Here are some photographs taken in Priddy, in the Mendip Hills of Somerset. This view of the Mendip Hills (to the right) was taken on a beautiful day in May, 1999. It may not have looked too different when the Plumleys lived here, although it was probably more thickly settled then.
An annual sheep and cattle fair has been held in Priddy since it moved here from Wells during the Black Death of 1348. In between fairs, the sheep pens are folded up and stacked under a thatched roof.
In the photo above you can see some of the old stone buildings surrounding the very spacious center green. Because of the fair, the green is very much larger than one would expect in a village this small.
Priddy's church of St. Lawrence is small and old, with its gravestones grouped around it.
The photo on the left shows the interior of the church, with the lid of its old font, looking toward the altar. This is one of the few churches that retains its old carved wood rood screen (right photo).
The ancient city of Wells still has a market, as it had in seventeenth century when the Plumleys walked its streets. In the distance one can see the two towers of the cathedral which has, inside, unusual and beautiful crossed arches.
Detail from Thomas Holmes' 1687 map of William Penn's colony, with the Plumley tract labelled "Widdow Plumly". It is a right triangle of land with its narrow end on the west bank of the Neshaminy Creek, and part of the hypotenuse bordering Lawrence & Joseph Growden's large tract..
This map of Solebury, from the second edition of Reeder's Early Settlers of Solebury shows the two tracts of Henry Paxson, slightly darkened. The lower one is dated 1704, the upper one, 1706.
Citations for Plumley Family 1. The marriage is recorded in the Mormon IGI with no reference to place; the date is 11 Feb. 1666 under Margery Page and 11 Feb. 1661 under Charles Plumley. There are no other references to either of these individuals in Somerset. The IGI also has no references to any records in Priddy Parish, Wells, or St. Cuthbert under Page or Plumley.
2. The city of Wells is in a fertile plain on the south side of the Mendip Hills in Somersetshire, 19 miles sw of Bath. It is included in the parish of St. Cuthbert, whose records date from 1608. There is also the cathedral of St. Andrew, a magnificent cruciform built in early English style. Lewis, Top. Dic., 4:474-77; Smith, Gen. Gaz., 555.
3. Priddy parish is in the union of Wells, hundred of Wells-Forum, East Division of Somerset, 4 1/4 miles north north west from Wells. In 1842 the population was 313. Lewis, Topographical Dictionary, 3:551. Parish registers only exist back to 1761. Priddy is in the peculiar jurisdiction of the archdeaconal court of Wells. Smith, Gen. Gaz., 421. The name derives from the Welsh pridd, meaning "earth, soil". Eilert Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, 2nd ed. (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1940), 356-7; Edward Hutton, Highways and Byways in Somerset (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1919), 108-110.
4. Penn Papers, etc. The fear was not misplaced, and even today many people assume that Pennsylvania was named for William Penn, the Quaker, rather than the Admiral, Sir William Penn, his father, who was definitely not a Quaker.
5. Marion Balderston, "William Penn's 23 Ships", in Walter Lee Sheppard, Jr., ed., Passengers and Ships Prior to 1684, Publications of the Welcome Society of Penna., No. 1 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1970), p. 42; "cwt" is a "hundredweight", equaling 112 pounds.
5a. Charlotte D. Meldrum, Abstracts of Bucks County, Pennsylvania Land Records, 1684-1723 (Westminster, Md.: Family Line Publications, 1995), 21, citing Deed Book A, Vol. 1:188.
6. Middletown Mo. Mtg. Men's minutes; Davis, Hist. of Bucks Co., 1:32, 127, 133, 329.
6a. Meldrum, Abstracts of Bucks County, Pennsylvania Land Records, 1684-1723, 103, citing Deed Book A, Vol. 3:166.
7. Middletown Mo. Mtg. Men's minutes, 1/11m/1684, 2/2m/1684-5.
8. Middletown Mo. Mtg. Women's minutes, 1:32. For more information on the Budd family, see Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (hereafter cited as PMHB) 10:124, which says that Mary Budd, sister of Rose, married the Philadelphia merchant William Allen.
9. Jane W. T. Bray, A Quaker Saga (Philadelphia: Dorrance & Co., 1967), p. 413.
10. Dates of the children's births from "Corrections & Additions" to Marion Balderston's "William Penn's 23 Ships", in Walter Lee Sheppard, Jr., ed., Passengers and Ships Prior to 1684, Publications of the Welcome Society of Penna., No. 1 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1970), p. 69.
11. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 9:227 (hereafter cited as PMHB), 12:373; Phila. Will Abs., 1:183.
12. Phila. Will Abs., 252. Charles had no brother-in-law named Henry Paxson as we know the term; the three men in his life by that name were his step father, his neice Ann's husband (they were not married until 5 years after James's death), and his "cousin", the son of his step father's brother James1.
13. PMHB, 10:124; Phila. Will Abs.
15. Middletown Meeting records in 4 volumes at Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore.
16. Colonial Society of Pennsylvania, Records of the Courts of Quarter Sessions and Common Pleas of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, 1684-1700 (Meadville, Pa.: Tribune Publishing Co., 1943), p. 72 (hereafter cited as QS & CP); see also Middletown Mo. Mtg. Men's minutes, 3/12m/1686, 3/1m/1687.
17. Middletown Mo. Mtg. Men's minutes, 5/11m/1687.
18. William Wade Hinshaw, Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy (Richmond, Ind.: Friends Book and Supply House, Distributors, 1938), 2:1021.
18a. Reeder, Early Settlers, 42, citing Deed Book 3, page 170.
19. Some secondary sources assume that Mary (Budd) Shinn married the son, Henry Jr., but that seems unlikely as he was only 17 at the time; the Buckingham Monthly Meeting records do not name the parents of the groom—a further indication that he was an older man. Henry Jr. is listed with his wife Elizabeth Lupton as the parents of 13 children. Records of Births, Marriages and Deaths Copied by William J. Buck, from the Original, belonging to the Several Monthly Meetings of the Society of Friends in Bucks County, Penn. 1680-1870 (Phila., 1871) in the Hist. Soc. of Penna., p. 290. Buck Extracts, p. 40; Hinshaw, Am. Q. Gen., 2:248.
20. Reeder, Early Settlers, pp. 21, 23. Reeder consistently confuses this Henry2 with his Uncle Henry1 the Emigrant, see esp. pp. 21, 23, and 37 which just refer to "Henry", and pp. 28, 43, and 45 where the same 200-acre grant is assigned to both men. From a careful reading of the will of Henry1 the Emigrant, as well as other evidence, I believe the Scarborough tract was purchased by Henry2, the husband of Ann Plumley. The other Solebury tracts seem to have been purchased by Henry1 the Emigrant. See Item 2 of the will of Henry2's son Thomas Paxson, Jr., Bucks Co. Will Book 3, File 1211.
21. Bucks Will Abs., pp. 38-9.
22. Davis, Hist. of Bucks Co., 1:285.
23. Buckingham Monthly Meeting minutes, 1720-1763, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore C, Swarthmore, Penna., p. 5; Buck. Extracts, p. 39.
24. Bucks Will Abs., p. 177; Reeder, Early Settlers, p. 44.
25. Buck. Mo. Mtg. Men's min., 1:20, 28; Reeder, Early Settlers, pp. 63-65, 72-74, although there is some confusion between Thomas and Elizabeth's children and grandchildren. Freund says they had 12 children.
26. Reeder, Early Settlers, pp. b, 42. Her death is erroneously recorded as 31 Aug. 1719 in Bucks County Friends Records, Births and Deaths, Buckingham and Falls, presented by Benj. Wiggins, Hist. Soc. of Penna. (Bu/5F), p. 73.
28. Buck. Men's min., 1:87; Hinshaw, Am. Q. Gen., 2:41; Buck. Extracts, p. 41.
29. Buck, Records of B's, M's and D's, p. 289; Reeder, Early Settlers, p. 43. Hinshaw, Am. Q. Gen., 2:467 lists Margery's birth as 25 Nov. 1716; Bucks Will Abs., p. 495.
30. Middletown Mo. Mtg. Women's min., 1:194, 284, 296, 303, 348-49; 2:75, and many more.
31. For more on the Beans/Baines family, see Davis, Hist. of Bucks Co., 1:167-8, 178, 194, 196.
32. Mid. Women's min. 1:291. Brey, Quaker Saga, p. 412 erroneously says Martha was the twin of Thomas, b. 12 June 1728.
This page was last updated 11/12/2007.
