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Birth: 1616 - Earthcott, Gloucestershire, England, United Kingdom
Death: Jan 3 1669 - Olveston, Gloucestershire, England, United Kingdom

NAME: JOSEPH STURGE I

SURNAME: STURGE GIVEN NAMES: Joseph *SEX: M

BIRTH: circa 1616 Gaunts Earthcott, England

DEATH:circa 1669 Lower Hazel, England (aged 53)

• FATHER: Thomas STURGE b: unkown
• MOTHER:unkown

MARRIAGE: unkown

Married: circa 1623 England

CHILDREN

1...M...William Sturge

2..M...Nathan Sturge

3...M...Joseph Sturge II

4...M...Thomas Sturge

5...M...James Sturge

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NOTES:

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As a family, we are fortunate that so much history of our ancestors has been preserved.

Quakerism came to Gloucestershire in 1654

This is undoubtedly due to the influence of the "society of Friends" (Quakers) to which our borebears belonged, and also to the prominence of Josephs following descendants such as Joseph Sturge VI in the 19th Century..

However, the Victorian accounts seem only to conjure the picture of good Christian Yeomen clad in sombre Quaker plain dress.

There is a lack of homely detail in those accounts , although this has been preserved in family papers and letters.

There is no individual information on Joseph 1 as an individual, only that he and his wife (unknown) bore 2 sons, Joseph II (married Barbara Williams) and son William. They both married.

Joseph II produced ...Joseph III who married Mary Young producing 7 offspring.

http://www.sturgefamily.com/

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Joseph the First

Thomas was the father of Joseph, who also lived at Gaunts Earthcott and was laid to rest in the Hazel burial ground in 1669. Joseph joined Friends “at their first appearance” and was repeatedly and heavily fined, as his descendants were to be, for refusing to pay tithes to the Church. He had six sons: William, Joseph, Henry, Thomas, Nathan and James.

All we know of Henry, apart from the fact that he had a great-grandson “remarkable for his strength, who used to carry coal to Bristol,” is that he seems to have been the first of the occasional “musical Sturges.” One of his descendants, for instance, was accompanied to his funeral by the Bristol City Band, of which he was a member. Another became a well-known maker of violins. Henry’s son, grandson and one of his great-grandsons each bore the name Joseph.

We know rather more about Thomas, a farmer who lived at Olveston Court in the same Thornbury area. He was “remarkably long from the waist down, so that when on horseback he was compared to a pair of tongs bestride the horse. He was noted for sagacity and industry, having saved money while living with his father by catching moles and by hatching magpies, crows, ravens, etc. under chickens and afterwards bringing them up by hand.” Many future Sturges, incidentally, were keen ornithologists.

But the most interesting member of this generation of the family was James’ wife Elizabeth, who became a Quaker in 1654 when she was about twenty. “The fell upon me another great exercise” she recorded, “to leave my habitation to go to King Charles.” In 1670 she wrote him an outspoken address about the persecution Quakers were enduring, and included the strong words “As thou hast been the cause of making many desolate, so will the Lord lay thee desolate.” This testimony she “delivered into his hands with the words “Hear, Oh King, fear the Lord God of Heaven and Earth.” Paleness came in his face and with a mournful voice the king said, “I thank you, good woman.” Elizabeth went unpunished; when she and James, who was a shoemaker, were imprisoned later it was for unlawful assembly.

Apparently there were Sturges in London at this time. We read that William, son of John and Elizabeth Sturge of East Smithfield, was buried at the church of St. Botolph, Aldgate, in 1659.

http://www.sturgefamily.com/Discover/THE%20STURGES%20OF%20BIRMINGHA...

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QUAKERS....................

Quaker:

A member of the Religious Society of Friends or Quakers. The Quakers were a radical nonconformist Christian religious group established by George Fox (1624 - 91) that believed that God's light existed in eveyone. They had a strong sense of morality and social justice

Quakers (Society of Friends)

The abolition campaign in Britain was started by the Society of Friends, known as the Quakers. Quakers believe that all people are created equal in the eyes of God. If this is the case, then how can one person own another?

The beginnings of the Quakers' opposition came in 1657, when their founder, George Fox, wrote "To Friends beyond sea, that have Blacks and Indian slaves" to remind them of Quaker belief in equality. He later visited Barbados and his preaching, which urged for better treatment of enslaved people, was published in London in 1676 under the title Gospel Family-Order. He said:

'... now I say, if this should be the condition of you and yours, you would think it hard measure, yea, and very great Bondage and Cruelty. And therefore consider seriously of this, and do you for and to them, as you would willingly have them or any other to do unto you...were you in the like slavish condition.' (Listen to this extract)

Around 1727, the Quakers began to express their official disapproval of the trade and promote reforms. From the 1750s, a number of Quakers in the American colonies began to oppose enslavement. They visited the slaveholders and lobbied the English Headquarters for action. By 1761, Quakers had come to view abolition as a Christian duty and all Quakers, on both sides of the Atlantic, were barred from owning slaves. Any members that did not conform were disowned.

In 1783 the 'London Society of Friends' yearly meeting presented a petition against the slave trade, signed by nearly 300 Quakers, to Parliament. They subsequently decided to set up a formal committee to consider the slave trade as well as an informal group of six Quakers who pioneered the British abolitionist movement. They later decided to form a small group, open to all denominations, to gain wider Anglican and Parliamentary support.

Prejudice in Britain against religious dissenters, meant that the committee was not gaining public attention and Quakers were barred from standing for Parliament. The new committee had nine Quaker members and three evangelical Anglicans, which strengthened the committee's influence. The Anglicans who co-founded the committee were Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson, and Philip Sansom. The Quaker members were: John Barton, William Dillwyn, George Harrison, Samuel Hoare Jr., Joseph Hooper, John Lloyd, Joseph Woods Sr., James Phillips and Richard Phillips.

Quakers continued to work for the movement and provide financial support throughout the campaign. They had built up a lot of knowledge of campaigning through struggling for their own rights. Their organisational skills were important to the success of the campaign, providing a network of contacts across the country which helped initiate local support.

You can find the accounts of some Quaker abolitionists in this section, others are less well known but their support was just as vital. Activists like: American, William Southeby, who, in 1696, demanded a ban on slave ownership and importation (he continued to publish attacks on slavery until his death in 1720); John Woolman who, in 1754, published one of the first tracts opposing slavery; James Wright of Haverhill, one of the first British businessman to refuse to sell slave processed sugar. Then there was Sophia Sturge who trudged round 3,000 households personally, asking them not to eat slave-grown sugar. The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), founded in 1839 by Joseph Sturge, still survives today as Anti-Slavery International.

http://abolition.e2bn.org/people_21.html