A Secret Message In Names

Crista Cowan 0:00

Imagine diving into your family tree to discover that your ancestors left you a secret message more than 300 years ago. Not in a diary or a hidden letter, but encoded into the literal names of their children. A sentence of survival written in code. One couple crossed the Atlantic Ocean three times, survived public excommunication, and stared down a corrupt government, all to write a hidden prayer that would ultimately be answered in New Jersey. If you are stuck on a family tree brick wall right now, this story is for you. Stories That Live in Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America. Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us. So join me for season two as we discover from sea to shining sea, the stories that live in us. If you've been with me for a while, you know about Carrie, our Carrie. That's what my pajamas and pedigrees community call her. They have followed along with her story and my continued discoveries about her and her family since way back in episode one of this podcast. Carrie Inman, my two times great-grandmother, was the brick wall in my family tree that I thought I would never get past. A little girl orphaned so young and raised by her paternal grandparents in Medina County, Ohio. For decades, Carrie was the dead end, the place where my family story just stopped. And then I found her. When I finally broke through that wall, and if you're a genealogist, you know that feeling, that moment when the puzzle piece that you've been holding for years just suddenly clicks into place. When I broke through that brick wall, I didn't just find another generation. I found a whole new world, a whole new branch of my family tree to discover and explore

Breaking Carrie’s Brick Wall

Crista Cowan 2:30

and play in. From Carrie's mom's side of my family tree, I connected with Alice Young, the Connecticut witch, whose story I shared in episode 114 just a couple weeks ago. From her dad's side, I learned about the grandparents who raised her, Isaac Inman and Sally Ann Marsh. They raised Carrie in the same small town where Isaac's own mother lived, a woman named Elizabeth Lippincott. Carrie's great-grandmother Elizabeth was born in Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey. She and her husband were both raised Quaker. And here's the thing about Quakers: they keep records, extraordinary records. Every birth, every marriage, every death, every action taken by their congregations, all preserved in what they call meeting minutes, going back centuries. Those records become a trail. And I followed that trail from Elizabeth in Ohio back to New Jersey through generations of lip and cots in Little Egg Harbor and Shrewsbury Township until one day I found myself reading about a man born in Devonshire, England, around 1615. A man who, with his wife, crossed the Atlantic Ocean three times in search of something most of us take for granted. And this couple wrote the story of their family's suffering and hope in the most interesting way imaginable. They wrote it in the names of their children. Their names were Richard Lippincott and Abigail Goody. And they are my 10 times great-grandparents. And this is their story. Okay, so picture this. It's 1639. The Massachusetts Bay Colony is barely a decade old. Boston isn't even a city yet, it's just a cluster of wooden houses and muddy paths on a peninsula surrounded by water, because that's what a peninsula is. There are less than 20,000 people in the whole colony, scattered in small communities throughout. And in those towns and villages, everyone knows everyone. And the church, it's not just where you worship on Sunday. It is the government, the social network, the courtroom. It is the moral authority of those communities all rolled into one. Into this world steps a young man from Devonshire, England, Richard Lippincott. He's about 25 years old, and he comes from a family with deep, deep English roots. The Lippincott name can be traced all the way back to the Doomsday book in 1080, tied to a family estate called Lovecote near Highhampton. This isn't just some peasant looking for opportunity. This is an aristocrat who left everything behind: land, name, status, and crossed an ocean. Why? Likely the same reason thousands of others did. Religious freedom. The chance to worship God according to his own conscience, without the Church of England telling him how and what to believe. On May 10th, 1640, Richard married a young woman named Abigail Goody in Roxbury. That's a small village just south of Boston at the time. Abigail was 18 years old and she had been born in Northumberland, England, which is about as far from Devonshire as you can get and still actually be in England. She's from the north, he's from the deep southwest.

Colonial Boston And A New Life

Crista Cowan 6:30

How they found each other in colonial Massachusetts is a story I would love to know, but the records don't tell us that story. What they do tell us is that together, Richard and Abigail joined the Puritan community in nearby Dorchester and they began building a life. Their first child was born in 1641, a son. And this is where the story starts to become something more than just a genealogical record because of what they named him. They named him Remembrance. I think we've gotten so used to names like Brittany and Tyler and Caitlin that we've forgotten how much weight a name used to carry. In the 1600s, especially among Puritans and other deeply religious communities, a name was a declaration. It was a statement of faith. It was a prayer pressed into the identity of a child. Remembrance. Remember, don't forget. But don't forget what? Maybe the liberty they found after crossing the ocean, maybe the mercies God had shown them, maybe the life they left behind. The historical record suggests all of those things. But whatever the specific meaning, the impulse was, for centuries before baby naming became a sport or an act of trying to instill uniqueness in a child, it was a way for parents to make a declaration to the child and to their community. These new parents looked at this baby boy and said, This child will carry our story. Does that sound familiar? Because every time you hang a family tree chart on your wall, or every time you share a story at Sunday dinner, or every time you name a baby after a grandmother, you're doing the exact same thing that Richard and Abigail did in 1641. You're saying, remember. Now, life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony wasn't exactly what Richard had imagined it would be. Richard and Abigail moved from Dorchester into Boston around 1644. Their second son, John, was born there. And John, while a perfectly ordinary name, actually has meaning. It means God is gracious. Next was a daughter, Abigail, named for her mother, born in 1646. But she died young. The historical record gives us that fact in a single line. Born 17th of 11th month, 1646, died in infancy. That's all we get. But behind that line is a mother who buried a baby girl who bore her own name. And every genealogist knows that behind the dates and names on our charts, there are moments like these. Moments of grief that the records I don't think ever fully capture. So Richard and Abigail are in Boston. They've lost a child, they're raising two young sons, and something is happening inside of Richard. His faith is shifting. And here's where I need to give you a little bit of context because what happened next doesn't make any sense unless you understand what the Puritan church actually was in colonial Boston at the time. The Puritans left England because they believed the Church of England was corrupt. Too much ritual, too much hierarchy, not enough of a direct relationship with God. And they came to Massachusetts to build what they called a city upon a hill, a pure Christian community. And they succeeded in building a theocracy. The church and the government were essentially the same thing. And if you weren't a member of the church in good standing, you couldn't vote, you couldn't hold office, and your social standing was in serious jeopardy. The church controlled not just your spiritual life, but your civic life.

Remembrance And The Power Of Naming

Crista Cowan 11:33

He was drawn to ideas about a direct individual relationship with God, what would eventually become the foundation of the Society of Friends, the Quakers. Though by this point, George Fox hadn't even published his first writings yet. Richard was arriving at these ideas all on his own. And the church in Massachusetts noticed. In 1651, a note appears in the record of the first church of Boston, and I want to share this with you as close to the original language as I can, because the words matter. Here's the quote: Richard Lippincott, a member of the Church of Dorchester, being recommended from fence by letters to us and falling in a withdrawing from communion with the church, was admonished. He stopped showing up. He pulled away from communion, which in that world didn't just mean he was skipping church on Sundays. It was a public act of defiance. The church in Dorchester had already flagged him and sent a warning letter to the church in Boston that they were watching him. They admonished him. Essentially, they gave him a formal warning to get back in line. And he didn't. Less than three months later, there's another entry. And this one, they demanded that Richard explain himself, stand up before the congregation, and give a reason for his withdrawal. And his response? He wanted a commission to speak. I thought about that line. What did he mean? The historical record gives us two possible interpretations. Maybe he meant, I don't have the authority to say what I really think in this forum. Or maybe he meant, I have nothing I'm required to say to you. Either way, he refused to explain himself. He refused to bend. And so the church excommunicated him. Now, excommunication in 1651 in Boston wasn't just a spiritual matter. It wasn't like being asked to leave the book club. This was a public shaming. This was social and economic exile. You are no longer one of us. In a colony of a few thousand people, where the church is the community, being excommunicated meant being cast out of everything, your social network, your civil standing, your identity, and that irony. Richard left an aristocratic life in Devonshire, England, and crossed the Atlantic Ocean and gave up his family estate and his position and his homeland, all for religious freedom. And the people who welcomed him, the people who had done the exact same thing, fled England for the exact same reason. They threw him out for following his conscience. The very thing they claimed to value most was the thing they punished him for exercising. I also think about Abigail at this point. She's in her late 20s. She's buried a daughter. She has two sons. Remembrance is about 10. John's about seven. Her husband has just been publicly expelled from the church that structures their entire world. Everything they built in this colony, their reputation, their relationships, their standing, possibly their business and any financial prospects, all gone. And Abigail didn't ask for this. Now, we don't know whether she agreed with Richard's theological evolution or whether she

Excommunication And Public Shaming

Crista Cowan 15:40

thought he was crazy or stubborn. We don't know if she was angry or afraid or both. What we do know is what she did. And what she did was pack up her family and they went home, like home, home, back across the ocean, back to England with two young boys, some shattered dreams, and a faith that was still taking shape. So picture this family on a ship going back. Remembrance, who is old enough to understand that something has gone terribly wrong, and John, who is still young enough to know that his parents are scared, but not old enough to quite understand why. Richard has just had his entire identity in the New World stripped away. And Abigail, well, she's managing all of it. The children, the uncertainty, her own grief and fear, and possibly a husband who is questioning everything except that one conviction that got them into this mess in the first place. It would have taken six to eight weeks, six to eight weeks of open ocean with a 10-year-old and a seven-year-old, six to eight weeks to sit with that question about what now, what next. They land in England and they settle in Plymouth, which is in Devonshire, near Richard's ancestral home. And that choice feels important. They didn't go to Northumberland, where Abigail's people were, they went to Richard's territory, back to the place where the Lippincott name still meant something. Maybe it was practical, maybe it was pride. Maybe Abigail insisted that they go where they had the strongest roots and prospects because she was done taking chances. We don't know. But they went to Plymouth. And in 1653, their third son is born, and they name him Restore. These names are becoming like a journal almost. Every child is a chapter. And if you're tracking the story through the names alone, here's what you'd read so far from Remember to Restore. Words that tell you everything about what this family has been through. Remembrance. Remember what we came from. John, God is gracious, and now restore. We've been brought back. We've been returned to where we belong. At this point, I need to introduce you to some people who are about to change Richard and Abigail's lives. Because somewhere in these early years, back in England, they find the Quakers, or maybe the Quakers find them. Not sure. Okay, so the Society of Friends. You've probably heard the word Quaker before. Maybe you associate it with oatmeal or the state of Pennsylvania. But in the 1650s, the Quakers were brand new and they were pretty radical. Here's what they believed in the simplest terms I can give you. Every person has direct access to God. You don't need a priest, you don't need a bishop, you don't need a church hierarchy telling you what God thinks. There is an inner light, the presence of God inside every human being. And if you get quiet enough, you can hear it. That might not sound revolutionary to you right now, or maybe it does, I don't know. But in the 1650s, that idea was dangerous. Because if every person can hear God directly, then what do you need the church for? And if you don't need the church, then the church has no power. And if the church has no power, well, in a world where church and state were deeply intertwined, you have just threatened the entire social order. Quakers also refused to swear oaths, any oaths, because Jesus said, swear not at all, which sounds like a small thing, until you realize that oaths were the foundation of the legal system, of military service, of allegiance to the crown. Refusing to swear an oath was essentially saying, your entire system of authority does not apply to me. They also believed in the radical equality of all people: men, women, rich, poor, everyone was equal before God. Women could speak in Quaker meetings. In the 1650s, women could preach. Let that

Finding Quakers And Paying The Price

Crista Cowan 20:40

sink in for a minute. So this is who the Lippincots are aligning themselves with. This movement, so new that its founder, George Fox, has only been preaching for about a decade. A movement that is attracting exactly the kind of people who believe that faith is personal, that conscience matters more than conformity, and that no institution has the right to stand between a person and God. Of course, Richard found them, or they found him. He'd been moving in this direction since before he left Boston, maybe since before the Quakers even existed as an organized movement. The ideas that got him excommunicated in Massachusetts were the same ideas the Quakers were building an entire faith around. For the first time in years, Richard was not alone in his beliefs. He had a community. He had people who understood. But here's the thing about finding your people in 1650s England it could get you killed. And it didn't take long. In May of 1655, two Quaker preachers, Thomas Salt House and Miles Hallhead, they arrived in Plymouth. They'd been traveling through the region, visiting friends and sharing their faith. They stayed at the home of a man named Arthur Cotton, and then that same evening, they went to Stonehouse, to the house of one Lippincott. That's what the record says. Richard's house. Now, hosting traveling Quaker preachers might sound harmless to you and me, but in 1655 England, under Oliver Cromwell's protectorate, it was an act of defiance. The authorities were terrified of the Quakers. These were people who wouldn't swear loyalty oaths, who wouldn't take off their hats to magistrates, who let women speak in their meetings, who insisted that every person, every single person had direct access to God without needing the permission of any institution. The government saw them as a threat to the social order. And they were right. The Quakers were a threat to the social order. That was kind of the whole point. Thomas Salthouse and Miles Hallhead were arrested. The charges were absurd, disturbing the peace, violating a proclamation against disrupting ministers, and this is my favorite one, violating an ordinance against duels, challenges, and all provocations thereto. Duels. These were pacifist Quaker preachers, and the authorities couldn't even find a law that applied to what they'd actually done. So they just threw everything they had at the wall to see what stuck. Thomas and Miles were thrown into the jail at Exeter Castle. Richard signed his name to a certificate defending them. A group of friends put together a written testimony that every single charge levied against those men was false, that Salthouse and Hall had never disturbed the peace, that they had never disrupted any church service, and that they had certainly never challenged anyone to a duel. They'd simply attended a private Quaker meeting. Richard's name appears on that document. And by signing, he had drawn a target on his own back. Within a few months, Richard found himself in the same jail. Now, we're going to do a little story within a story because there's this woman that Richard was imprisoned with. She spoke, and the mayor himself admitted that what she said was very good and true. And then he had her arrested anyway. On the fourth of the next month, at four o'clock in the morning, a constable and a sergeant broke down the door to Margaret Kellum's house, then broke down the door to her bedroom. They refused to show a warrant. They dragged her out into the street. They tied a rope around her body, threw her onto the back of the horse, bound her arms behind her, tied her feet under the horse's belly, and carried her like that for 10 miles to Exeter. A tender woman of good education and considerable fortune, dragged behind a horse like a criminal, for saying things that the mayor himself admitted were true. Margaret ended up in the jail at Exeter Castle, and so did Richard, and so did a man named Thomas Hooton. The charge? Margaret Kellum was indicted because in a conversation about scripture, she said, and I'm paraphrasing this only slightly, that Jesus Christ is the Word of God, and that the scriptures are a declaration of the mind of God. That's it. That was the crime. And the judge, a man named Justice Vowell, when a friend asked that the law be allowed to take its proper course with Margaret, the judge's response was essentially, What would you have them hanged outright? And by them, he met Margaret Richard and Thomas Hooton hanged for saying that Christ is the word and that scripture declares the mind of God. A judge, a man who called himself a Christian, suggesting that people should hang for testifying about Jesus Christ. Now, I'm a Christian woman, and when I read that in the record, it boggles my mind and breaks my heart a little bit. The cruelty and the hypocrisy and the absolute inversion of everything faith is supposed to be about. These officials professed Christ with their words and persecuted his followers with their power. Richard sat in that cell for we don't know how long exactly. The record suggests it was at least several months. And then on the 13th of February, 1656, the Sheriff of Devonshire, Colonel John Coplestone, issued a warrant that said, quote, these are to will and require you on site thereof to set at liberty Richard Lippincott, Thomas Hooton, and Margaret Kellum. Set at liberty. Three people who never should have been imprisoned in the first place. Now, here's the part of the story where there are no records, but that I believe with everything in me. While Richard was in that jail cell in Exeter, Abigail was at home in Stonehouse with their children. Remembrance is about 14 at this point. John's about 11. Little Restore is barely two years old. And we know from the historical records of what happened in Plymouth during this time period that the Quaker women kept meeting for worship, even while their husbands and fathers and brothers were in prisons. Even knowing what had happened to Margaret Kellum, they kept gathering. They kept worshiping. I believe Abigail was one of those women. She knows that Margaret Kellum was dragged from her bed at four o'clock in the morning and tied to a horse. She knows her own husband is sitting in a jail cell in Exeter for the crime of believing what she now believes. She has a toddler and two older boys at home, and every week she walks to meeting anyway. Stubborn, reckless, maybe, or maybe she is a woman who has decided that there are things worth risking everything for. That her faith, her conscience, and her community of fellow believers are not negotiable, not for comfort, not for safety, not even for her children's security. I think about Abigail

Abigail And Unbreakable Courage

Crista Cowan 30:10

a lot because the records are full of Richard, his excommunication, his petitions, his imprisonment, his name on certificates and documents. But behind every one of those records, there's Abigail holding the family together, keeping the children fed and safe, making impossible calculations, the ones that mothers make when the world is falling apart around them. She is the reason this family survived, and she is the reason their faith persisted. I'm sure of it. Now, Richard is released from prison. He comes home to Abigail and the boys in Stonehouse, and sometime around this period, the exact date's a little fuzzy, another son is born. They name him Freedom. Freedom after prison, after being locked in a cell for saying what he believed about Christ and Scripture, after months of separation from his wife and his boys. Richard and Abigail hold this new baby and they name him Freedom. Are you keeping track? Remembrance, John, restore, freedom. Remember, God is gracious. We've been brought back, and now we are free. Two years later in 1657, a daughter is born. They name her Increase. And in 1660, another son, Jacob. Now, Increase is a beautiful name. The family is growing, their faith community is growing, their life in England is expanding. Increase. But Jacob, that's a different kind of a name. It's the first biblical name that they have chosen since John. And if you know the story of Jacob from the book of Genesis in the Bible, you know that Jacob is the man who wrestled with God all night long and refused to let go until God blessed him. He walked away from that encounter with a limp and a new name, Israel. But he got his blessing. I don't think it's an accident that Richard and Abigail named a son Jacob at this point in their life. This is a family that had been wrestling with churches, with governments, even with their own faith, and they have refused to let go. But that brief peace in England didn't last. Toward the end of 1660, the persecution of the Quakers intensified across the whole of England and Wales. Friends were being fined for not attending the established church. They were being whipped, put in stocks. And then this new tactic emerged. Authorities began pulling Quakers from their meetings and demanding that they swear oaths of allegiance and supremacy, loyalty oaths to the crown. Now remember when I told you about Quakers and oaths, they wouldn't swear. Not because they were disloyal, not because they had anything to hide, but because Jesus said, swear not at all. And they took that literally. They believed every oath, every single one, was forbidden by Christ's own words. They would affirm, they would promise, but they would not swear. And the authorities knew that. That's what makes it so sinister. They weren't asking Quakers to swear oaths of allegiance to the crown because they genuinely questioned their loyalty. They were using oaths as a trap. Swear, and you violate your conscience. Refuse, and we have legal grounds to throw you in prison again. On the 20th of January, 1661, Richard was taken from a Quaker meeting in Plymouth by the mayor and sent, again, to the high jail at Exeter. Again, same jail, different year, same persecution. Over the course of about two months, roughly 70 Quakers were arrested and crammed into the prisons at Exeter. Every Quaker man in Plymouth who was known to the authorities was locked up. Every single one of them. Which meant that the women were on their own again. And so here's what the women of the Plymouth Quaker community did this time. They kept meeting for worship every week, as if nothing had changed, as if their husbands and fathers and brothers weren't sitting in jail cells for doing exactly what they were doing. The mayor noticed, of course he did. So he summoned all the women and demanded to know why they were meeting in defiance of the king's command. And their answer, I wish I could have been there to hear it personally. Their answer was this we do so, not in contempt of authority, but in discharge of our duty to God, in whose fear we met to wait upon and worship him in spirit and in truth. And if in so doing we have broken the law, we are ready to show our submission by patient suffering. We're not defying you. We're obeying God. And if that means prison, we'll go willingly. So the mayor tried another approach. He asked them essentially to post bail for each other to guarantee each other's good behavior. And this time the women responded, we're not guilty of any bad behavior. The whole town knows how we live. Their courage, their calm,

The Oath Trap And Another Crossing

Crista Cowan 36:30

unflinching, deeply rooted courage so impressed the mayor that he let them go. I mean, he warned them that if they were brought before him again, he would send them to prison, but he let them go. I believe Abigail was in that room. I believe she was one of the women who looked at the mayor of Plymouth right in the eye and said, We're not afraid. We're not afraid of your prison. We answer to God. But after everything she went through and watching what she did in that moment, I don't know, staring down the mayor of Plymouth while he's threatening to throw you in prison, and then what happens to your children? She expressed her faith in a really, really powerful way that I find very admirable. Eventually, Richard was released from prison again. They've now been in England for about a decade, and things are only getting worse. So Richard and Abigail have a decision to make. They have six living children. Remembrance is now in his early 20s. Little Jacob is a toddler. And this family, um, do they make the decision altogether? I don't know. Do they stay? Do they keep their heads down as much as Quakers ever kept their heads down, which historically speaking, was not much? Do they keep attending meetings? Do they keep risking arrests? Do they keep trusting that God would preserve them? Or do they cross the ocean again? I just think about what that means. I mean, especially for Abigail. She's already made this crossing twice. Once as a bright-eyed teenager full of hope, once as a young mother fleeing excommunication with two small children. And now, now she's in her 40s with six children, and a husband who has proven repeatedly that he will not compromise his conscience, no matter what it costs their family. And she says, yes. Again, she agrees to get on another ship, a third Atlantic crossing with children ranging from toddler to young adult. I don't know what that conversation between Richard and Abigail sounded like, but I know this. By 1663, Abigail Lippincott was not a woman who was simply following her husband. She had spent a decade proving her own courage, attending meetings while he was in prison, standing with the women of Plymouth before the mayor, raising children in the middle of persecution without a husband around often. If she got on that ship, I think it's because she believed it was the right thing to do, not because Richard told her to. Preserved, kept safe, protected through everything. Remembrance, John, restore. Freedom, increase, Jacob, preserved. Remember, God is gracious. We were restored, we found freedom, we increased, we have wrestled with God, and through it all, we were preserved. It reads like a prayer. Through time, various descendants of the Lippincots have noted this. There's also been people that have noted that if you set aside John, I don't know why you would, but that the remaining names form an almost complete sentence of gratitude, and that the addition of one more son at the end named Israel would have completed it. It reads like this: remember, restore freedom, increase Jacob, and preserve Israel. One writer commented that this was doubtless accidental, having never been premeditated by their parents, but I'm not so sure about that. I think Richard and Abigail knew exactly what they were doing. Maybe not from the beginning. Remembrance was probably just a single act of gratitude from new parents in a new land. But by the time you're naming your fifth son preserved after two ocean crossings and two imprisonments, you know what story you're telling. You know what you're writing in the names of your children. And that I think is one of the most beautiful things I have ever found in a family tree. So

New Jersey And Liberty Of Conscience

Crista Cowan 42:10

the Lippincots are in Rhode Island. They're safe. They can worship freely for the first time in their lives together. No one is going to knock on their door at four in the morning. No one is going to drag them before a magistrate for attending a meeting. No one is going to demand that they swear an oath that they can't swear. They could have stayed there. But Richard Lippincott wasn't just looking for a place to hide. And in 1664, he found it. Here's what happened. The English had just taken control of the territory that had been the Dutch colony of New Netherlands. New land grants were opening up, and a group of Quaker investors, friends from Long Island, who shared Richard's vision of a community built on the principles of religious liberty, secured a patent for land along the Shrewsbury River in East New Jersey, about 25 miles south of Manhattan, right along the Atlantic coast. The local Lenape people knew the area as Navasink. And Richard didn't just join this venture, he became the largest shareholder. And the language of that patent makes my heart smile for Richard and Abigail, knowing everything that they had been through. The terms guaranteed, and I'm quoting, free liberty of conscience without any molestation or disturbance whatsoever in their way of worship. Free liberty of conscience without any molestation or disturbance. Whatsoever. This was the first land grant in New Jersey that explicitly protected religious practice. In Boston, Richard's conscience had been punished with excommunication. In England, his conscience had been punished with prison. In Rhode Island, his conscience was tolerated. But in New Jersey, in this patch of land along the Shrewsbury River, his conscience was protected, written into the founding document. It was guaranteed. This wasn't just a place to live. This was the thing that he had been crossing oceans for. And Richard didn't just move there, he built it. He served as a deputy of the patentees. He served as town overseer of Shrewsbury Township in 1669 and again in 1670. He wasn't a refugee anymore. He wasn't a prisoner. He wasn't an exile. He was a founder. The family settled on Passequiniqua Creek. I've been practicing that. It's a branch of the South Shrewsbury River. And here's the detail that when I first read it, there may have been a shout of joy. Before the first Quaker meeting house was built in Shrewsbury. Do you know where the friends held their meetings? For worship every week, it was in Richard and Abigail's home, their living room, their house. The man who had been excommunicated from the Puritan church in Boston, expelled, publicly shamed, cast out, was now hosting the church. His home was the meeting house for years. His table was where the community gathered. His roof was the shelter under which friends could worship in spirit and in truth without molestation or disturbance. If that's not one of the most beautiful stories of redemption, I don't know what is. And then in 1672, it gets even better. George Fox came to visit. The founder of the Society of Friends, the man whose teachings had given shape and language to everything Richard had been groping toward since the 1640s. The inner light, the direct relationship with God, the refusal to bow to any earthly authority in matters of conscience. George Fox himself traveled to Shrewsbury. And when the first official Quaker meeting for worship was established there in 1672, he visited the home of Richard Liquencott and Abigail Goody and worshiped there. That's the arc of this life. From exile to host, from outcast to founder, from a man who wanted a commission to speak to a man in whose home the truth could be spoken freely. And New Jersey made that possible. New Jersey, this specific colony with this specific patent, with this specific guarantee of liberty of conscience, was the place where everything Richard and Abigail had been searching for finally became real. It wasn't just where they lived. It was the answer to the prayer that they had been writing in their children's names for 20 years. Richard lived out the rest of his life there. 18 years in Shrewsbury, New Jersey. He divided land among his sons, including a thousand acres along the Cohansee River that he had secured from John Fenwick, parceled out to his five boys. Freedom got first choice of the lots. I like to think that Richard smiled at that. Freedom, choosing first, even though he wasn't the oldest. On November 25th, 1683, Richard Lippincott died. He was in his late 60s, and his will, written just two days before his death, begins with words that tell you he was clear-eyed and at peace, being in his right, perfect sense and memory. He left the bulk of his estate to Abigail, his loving wife, with the advice of friends. And Abigail, she lived another 14 years until 1697. She left behind, in the words of the historical record, a considerable estate. I've thought a lot about what a considerable estate means for a woman in the 17th century who outlived her husband for that many years. It means she didn't just survive after Richard. She managed, she built, she grew what they had. For 14 years, Abigail Lippincott, who at 18 years old from Northumberland, England, married a man from Devonshire in a tiny colony in Massachusetts. She ran the family's affairs, she maintained the homestead, and she remained a pillar of the Shrewsbury, New Jersey Quaker community. She was 80 years old when she died. Sometimes I just repeat things to myself to fully grasp the meaning because it's easy to skip past things. Abigail Goody Lippincott crossed the Atlantic Ocean three times, buried a daughter, stood firm while her husband was imprisoned, raised seven children through persecution and upheaval, helped found a community, hosted a faith in her living room, and outlived her husband by 14 years. And the historical record only gives her a handful of lines. That's why we do this. That's why we dig. Because the records will never tell us enough about the Abigails. But if we look closely, if we read between the lines, if we pay attention to what the documents imply rather than just what they say, she's

Legacy, Records, And Your Story

Crista Cowan 50:20

there. She was always there. And their story lived on in remembrance. Richard and Abigail's firstborn, the one whose names started the prayer, the child who was old enough to remember all of what his parents went through, because he went through it all with them. The excommunication and the ocean crossings and the years of uncertainty and persecution and his father's imprisonments and his mother's quiet defiance, all of it. By the time the family settled in Shrewsbury, remembrance was in his early 20s. He became a farmer and a landowner and a leader among the friends, a pillar of the community that his parents had helped to found. And he was almost certainly in the room where it happened, his parents' home, when George Fox visited in 1672. Imagine being Remembrance in that moment, 31 years old, standing in the house while your father hosts the very faith that nearly destroyed your family. Watching the founder of that faith walk through the door. What does that feel like when your name is Remembrance? Remembrance died in 1723 at about 82 years old, and his descendants, through a generation of men named Joseph and Samuel, and Joseph and Samuel, still in New Jersey, still Quaker, still keeping those meticulous records, eventually produced a woman named Elizabeth Lippincott. Elizabeth married a man named John Stafford Inman, both raised Quaker, both rooted in New Jersey. And after their fifth child was born, they did something that feels familiar. They moved. They questioned their faith and they made different choices about who they believed God was and what their relationship to him meant for their family. Elizabeth and John left New Jersey for New York and eventually settled in Medina County, Ohio. And there, when Elizabeth was about 82 years old, her great-granddaughter was born. R. Carey. You know, when I first found Richard and Abigail's story, I was deep in the research, like full genealogist mode, verifying sources, cross-referencing Quaker meeting minutes, checking published genealogies and family histories against original records. And I was so focused on the work of filling in the tree that I almost missed the story. It was the names that stopped me. I was doing the data entry, entering the children, entering the birth dates, entering the locations. And I typed remembrance and then restore and then freedom. Sure, they're unusual names for our time and place, but not really for theirs. But together, I knew they meant something more. I felt like I was reading a love letter from my 10 times great-grandparents, a letter they wrote across two decades of life, across two continents, across an ocean. A letter that said, we suffered, we endured, we were restored, we found freedom, and we were preserved all by the hand of God. And if I hadn't broken through the brick wall that was Carrie Inman, I never would have found Elizabeth Lippincott, and I never would have followed the Quaker Records trail back through Little Leg Harbor to Shrewsbury. I never would have found Richard and Abigail. I never would have read the names. I am a descendant of remembrance. Not restore, not freedom, not preserved, remembrance. The one whose name means don't forget. The one who was old enough to carry the whole story. The one whose name was the first word of the prayer. And I wonder sometimes if this is what I was supposed to do with my life. No, I don't. I know it is. Not just the genealogy, the part where I help you find names and dates and records, but the other part. The part where we turn those names and dates into stories. The part where we make sure the Abigails don't disappear from the record. The part where we hang a chart on the wall and point to a name and say, Let me tell you about her. Richard and Abigail wrote their story in the names of the children because that was the tool they had: a birth record, a name, a single word pressed into the identity of that baby carrying the weight of everything that they had survived. You have different tools. You have ancestry, you have DNA matches, you have census records and passenger lists and Quaker meeting minutes and newspapers and yes, even charts you can hang on your wall. But it's the same work. It's the work of remembrance. You don't need a finished tree. You just need to start telling the story. One name, one record, one conversation at Sunday dinner. And if you're currently fighting your own brick wall, just like I did with Carrie for all those years, go back and listen to episode one, where I tell you the story of exactly how I tore down that wall and found her. And if you're watching this on YouTube, leave a comment below with the most unusual or meaningful name or series of names you found in your own family tree. And until next time, remember. Studio sponsored by Ancestry.