Lynam Family History

Notes on the Quaker Lynam Families of Derbyshire

The known quakers are in the tinted boxes

We know quite a bit about some of the Lynam Quakers and how they suffered for their beliefs.

Johannes (John) LYNAM c 1591–1648

Johannes and his wife Alice ALLIN were early Quakers. They were both baptised and married at St Lawrence Church, North Wingfield as were their four children. It seems likely that they became Quakers sometime in about 1647 (the movement started in about that time). Of their four children only Johannes and Thomas seem to followed their parents in becoming quakers. No evidence has been uncovered that younger sons Richard and William (Gulielmus) became Quakers.

Johannes (John) LYNAM c 1623–?

From the Quaker records we know that John was married. The only marriage found for a John Lynam in this time frame was to Susannah KITCHIN at Mansfield in 1665. So, this marriage is slightly speculative.

From Chesterfield quaker records:
Oct 1685: John Lineham and Edward Searson at a meeting at the house of Thomas Sleanor fined £10 0s 0d.
1685: Upon a meeting of John Linam, a Justice Lowe granted a warrant of John Lynam and Edward Searson £1 15s 0d.
1685: A meeting of people for the burial of the wife of Samuel Rowe, John Lynam fined £6 10s 0d for being there.
1685: John Lynam fined 5 shillings for his wife being at Tupton meeting also he had goods taken valued £24 0s 0d. [a record indicating that John was married]
In 1686 he stood surety to the vale of £50 for William Allestry in a court case.

Jacobus (James) LYNAM c 1624–1662

James, like many other quakers, contributed the sum of two shillings to what was known as the “Free and Voluntary Present of 1661” [see notes below]. The record stated "James Lynam, husbandman of Pilsley, gave the sum of two shillings to Parliament".

On his death correspondence passed between what is believed to be two fellow quakers regarding probate:

For my very loving friend Mr Simon Mostin, Lichfield this day.
Wm Mostin my Lord ? sent you ? desire you to send me a letter of Administration of the goods and chattels of James Lynam deceased of Pilsley in the parish of North Wingfield. Elizabeth Lynam which was his wife will take it now she has married to Richard Ludlum in the same parish and he will join with her fee
I desire you to give us time for the Inventory. I desire you to direct the commission to Mr Nickson of Morton. Fee I have send you here for it is 16s 4d
I shall send you all the commission and bond the next return for evermore at this time
your loving friend
Samuel Wheaton
Stretton
November 25 1662

One of the appraisers of his estate was Thomas Lynam, his cousin and fellow Quaker.

Thomas Lynam c 1627–1690

Thomas appeared quite often in the quaker records.
1661: Thomas Lynam, husbandman of Pilsley, gave the sum of two shillings and sixpence to Parliament to as part of the Free & Voluntary Present tax to help with the crowning of Charles II.

1662 Thomas was an appraiser of the goods and chattles of James Lynam, (1624–1662). James was Thomas’s first cousin and a quaker who lived at Pilsley.

Some of the suffering the Quakers endured was recorded in 1753 by Joseph Besse in a book with the wonderfully long title: A collection of the sufferings of the people called Quakers, for the testimony of a good conscience from the time of their being first distinguished by that name in the year 1650 to the time of the act commonly called the Act of toleration granted to Protestant dissenters in the first year of the reign of King William the Third and Queen Mary in the year 1689 (Volume 1)
What follows are the entries for Thomas in that book:

1665 Thomas Lynam was imprisoned for three months for being at a meeting. He had cattle taken from him worth £7 and also fined seven shillings.
1665 He was excommunicated.
Between 1665 and 1677 he was a witness at four Quaker weddings.
1670 Thomas Lynam held a meeting at his house, William Cooper attended had taken from him not only his cow, hay, and household goods, but also his coat and all the food he had provided for his wife and three young children.  Thomas Ellis who attended was a smith had he lost his bellows and all other tools and was unable to follow his trade.  Four other friends who attended the meeting lost goods to the value of £23-3s-4d

This happening in 1670 was also recorded in Helen Forde’s excellent PhD thesis “Derbyshire Quakers 1650–1761”. She wrote:

Apart from excommunication and manipulation of the law by the authorities, which frequently resulted in imprisonment, fines and distraints were constantly levied on Friends, They were paid with great difficulty by many Friends and pathetic accounts of the straits to which they were reduced were sometimes appended to an otherwise bare catalogue in the Quarterly Meeting record of Sufferings. In 1670 the officers removed from William Cooper his corn, hay, cow and household goods down to the coate he should have worn. John Crosse, on the same occasion, was fined £10 15s; the officers took goods from him to the value of £6 3s 10d “it being most that he had: soe that they tooke the land irons [andirons] and frogs trenchers and grater and would not leave a scellet (though desir’d by some) to boyle Milke for his child”. At the height of the persecution such household goods were frequently removed. Thomas Lynam, at whose house a meeting was held in Pillesly in 1670, was fined £10 on that occasion and according to the Quarterly Meeting record of Sufferings ’had his goods wholy sold within the house and without many of them being sold upon the account of the former fine yet they did not forbear to make distresse and sell them the second time though they were the same officers that sold them formerly...” Clearly, household goods sometimes found their way back to the houses of their owners by one means or another. Animals, on occasion, found their own way home. In 1685 the under-sheriff’s deputy came to John Frith’s house to demand £120 for six months absence from Church. They entered his grounds and drove away thirty sheep, four kine, two foals and three horses. The sheep and cows broke loose from their pasture and went home; the horses, though worth £17, were sold for £10.

Quakers usually refused to pay the fines imposed for non-payment of tithes. However, there were instances of others sympathising with then paying the fines for them to stop the sequestration of goods or imprisonment. This was not appreciated by the devout quakers such as Thomas as Helen Forde recorded in her thesis

Besse published no reference to friends, neighbours and relatives who paid the fines for which many Friends were imprisoned. His motive may have been to cover up an aspect of the relationship between Friends and non-Friends which some would have preferred to deny. The Quarterly Meeting record of Sufferings, however, mentions five occasions on which this happened. Thomas Lynam was freed by a neighbour who paid his £5 fine in 1665 though an exculpatory note was added ‘though contrary to his mind'.

1688 Thomas Lynam for Tithes in corn and goods – seven shillings [Note seven shillings in 1688 would be worth about £40 in 2019]

Constables Presentation 1683 Parish of Morton.
All Quakers – Ellen and James Wolstenholme; Margaret, wife of Richard Calow; Thomas Lynam, carpenter, and Elizabeth his wife; John Calow, carpenter.
[Note: were Margaret, Richard and John CALOW relatives of Thomas’s wife Elizabeth (née CALOW). It seems most likely]

Chesterfield Monthly Meeting Minute Book 1691 – 1732Transcribed by Joan Goodwin, 1987

Quaker Records for Tupton

Quaker Records for Chesterfield

References in pencil-written notes (may be those referred to in note attached to inside cover of blue binder, in which case they come from Quarterly Meeting minutes)
1685 Quarterly Meeting at Thos Lynam’s house at Pilsley, 25.4.1685
1687 Quarterly Meeting Tupton 24.4.1687
Thomas Lynam’s name included in a list of Friends ordered to be at John Frith’s house at Chesterfield on 5th next month . . . . etc. etc.

1694 Quarterly Meeting Tupton 4.8.1694
a. Paid to Thomas Lynam for making a paper window for the meeting house at Tupton.
(A paper window was a window made from waxed or greased paper rather than glass which at the time was prohibitively expensive. It was held in place in a frame, mullioned and transomed (vertical and horizontal bars). Linen was also used).

In another set of pencil-written notes, Thomas Lynam is mentioned in a list of Friends fined heavily after 1661: “Thomas Lynam £26”.

Thomas appears in a controversy over his brother John’s will [John's record follows]. Apparently John promised to repay a debt to Thomas’s children in his will and this did not happen (John was in America at the time of his death). The Quaker Friends of Chesterfield contacted John’s local Quaker Friends in Pennsylvania to raise this issue and it was investigated [see this correspondence in John’s record].
Had Thomas given money to John when he left to go and live in America?
The American quaker group had a problem. John had left his money to a school for poor quaker children.

FREE & VOLUNTARY PRESENT 1661
England was in great debt at this time with over three million pounds owing. Charles said if he was crowned he would pardon all the people, for their misdemeanours and allow more religious freedoms. Like many political promises it was worthless. Thomas, a quaker, probably thought things would get better after the Coronation; and they did for a time and then the persecution started again.

Background to the “Free and Voluntary Present
1649 King Charles I has his head chopped off by Parliament and the country is ruled by Parliament, its Army and General Oliver Cromwell. The Scots and the Irish want Charles’ son Charles II as king.
1650 King Charles II is crowned in Scotland
1651 Cromwell defeats Charles at Worcester. Charles escapes to France. Parliament is incompetent, Cromwell becomes Lord Protector and rules as an unwilling dictator
1658 Cromwell dies of malaria at fifty-nine and his son Richard becomes Lord Protector. Richard is a “weak and mild man” and the Army turns him out.
1659 Richard resigns. Most English people now want Charles II back.
1660 Parliament recalls Charles II from Holland. The monarchy returns to a throne in debt and without finance.
1661 To alleviate this problem, the Speaker of the House of Commons presents a Bill for confirmation of an Act for a “Free and Voluntary Present” (from the people of England)
Receivers were appointed to collect donations and a warrant was given to allow the receivers of the “Free and Voluntary Present” in pursuance of an Act of Parliament twelve pence in the pound in recompense for their charge and trouble.
Roger Allestry of Derby and Ralph Weldon were appointed head receivers for Derbyshire and collections were taken in various towns and 5,000 people contributed a total of 2,299 pounds in the County. The occupations are given for the Hundreds of High Peak and Scarsdale but unfortunately not for the other four. Whilst most people gave around one or two shillings the more well off and the gentry gave more. A number of Knights and Barons gave forty or fifty pounds but Sir John Curzon of Kedleston gave the most by far, his donation was one hundred pounds.
Source: Wirksworth Parish website

John Lynam c1631–1698

John LYNAM and his wife Margaret RIDGE became renown quakers and became part of well-recorded quaker history through the publishing of "Margaret Lynam's story – 1661, she was a Quaker". Read the story.

July 1661 – John Lynam, wheelwright of Moorwood Moor, South Wingfield, gave two shillings and six pence to the crowning of Charles II as part of the “Free and Voluntary Present”.

From Besse's record–
1661 John was imprisoned in Derby gaol for non-payment of tithes to the South Wingfield vicar, Revd Coates – who persecuted John and Margaret over many years. Shortly after John was imprisoned, thirty-one men and ten women from Eyam were also sent to be imprisoned at Derby, having to walk there via Crich. They were kept overnight in Squire Clay’s Barn without food, water or covering. Margaret and other Quakers from Fritchley heard of their plight and gave them comfort.

[The tribulations of the Eyam quakers was referred to in Helen Forde's thesis “Derbyshire Quakers 1650–1761”–

Mob violence was a phenomenon of the very early days of Quaker persecution. Reaction to Meetings which remained obstinately silent despite goading was strong and many of the early accounts of Sufferings mention groups of ’rude people1 who set about Friends through suspicion. Such physical violence involved pulling people about by the hair, beating and stoning. Besse noted that Jane Stones was thrown into some water at Stavely in1657 for declaring the Truth , and that at a meeting at Eyam in the High Peak in 1661 Elizabeth Deane was dragged out, while praying, by the constable and soldiers and ’with like violence they drew out the rest, some by the Hair of their Head others by the Legs with their heads on the ground.]

1662 John Lynam was fined 25 shillings by the vicar of South Wingfield and a cow worth £3-10-4d was taken as payment.
1663 the South Wingfield vicar struck again. John had a cow worth £3-3s-4d confiscated in lieu of tithes. Later in the year he was excommunicated.

1670 an act of Parliament was passed that inflicted fines of £20 for every meeting at which more than five persons beyond the inmates of that house were assembled, £20 for a preacher and five shillings each for each worshipper.

1676 John Lynam in the parish of Pentrich fined 5/- and £3-15-0d more for persons unknown who also attended the meeting and was at a meeting at Eggstone in the parish of North Wingfield.
[They used to fine people they only suspected of attending the meetings, no proof was required that they did.]
After thirty years of persecution John and Margaret Lynam decided to go to America where William Penn had established the territory of Pennsylvania. In 1677 they sailed from Hull on the flie boat “Martha”, along with other Friends from Derbyshire. There they helped to found Darby County where they were able to live out the rest of their lives in peace and with freedom to worship in their chosen manner without further persecution.
In the Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine dated 1979 there is a catalogue of eighty-seven Public Friends who died in Pennsylvania since the 1st settlement of Friends there and these were read at the Yearly Meeting of 1709. Public Friends means those who spoke or preached in meetings. It states that John and Margaret Linam, belonging to Shilltop Meeting in Codnor in Derbyshire, came from Maryland in the year 1677 from thence removed to Philadelphia.

John’s entries in the American Quaker records
17 April 1692: John Lynam was listed as being at a meeting of Ministering Friends held at the house of Thomas Loyd in Philadelphia.
3 April 1695: It was common place for the Quaker community to mediate between its members who had disagreements. John was one of the chosen mediators in a “difference” between Peter Ceurles and his wife with his local quaker friends which was raised at a Quarterly Meeting held at the house of Robert Ewer on the 3rd day of the 4th month1695.

A complaint being brought to this meeting from the monthly meeting of friends of German town, between Peter Ceurles & his wife, and friends, the Meeting hearing something of the matter, requested Robert Owen, John Beaven, Alexander Beardsly, John Lynam, Evan Morris & William Southbey, or any three of them, to go to the said Peter Ceurles & his wife and endeavour to end said differences & make report thereof to the next meeting.

21 January 1696: John was one of the quakers commissioned to arrange the building a new Meeting House.

Whereas Samuel Carpenter, Edward Shippen, John Jones, & John Lynam being appointed by the last Quarterly meeting to provide materials & agree with workmen for building the new Meeting house and do report to this meeting , that they have agreed with Thomas Duckett & William Harwood for building the said house, which is to contain fifty foot square with cellars all underneath and they deem the charge of the whole will amount to about one thousand pounds – whereupon a subscription began towards defraying the charge of the said building, the above said friends are desired to carry on the same, and this meeting will notify them in that behalf.

29th October 1696: John was paid for carrying out repairs to the Quaker burial grounds fence.

John Lynam having paid money for the repair of the burying yard fence. It was approved of & Alexander Beardsly ordered to pay him out of the stock one pound seventeen shillings and 3d and five shillings more added. £2-02-3

29 October 1697: It seems as if John was one of the treasurers of his Meeting House

George Gray is to be desired to be assisting to John Lynam to gather in the subscriptions, the Meeting house

26 March 1699: John had died in January 1698 leaving £20 to the Quaker school for the education of poor children.

A copy of a paragraph in John Lynam’s will was read, whereas he hath given £20 for the use of the public school to stand a Stock forever for that use. This meeting orders that John Kinsey & Ralph Jackson pay in the said £20 to Anthony Morris & David Lloyd, who are to pay it in to Edward Shippen for that service.

30 April 1699: Confirmation of this legacy was reported back at the Monthly Meeting.

Anthony Morris and David Lloyd makes report that they have received the £20 – legacy of John Lynam of Ralph Jackson & John Kinsey and have paid it into the hands of David Shippen.

John died in Darby County, USA, on the 29th of January 1697 and Margaret died a few weeks later on the 12 of March 1697. In his will John left legacies to the Monthly Meeting of Philadelphia to a free school for the children of poor Quakers.

Query raised over John Lynam’s will

It seems that when news of John Lynam’s death reached England the Chesterfield Friends raised a query regarding the settlement of a debt which should have been met under the terms of his will.
25 May 1703: The late John Lynam’s Meeting house received a request from the Chesterfield Meeting house; where his brother Thomas Lynam attended

A letter from the monthly meeting of Chesterfield in Old England was read, requesting this meeting to enquire concerning the Estate of John Lynam deceased, seemingly to claim for a debt, which they suppose to be due to a Thomas Lynam’s children, and also to request something of the Estate towards the assistance of the said children. Samuel Carpenter, Anthony Morris & David Brientnall are desired to make enquiries into the matter, and see if any debt doth appear or what else they may see needful and make report thereof to the next monthly meeting

30 May 1703: In the report made at the monthly meeting at the Meeting house it was stated that no proof was found concerning this debt. A letter confirming this was authorised to be sent to the Chesterfield Meeting house.

The friends appointed to make enquiry into the business of John and Thomas Lynam concerning a debt that the friends of Chesterfield meeting was informed was due to the Estate of Thomas Lynam (Thomas had died in 1690) from his brother John; report that they cannot find anything to make the debt appear, therefore Samuel Carpenter, David Brientnall & Anthony Morris are desired to write to the aforesaid Meeting of Chesterfield and answer such things therein as may be needfull and sign the same on behalf of this meeting.

Elizabeth Lynam 1655–1700

Elizabeth had a quaker marriage to Matthais Brackney on 26 April 1688 at Chesterfield. They had six children Elizabeth (1689), Mary (1691), Matthais (1693), Sarah (1694), Hannah (1695), John (1896) . All of them were record as quaker births.

Their son MATTHIAS BRACKNEY was a weaver between 1711 and 1746 and immigrated in 1723 to Chesterfield Township, Burlington County, New Jersey. He was an overseer of highways from Mount Holly to Haddenfield, NJ in 1729; an election commissioner in 1740 and died in 1746 in New Jersey. He had an estate probated in 1746 in Hunterdon County, NJ. He was a Quaker when he married Frances Denman Andrews about 1713 and they had six children.

Alice Lynam (1655–1662)

Both her birth and burial were recorded in the quaker records.

Thomas Lynam 1660–?)

He had a quaker marriage to Hannah STOPPARD [there were several spelling variations] and they had three children John (1692), James (1696) and Hannah (1702). These three children all had adult baptisms on 11 June 1722. In the North Wingfield Parish Record there is a note that they were unbaptised quakers. They were quakers no more.

Joseph Besse 1753 records

Some of the suffering the Quakers endured was recorded in 1753 by Joseph Besse in "A collection of the sufferings of the people called Quakers, for the testimony of a good conscience from the time of their being first distinguished by that name in the year 1650 to the time of the act commonly called the Act of toleration granted to Protestant dissenters in the first year of the reign of King William the Third and Queen Mary in the year 1689 (Volume 1)". What follows are the entries for Quaker Lynams in that book.

 

 

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The Anatomy of a Separation: The Lynam Controversy
Kenneth L. Carroll (Professor of Religion at Southern Methodist University)
Quaker History
Friends Historical Association
Volume 55, Number 2, Autumn 1966
pp. 67-78: a brief excerpt of the content:

Separatist movements appeared within the Society of Friends quite early, both in England and the American colonies. Few of them have been studied in detail, and most of them have been almost completely forgotten. The latter is especially true of the Lynam Separation in seventeenth-century Maryland. The one brief account of this event misses the underlying reasons, the major developments, and the final solution of this controversy that so distressed George Fox and other English and American Quakers. John Lynam was a well-known Friend long before he and his wife, Margaret, came to Maryland. He suffered nine or ten weeks of imprisonment in Derby jail in 1661 and was again persecuted by the vicar of South Wingfield in 1663. In 1675 he was fined for attending a Friends meeting in Heanor, and in 1676 he lost goods valued at £6 10s. for attending the funeral of Samuel Roe in Ilkeston Parish. Margaret Lynam, whose name had been Ridge before her 1666 marriage to John Lynam, was the daughter of a clergyman at Antrim in Ireland. She was active in “the service of truth” in the North of Ireland before 1660 and also travelled in England quite early. According to Davidson, she was in Derbyshire in England in 1661, when she took food to forty-one Quakers who had been taken from meeting for worship and locked in one room in a barn overnight, while being marched to Derby jail. After feeding them, the next morning, Margaret marched with them as far as Fritchley.
References:
T L Creative Centre of Quakerism (1965) “Records respecting John and Margaret Lynam in England and Maryland,”
Journal of the Friends’ Historical Society, V (1908), 95-103.
Joseph Besse, A Collection of the Sufferings of the People Called Quakers (London, 1753),
Thomas Davidson on Margaret Lynam (Derby, 1901)
Extracts from Letters by Margaret Lynam
Quaker History of her early letters show Margaret to be intelligent, literate, and persuasive. In the mid-1670s after nearly ten years of marriage, John and Margaret Lynam produced several pamphlets. A paper submitted by them in 1675 was judged by the Second Day Morning Meeting not fit to be printed. Exactly a year later, on Fifth Month 24, 1676, a “book” by Margaret and John Lynam was ordered to be published. This probably was the brief two-part work which begins with Margaret’s “The Controversie of the Lord Against the Priests of the Nations and Teachers of the People” and ends with John’s “Unto all you People, under what Name or Form of Religion soever you are.” Margaret Lynam’s selection is full of biblical imagery, allusions, and quotations—showing a wide and deep acquaintance with the Bible. John’s work deals largely with his convincement, the fruits of the Spirit, and a cry from the heart: “I who am made a Partaker of God’s free Love do, in the same Love wherewith God hath loved me, this Testimony unto you bear, that you may be with me made Partakers of his Love and heavenly Peace.” In 1677, the Lynams were living in Derbyshire, where John was a wheelwright. They were still in England, it appears, when Margaret issued, somewhere about 1680, a one-page tract entitled “A Warning from the Lord Unto All Informers [etc.],” which is a call to come out of “Darkness” into the “Light.”

Read the story of Margaret LYNAM (née RIDGE) and the Eyam Quaker tribulations – Margaret Lynam's Tale

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