Communicating Religion with Friends ‘Beyond the Seas’

Abstract

The four travelling ministers aboard thejosiah in 1697 had each visited the Morning Meeting before the onset of their journeys. A month before departing from Grave send, William Ellis and Aaron Atkinson had acquainted the Morning Meeting ‘of their Intention to Travell into america in the Service of Truth and produced Certifficates from the Meetings to which they belong of their Unity with them’.¹ At the same meeting, Thomas Turner also informed the meeting ‘of his intention to Travell in the like Service into the Same parts and also that he had a Cer- tificate of Friends Unity with him’.² Two weeks later, ‘Thomas Chalkey laid before the Meeting that it had long lain upon him to visit Friends in America and was willing to goe, now in company with other Friends for those parts’, and the week following, ‘A Coppy of an Epistle as ordered last week, was Read in the Meeting, from many Friends belonging to the Monthly Meeting, of South war k — Expressing their Unity with Thomas Chalkey as to his Conversation, Testimony and Proposall of Visiting Friends in America.’ The Morning Meeting appointed some members to ‘write a letter to Friends in America on this behalfe — which John Field, illiam Bingley, Theodor Eccleston or any two of them are desired to doe and subscribe with such Friends of this Meeting as can Readily be found away’.³ Members of the Morning Meeting and Chalkley’s father accompanied Ellis, Atkinson, Turner, and Chalkley to Grave send, from where they set sail.⁴ Several months later, a letter from Jonathan Tyer in West Jersey informed the Morning Meeting that the travelling ministers had attended the Salem meeting there.⁵