Quaker Conundrum - Benjamin Taylor III (1751-1832)

 

Recent photo of Makefield Friends Meeting House, built in 1752

What is a young Quaker man to do when the Revolutionary War comes to his doorstep? Benjamin Taylor III, my 5th great-grandfather, faced this difficult decision. Should he join in the conflict or remain strictly aloof according to Quaker principles? This must have been a trying time for him and other young (and not so young) Quaker men in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

  Since its beginning the Society of Friends (Quakers) had always maintained a position of strict opposition to war, forbidding its members to have any participation in it. They stressed active, peaceful solutions to all disputes, whether personal or national. It was their duty to uphold the Christian principle of non-violence. Those who acted against the religion’s tenents and refused to repent were usually expelled from the faith. But when actual warfare occurs they are in a particularly difficult situation. In the Revolution they faced the trial of choosing which loyalty to uphold: the Patriot cause or the Christian cause. Most Friends of the time were sympathetic to the Revolution. Staying clear of the conflict, they helped in other ways, such as providing food and clothing, and caring for the wounded. It is not generally known how heavily the Quakers were fined for non-participation in the war. Benjamin Taylor I (my 7th great-grandfather), who was eighty-three in 1778 was fined £100 (worth at least $5000 today.) In many cases Friends’ homes were raided. It was a difficult time to stand by ones principles.

 In the fall and early winter of 1776, the country around Taylorsville was the scene of preparations for the momentous Battle of Trenton to come. We all know about Washington crossing the Delaware but we know little about the preparations for it. Soldiers were quartered in all the farmhouses of the area. Durham boats, used for transporting iron from the Durham Furnace in northern Bucks County, were commandeered and hidden in the dark seclusion of Taylor’s Island in the Delaware River. On Christmas night the little army crossed the ice-filled Delaware and surprised the British, garrisoned at Trenton, early the next morning.

This crossing was made from the shore of ancestral property belonging to Benjamin Taylor III. Little is known of Benjamin’s part in this episode in history, but the question could easily be asked, “Could a young man of twenty-five have witnessed the preparations for battle and not be inspired to take action?”

 From The Taylors of Washington Crossing by Arthur Edwin Bye: “There has always been a tradition handed down in the family…, that Benjamin Taylor ‘helped Washington cross the Delaware.’ He probably was one of the enlisted men, and his ‘help’ was merely that he was one of the party. This is corroborated by documentary evidence, for there is a record that he was paid $60 for two months service in Captain Henry Van Horn’s company of militia commanded by Joseph Kirkbride, January 1777. So he was among those who rowed across the icy river and stealthily marched to Trenton.” So what happened to Benjamin Taylor in his Quaker community for his participation? Historian Arthur J. Mekeel calculates that between 1774 and 1785, 1,724 Quakers were disowned from the faith for participating in the Revolution in some way, shape or form. But it seems that our ancestor was never disciplined for his participation in the Revolution. It had most likely been of short duration and he never made an issue of it with the Friends’ Meeting. “One is not apt to get into trouble if one keeps quiet.” Much of this information comes from the book listed above, The Taylors of Washington Crossing which is now in the public domain and can be accessed at https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/005769426. We are related to most of those mentioned in the book. Our ancestry from Benjamin Taylor III>>Lydia Taylor>>Benjamin Taylor Yardley>>Hannah Anne Yardley>>Harriet Yardley Harned>>Edgar Charles Forman (and from there through his sons Edgar Ross, Ivan Lake, and Ward Harned Forman.)