Jackson Allen

Family History

Taken from The History of the Society of Friends on Cape Cod:

By mid-1658 there were sixteen Quaker heads of families, amounting to perhaps a hundred persons, fined for refusal of oath, with meetings held at the Allen’s house now heavely punished. It was probably at this point that secret meetings were being held in Christopher’s Hollow.

In the year 1658 members of the Allen family paid fines aggregating £250, imposed by the church authorities. In 1659 Ralph Allen, with his brothers, was taken from the jail at Boston and whipped through several towns as a punishment for his religious opinions. They subsequently became allied with the Friends, or Quakers, and were further persecuted because of this.

• Link:http://hylbom.com/family/articles/history-of-the-society-of-friends...

Jackson Allen descended from Ralph Allen, Jr. who along with his son William were early members of the Society of friends at Sandwich, Massachusetts. The first official notice of meeting was April 13, 1657 and was held at the home of William Allen, son of Ralph. Due to the persecution imposed on on the members of the church , many of the families would leave and try to find a place they could practice their faith. Jackson's father, Rueben Allen and his brother Benjamin, would purchase land in re-locate to Maryland (according to records around 1714). They would sell their land and move to Pennsylvania (according to records 1729). Finally, in 1734 they both would move to Virginia, settling near Mt. Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley. Here they remained and both would die in Virginia.( Rueben died 1741; Benjamin died 1747)

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Taken from History of Tract Ownership - Tract Map of Vicinity of Mt. Jackson, Shenandoah Co., Virginia:

Jackson Allen (son of Reuben I and Mary) received a Fairfax grant for 202 acres, 2 rods located on the North River Shenandoah on 21 July 1749. The tract was adjacent southeast of Benjamin Allen's 400-acre 1739 patent land. Joseph Allen (son of Reuben I and Mary) purchased 118 acres adjacent southeast of the 1739 patent land and adjacent southwest of Jackson's 220-acre grant land from Lord Fairfax on 21 July 1749.

• Link:http://www.lafavre.us/genealogy/mt_jackson_tracts.html

According to the court minutes on 28th of September, Jackson Allen was summoned to the next court because he had set some of his negroes free and the county wished to sell them.

• Link:http://www.shenandoahcountyhistoricalsociety.org/PDF/HowSCenteredSl...

Jackson Allen, well-to-do farmer and miller appeared in Shenandoah County Court ,1776, to answer to the charge he freed his slaves. He appeared in court more times than once and had heavy fines distrained against him for fidelity to the Quaker teaching about military and war taxes, as had brother James.

• Link:https://books.google.com/books?id=pxrANQtD3RkC&pg=PA94&dq=quaker+ja...

Note: records for 1776 show that Jackson Allen owned three slaves: Sidney,Dinah and Zachariah

• Link:http://www.shenandoahcountyhistoricalsociety.org/PDF/Emancipation.pdf

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Excerpts from Wikipedia entry for History of the Quakers:

Most Quakers owned slaves when they first came to America; to most Quakers "slavery was perfectly acceptable provided that slave owners attended to the spiritual and material needs of those they enslaved."[23] 70% of Quakers owned slaves in the period from 1681 to 1705; however, from 1688 some Quakers began to speak out against slavery until by 1756 only 10% of Quakers owned slaves.[24]

The Southern states, however, were still very prominent in keeping slavery running. Because of this, an informal network of safe houses and escape routes—called the Underground Railroad—developed across the United States to get enslaved people out of America and into Canada or the free states. The Quakers were a very prominent force[citation needed] in the Underground Railroad, and their efforts helped free many slaves. Immediately north of the Mason-Dixon line, the Quaker settlement of Chester County, Pennsylvania—one of the early hubs of the Underground Railroad—was considered a “hotbed of abolition." However, not all Quakers were of the same opinion regarding the Underground Railroad: because slavery was still legal in many states, it was therefore illegal for anyone to help a slave escape and gain freedom. Many Quakers, who saw slaves as equals, felt it was proper to help free slaves and thought that it was unjust to keep someone as a slave; many Quakers would “lie” to slave hunters when asked if they were keeping slaves in their house, they would say “no” because in their mind there was no such thing as a slave. Other Quakers saw this as breaking the law and thereby disrupting the peace, both of which go against Quaker values thus breaking Quaker belief in being pacifistic. Furthermore, involvement with the law and the government was something from which the Quakers had tried to separate themselves. This divisiveness caused the formation of smaller, more independent branches of Quakers, who shared similar beliefs and views.

However there were many prominent Quakers who stuck to the belief that slavery was wrong, and were even arrested for helping the slaves out and breaking the law. Richard Dillingham, a school teacher from Ohio, was arrested because he was found helping three slaves escape in 1848. Thomas Garrett had an Underground Railroad stop at his house in Delaware and was found guilty in 1848 of helping a family of slaves escape. Garrett was also said to have helped and worked with Harriet Tubman, who was a very well known slave who worked to help other slaves get their freedom. Educator Levi Coffin and his wife Catherine were Quakers who lived in Indiana and helped the Underground Railroad by hiding slaves in their house for over 21 years. They claimed to have helped 3,000 slaves gain their freedom.[26][verification needed][page needed][28] Susan B. Anthony was also a Quaker, and did a lot of antislavery work hand in hand with her work with women’s rights.

• Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Quakers

Added by D. Glenn

GEDCOM Note

of Shenandoah Co, VA