Thomas Watson, Jr.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/10462888/thomas-watson

Colonial families of Philadelphia (Volume 2). (page 82 of 114) http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/john-woolf-jordan/colonial-fa...

Thomas Watson, son of Thomas and Jennett above mentioned, "of Strawberry How, parish of Cockermouth, Cumberland, and Rebecca Mark, daughter of Thomas Mark, of Bleckelhall, near Carlisle, county of Cumberland," were married in England, and in 1702 brought a certificate to Falls Monthly Meeting, Bucks county, Pennsylvania. They settled in Falls township, Bucks county, on a plantation of 300 acres which they named "Strawberry How" after the little rural village of Strawberry How on the northern slope of the Cumbrian Mountains, in the ward of Allderdale-below-Derwent, county of Cumberland, England, where Thomas Watson was born. It was not, however, in the parish of Cockermouth, as stated in the above quotation, not being even in the same parish as the town of Cockermouth, but several miles further south, near the source of the river Derwent, on the southern border of Cumberland next Westmoreland.

Thomas Watson was a Justice of the Courts of Bucks county, 1710-28, and a member of Colonial Assembly from 1720 to 1725. To distinguish him from Thomas Watson, of Buckingham, also a Colonial Justice and Member of the Assembly, he is noted on the official records as "Strawberry How." His will, dated February 15, 1737-38, proved August 15, 1738, also mentions him as "late of Strawberry How, now of Bristol, Bucks County," &c.

Thomas Mark, father of Rebecca (Mark) Watson, married, April 8, 1658, Mary Bewley, of the ancient family of Bewley, Cumberland, an account of which is given in the Bewleys, of Cumberland. Her father, Thomas Bewley, was an early convert of George Fox, and one of his most intimate friends and associates. The journal of the distinguished Founder of the Society of Friends makes frequent mention of his sojourning at the house of Thomas Bewley, near Carlisle. Cumberland. Both Thomas Bewley and his sons suffered severe persecutions and imprisonments for "Truth's sake."

GEDCOM Note

He was a tanner.

Other notes

A letter written back to Ireland by Benjamin Chandlee refers to a Thomas Watson family. This seems to match, for a few of the Watson family were born in Armagh; and Quaker often had sojourns in Ireland before coming to West Jersey, Philadelphia, and Bucks.