Evidence from the Past

The value of published, peer reviewed, research. 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 wro...

In his monograph, “Stories for a Sunday Afternoon”, Maynard H Mires presents an unconvincing case his “revolutionary” ancestor Daniel Myers (Miers, Mires), Indian slayer and original settler of the Minisink township, descends from Delaware Quaker families, Miers and Cummings. Mires is correct in stating Ann Cummings daughter of Enoch Cumming married John Miers between 1747-48 but the statement that the Cummings family belonged to the Established Church is false. Minutes of Duck Creek Monthly Meetings show that Ann Cummings and John Miers married with the approval of the Quaker community.  Minutes of Quaker meetings held in Chester county show Cummings daughters, Jane and Elizabeth, committed to Quaker principles. Moreover, Enoch Cummings’s second marriage to staunch Quaker, widow Sarah Blundell (nee Miers formerly Ozburn and Rowland) met with the approval of the Quaker community. Ann Cummings married widower John Miers, the son of John and Mary Haworth and not John Miers, the son o...