Pleasant Grove
Hello Williamsons!
It's a fine Spring like day in Pleasant Grove. Here's hoping our families living in the east are having better weather.
In our last gathering we talked about our 6th Great Grandparents Joseph Bennett and Rebecca Fincher. Today we meet to learn about the grandparents of Joseph Bennett, our 8th Great Grandparents, Francis Standfield and Grace Achelly. We begins with a climb up the Family Tree.
- Click on Charles Williamson
- Click on Margaret Willis, my Dad's Great Grandmother.
- Follow the Tree up from Jonathan Willis to Bennett Willis to Phebe Bennett and up to Edward Bennett
- Click on Sarah Standfield and climb up to Francis and Grace.
Francis Standfield arrived at Philadelphia on July 29, 1683, aboard the ketch “Endeavor” of Liverpool, George Thorpe was Master of the ship. The Endeavor was one of the ships that brought many of the original Quaker settlers to the Pennsylvania Province beginning in 1682. William Penn made at least one voyage on the Endeavor, when he returned to England in 1684. Francis and his wife, Grace, brought with them five children:
James, Mary, Sarah, Elizabeth, Grace and Hannah; and eight servants, Daniel Browne, Thomas Massey (Marsey), Isa. Brookesby, Robert Sidbotham, John Smith, Robert Bryan, William Rudway and Thomas Sidbotham. A sixth child, Deborah, seems to have been born after the arrival in Pennsylvania.
Francis Standfield married Grace Achele (Achelly) at the Worcester England Quakers (Friends) Monthly Meeting, about 1661. On June 3, 1678 Mary Achelly (almost certainly a sister of Grace) married Francis Fincher of the City of Worcester. This was a second marriage for Francis Fincher. The Achelly family may have been related to Grace Ashall of Up Holland near Liverpool, where one of the Lancashire Fisher families lived.
The Standfields are usually described as Cheshire (England) people, but they were among a group of Quaker families from around Worcester who came early to Pennsylvania and were associates in Chester County. In 1670, Francis Fincher had all his goods consficated at Grafton-Flyford near Worcester, for attending a Quaker meeting at the house of George Maris. George Maris spent time in prison, and in 1683 came to Pennsylvania and settled in Springfield Township, Chester County.
Francis Standfield had also been subjected to religious persecution in England, and was arrested in 1670 for attending a meeting at “Cartop” in Berkshire, which was almost certainly the village of Cutthorpe in the parish of Brampton near Chesterfield. Others who were arrested with Francis Standfield were from Brampton. Brampton is about 15 miles southeast of Marple (in Cheshire near Manchester), where Grace Standfield Jr. was born in 1673. In August of 1682 James Standfield, son of Francis and Grace, signed a certificate of removal for a group leaving the Congleton meeting in Cheshire with intent to emigrate to Falls Monthly Meeting in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Brampton is a little over 20 miles east northeast of Congleton.
Our Great Grandfather Francis Standfield, a Quaker, was listed as “husbandman” (farmer) when he arrived in Pennsylvania. The Standfields were listed as immigrants from “Garton in Cheshire,” although no village of that name has ever been listed. This may have referred to Gorton near Manchester (then Lancashire,) being very near the Cheshire line. It may be a mistake for Garston, a village on the Mersey River southwest of Manchester, at the lower end of Lancashire (now Merseyside). They had lived at Marthill and Marple, Cheshire, and possibly at Cutthorpe in Brampton Parish, Berkshire, as well as places in Worcester.
Francis Standfield may have been descended from the Yorkshire Stansfield family, who were early Quakers in and around Halifax Parish, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The Stansfield manor house still stands, in the village of Stansfield near Halifax.
The Standfields were among the earliest settlers of the township of Marple PA, just west of Philadelphia between Darby Creek and Crum Creek. Their land was not far from that of Francis Fincher of Springfield Township, presumed brother-in-law of Grace Standfield, and their friend George Maris from Cheshire. Thomas Achele, across the Delaware at Burlington, was a probable relative.
Francis and a son had numerous land holdings and were active in the community. Francis was an assemblyman for Chester County in 1685, and son James gained wealth and prominance until his untimely death in the 1699 yellow fever epidemic. Grace died in 1691 and Francis followed a year later.
Our 9th Great Uncle, James Standfield joined William Penn’s Free Society of Traders and began a career as a merchant trader. He had a two-masted brigantine, the “Betsy,"
A two masted Brigantine
In 1693 Griffith Jones, a Philadelphia merchant, sold part of his Delaware bank lot in Philadelphia to our Great Uncle James Standfield, also a merchant of Philadelphia. It was a narrow lot on Front Street and extending to the east into the river. It lay about 200 feet north of High Street, and was probably the berth for the Standfield brigantine, the “Betsy.”
In 1697 he bought a similar frontage from William Jenner on the opposite side of Front Street, extending to the west instead of east. The lot is shown on the map made by Albert Cook Meyer’s committee in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the first arrival of William Penn.
In 1699 Great Uncle James Stanfield of Philadelphia, son of Francis and Grace (Achele) Standfield of Marple in Chester County, left a detailed will and estate accounting that mentioned business in Maryland and Boston, his brigantine two-master the “Betsy,” Jerimiah Collett and the names of various sea captains.
Land records of Chester County reveal that during the 1690’s James Standfield laid out, for the heirs of Francis Standfield, a large tract of land in Kennett, Chester County. The land was abandoned with no survey when James died in 1699.
Our 7th Great Grandparent Edward Bennett married Sarah Standfield, daughter of Francis and Grace.
It has been reported that Samuel Atkins took our 9th Great Uncle James Standfield as an apprentice to learn the shipping trade. (Source unknown.) He bought land near the original Standfield estate in Marple. Samuel divided his time between Sussex County and Philadelphia, and arranged leases of whaling vessels for companies such as that of John McGiver. Samuel’s business sometimes took him on return trips to England.In 1699, Samuel Atkins sold his land in Marple to John Worral, who was the Standfield’s neighbor to the north, where the present-day “Worral Estates” are located. James Standfield and Samuel Atkins may have died together at their shared house on the Philadelphia waterfront.
Other possible family ties: The Standfield (Stansfield) family seat in Halifax Parish, West Yorkshire, was only a few miles from Clitheroe in Lancashire, where John Fisher and the Hindles lived before their emigration. The Standfields brought a crate of window glass when they came, which would have been needed by the glazier John Fisher. The Standfields had an active trading company, and had large acreage in Sussex County where the John Fishers family lived. The ship-building supplies and artisans mentioned in the John Fisher family tradition could have been associated with the two-masted ship, the brigantine “Betsy,” owned by the trading company. A “carpenter’s shipyard” was located on one of the Fisher tracts in Sussex County.
The Holmes map of the Marple area shows the Francis Standfield estate house in the north-east end of the Standfield 600-acre tract. The site has been identified with two different homesites which can be located today. A house on Crum Creek Road near Marple Road has been discovered to have been built around a two-story log structure. Another residence, a two-story brick house on McClarie Street nearby is also sometimes considered to be on the site of a Standfield house.
For further details concerning the Standfields, see “The Francis Standfield Family of Colonial Pennsylvania” by this author, and “Marple Township, the First 100 Years.”
Original Sources Mentioning Francis Standfield
At a Quarterly Meeting of Friends held 3 mo 3 1686 it was
“Agreed yt a meeting be kept at John Bolters (Bowater’s) upon ye same first day it was used to be at Bartholomew Coppocks, for ye ease of such yt live westerly in ye woods and ye rest of friends living ye other way, upon yt same day, to meet at ffrancis Stanfields until further consideration.”At a Quarterly Meeting held 6 mo 2 1683, it was
“Agreed yt ye meeting at Francis Stanfields, upon fresh consideration be Removed to Bartholomew Coppock’s ye younger, to begin ye next first day and ye following 4th day untill friends se cause to remove it.”
Francis Stanfield was a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly from Chester County in 1685. He died in 1692. His wife died a year earlier.
Children of Francis and Grace Stanfield
1. James Stanfield, d. 1699; m. Mary Hutchinson, of Burlington, New Jersey, 1689.
2. Mary Stanfield, m. William Huntly, 1692 and had children, 1 Elizabeth, 2 Francis, 3 Deborah, 4 Mary, 5 Sarah. She married, 2nd, Richard Fletcher, 1713.
3. Sarah Stanfield, m. 1st, William Clows or Clews, of Bucks County. She m. 2d, Edward Bennett, of Thornbury, and had children, 1 Edward, 2 Sarah, 3 Joseph, 4 William, 5 Elizabeth.
4. Elizabeth Stanfield, m. 1st Thomas Hope, 1697. He died 1708. She married, 2d, William Horne, 1709. He died 1743. No children.
5. Grace Stanfield, m. 1st Francis Chads, 1695, and had children, 1 Sarah, 2 John, 3 Grace, 4 Betty, 5 Ann, 6 Francis. She m. 2d Guyon Stevenson, 7 mo 16, 1714. She died 1728.
6. Hannah Stanfield, m. Isaac Few, 1699.
7. Deborah Stanfield, m. Richard Woodward, Jr., 1701. She was the second wife of Richard Woodward, (who was four times married) and was the mother of most if not all his twelve children.
