Research Tools - Phd Dissertation - Kinship networks

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MIERS-HAWORTH LETTERS

The letters of Quaker migrant Mary Haworth, later Mrs John Miers, to her brother James, and her Delawarean born son, John, to his mother’s brother, James Haworth, domiciled England, form part of "A Collection of Letters Written at Various Times from America” that have not been transcribed or published. Excerpts from these letters have been used by Thomas R Saxton in his essay, “Living in Two Worlds: Kinship networks and Pennsylvania's Integration into the Atlantic World.[1] 

letter writing - important to keep contact; knowledge of identity – where came from – important to sustain identity while at the sametime create a public identity in a new society.

The Haworth Miers letters are an important resource for ancestral studies and present an inviolable representation of family relationships and lineage at a precise period.

1715: Writing to his brother James Haworth, in the summer of 1715, George wrote: "two of my sister Mary's children, John and Mary came to see me this spring.[2]

1725: Mary Haworth Miers informing James Haworth of their brother George’s death, leaving a widow and six children and that "my son John [Miers] has been up lately to see them and they were all in WORD MISSING health and desires to be remembered to thee and all their relations".

1745: John Miers wrote back to his uncle James Haworth in England, pleased of news about his kin across the Atlantic.  He discussed his immediate family, mentioning the death of his mother Mary about 17 years ago, a deceased brother, survived by four daughters.  His sister Mary was deceased about eight years leaving a daughter and two sons, while another sister Sarah, was "yet living" with six children from four marriages.


[1] Thomas R. Saxton, Living in Two Worlds: Kinship Networks and Pennsylvania's Integration into the Atlantic World (Thesis (Ph.D.)—Lehigh University, 2011), John Miers to James Haworth, Lewistown (Lewes, Del.) October 25, 1745 in "A Collection of Letters Written at Various Times from America," Historical Abstracts Box 34, pp 38-41, Brinton Coxe Collection (collection no. 1983), HSP. p159 of thesis.

[2] (George Haworth to James Haworth, Buckingham Bucks County, Pa 27/7/1715 in "Early letters from Pennsylvania").

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