation. Therefore there is no overall numbering system in the collateral lines.
For at least 200 years members of the Religious Society of Friends eschewed the pagan names of the months, preferring to number them instead. Most dates in this webpage have been translated from the Quaker numerals (First Month, Second Month) to their more commonly used names. However, before 1752 the new year (according to the calendar used by the English[3]) did not begin until March 25. Therefore First Month was what we call March, and September through December were, as their Latin names would suggest, actually Seventh Month through Tenth Month. In this webpage, for the years before 1752, dates from January 1 to March 24 are given in the Old Style. For example, what in New Style would be 11 January 1647 will be expressed as 11 January 1646/7, or 11 Eleventh Month 1646/7. Readers may translate these to modern dates by (in this example) dropping the 6 and understanding the date as 11 January 1647. Often secondary sources confuse Old Style and New Style numbered months, resulting in dates being given incorrectly: July instead of September, for example. Sometimes the years will be off, as in this example assuming it is 1646 instead of 1647. Where I have been unable to check the original source I will often put both dates, with a question mark.
Friends also refused to use names that were derived from pagan sources for the days of the week. So they referred to them by number: First Day instead of Sunday, Second Day for Monday, and so on. In quotations from older Friends' sources weekdays will often be referred to with Quaker nomenclature.
Explanations of Various Quaker Practices
The first generations of the Paxson family in Pennsylvania were all members of the Religious Society of Friends, also known as Quakers. In the seventeenth century, when Friends began, their theology was quite distinct from either the Roman Catholic church or the various Protestant denominations of the time. One ought not to be able to separate Friends' faith or theology from Friends' practice or lifestyle. What Friends believed and how they lived each day should be two sides of the same coin. Friends' "practice" includes both individual lifestyles and also the processes and structures that have developed corporately for the functioning of the Religious Society.
There are lots of references to a variety of these corporate Friends' practices that might not be familiar to some readers. I have described some of them at appropriate points in the biographical sketches of individuals. Here is a key to some of them. More will be added in time.
Although for over 200 years Friends had no paid clergy (and some meetings still maintain that tradition), they were not without ministers. They recognized gifts of ministry, poured out on women and men, young or old, as prophesied in Joel 2:28. Ministers were not paid, and were expected to earn their own living, although Friends often contributed to their travel expenses or helped with family and farm when a minister was away from home.
When a Friend removed from one meeting to another, he or she asked for and received a certificate of removal to introduce him or herself to the new meeting, as someone in good standing among Friends. This practice is a good way of keeping track of the movements of individual Friends at least through the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth century. While certificates of removal are still used among Friends in the Conservative and Friends General Conference branches, they are no longer a reliable guide as Quakers often move and, out of sentiment or inertia, retain their membership in their original meeting.
Before the last third of the nineteenth century no Friends Meeting had a pastor or priest. All the functions of the faith community were performed by meeting committees formed for the specific purpose. In the first century (i.e. 1650s to 1750s) committees were named for a specific short-term function, then released as soon as the service had been performed. By the nineteenth century a few committees were beginning to be named for terms of service of a year or more. Since all the appointments of Friends to serve on committees were recorded in the minutes, they provide a good indication of an individual's level of participation in the ongoing life of the faith community.
Sources and Documentation
Great efforts have been made to document a primary or reliable secondary source for all the information given in this website. For the first three generations and most of the fourth, clicking on a number in brackets will move you to the correct note on the Citations page.[4] Alternatively you can view all the citations at once, at least for the first four generations, which is the best way to see full citations rather than shortened forms. The first time a source is mentioned, its full citation will be given. After that, it will be a short form. If you want to see all the citations all at once, click on Citations.
However, the more recent generations are still under construction. Therefore the sources are usually given in smaller font in brackets. My apologies for their incompleteness. Some are still in a form more meaningful to me than to the general reader.
A few of the individual family pages in the Collateral lines will have their own separate citation pages that work the same way as do those for the earlier generations of Paxson pages, described above. However, most of them will have their notes and sources at the bottom of their pages.
Not only do the more recent generations not yet have their citations put into a polished form, they also include a great deal of third-source information that I have not yet checked myself. My intention in including things from the web or from volunteers who kindly offer me their findings, that I have not researched myself, is to spark an increased conversation that may ferret out new nuggets of data. I have tried to provide sources so that viewers may evaluate it for themselves. My apologies for this; some day I hope to get everything checked. Meanwhile, caveat emptor.
Coat of Arms
There was at least one coat of arms granted to a Paxton/Paxson in 1250, although as we are not descended from the eldest son of the eldest son of the eldest son we are not entitled to use it. I have not yet traced the actual line of descent from whomever was originally granted the arms. For those who enjoy such things, however, here is one description:
ARMS: Ermine, two chevrons, the one sable, the other azure, between three mullets, in the pale of the last.
CREST: An eagle's head erased, azure, charged on the neck with two chevrons, or, between a pair of wings argent. Semee of mullets gules.
For ease and speed of downloading, the entire Paxson genealogy appears on six separate pages. Click on the page that interests you. The more recent generations are by no means comprehensive. If your family fits in here and is not included, I would very much appreciate hearing from you so that it might be included. My thanks to those cousins who have already contributed data. Send me an e mail at kwg "at" cwru.edu, substituting the familiar "@" symbol for the "at" (I am trying to discourage spam—with very little success, I'm afraid).
See the alphabetical list of each Paxson individual catalogued in these pages, although some of the most recent additions are not yet included. These pages are constructed by hand, so to speak, by writing the html; they are not generated by a software program that automatically indexes everything, so it takes time.
Our branch of the Paxson/Paxton family in England, in the seventeenth centuries (ca. 1640 to 1682).
See Photographs and maps of Buckingham and Oxford. (There are some photographs courtesy of Barbara F. Gill, among others.) There are also other scenes from England that various branches of the family would have known. (Perennially under construction.)
The first three generations of the Paxson family in colonial Bucks County, Pennsylvania, (1682- ca. 1775). You can go directly to the First (the Immigrant Generation), or to the Second, or the Third Generation.
I believe these are complete in terms of including all members of the family in these first three generations. However, I continue to find new bits of information about specific individuals, and welcome documented data from readers.
There are some illustrations and a map.
Fourth Generation, during the American Revolution and Federalist period of the United States.
This seems to me to be very nearly complete, although there may always be gaps in information about some individuals. I think I have the names of all their children, so that not only the fourth generation but also the fifth now have consecutive numbers.
Graphics illustrating the text—I have found and posted a few interspersed in the text; I hope to get more in time.
See the Fifth Generation, during the ante bellum period, although too many have very little information.
There are photographs of many of the Friends meeting houses in which members of the family worshipped, although this is not yet complete.
There is a partial account of the Sixth Generation, during the Civil War and
Reconstruction, and into the Gilded Age.
Lots more work remains to be done on this page, but it continues to grow, thanks largely to other Paxson descendants who share helpful information with me. A warning: I have not done a lot of this research myself, so cannot vouch for every factoid that I've posted.
Photographs of people and places are being posted as I receive them. If you have something to add, please let me know.
There are fewer members posted in the Seventh Generation, the last third of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth.
Much of this has come from cousins, or from the web, and I have not had time to check it all myself. It is only posted in this early form in the hopes of eliciting additional information and corrections from readers who find their own grandparents or great grandparents or even great great grandparents listed there. I do not intend to continue this web page very far into the twentieth century with the eighth generation as some of these relatives are still living. However, I have recently started to keep a record off line.
Photographs are being made available, as they come to hand. If you have relevant pictures that you would be willing to share, please contact me.
Index of a few of the zillion Collateral Lines that connect to a Paxson.
Only a few of these are operational as yet. I have no expectation that this will ever be complete.
There is a note on this logo.[3]
Remember, this entire website is still very much under construction. If you are frustrated by what is not here, come back in a few weeks or months. Or, send me your additions and suggestions by e mail to kwg"at" cwru.edu, substituting @ for "at".
This homepage was updated 6m/23/2009.
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