The Concept of Membership

In the early years of the Quaker movement there was no ‘club’ or formal organisation to which one could enrol or apply for membership (Rules of Discipline etc. 1834: 59–61, Vann 1969a: 122ff.). The so-called ‘Society’ simply comprised an association of persons who shared common beliefs and who were prepared to accept the consequences of association regardless of hardships and penalties that might arise because of membership. To become a Friend a person needed to be ‘convinced’, recruited and/or enticed into membership, having considered and accepted the merits of Friends’ religious tenets and after pledging to follow and engage with an emerging set of rules that governed social and religious behaviour (Vann 1969a: 39ff.). A person became a Friend by the common consent of those who were already Friends and remained so throughout their lives unless they resigned, died, or were disowned by fellow Friends. All first-generation members of our four families were, by definition, recruited into the world of Friends.

Once a person was convinced and accepted into membership, if and when he/she married and had children, the membership status of their children became an issue that required resolution (Rules of Discipline etc. 1834: 137–38, Holman 1939: 102–10). In the early years of the Society, children of parents who were both members were not regarded as bona fide members, but they were encouraged to attend meetings for worship and educated in the ways of Friends. As they approached adulthood, having constantly been under observation by the membership, children were assessed as to whether they had integrated spiritually and otherwise into the Quaker community. When children passed this assessment, they could be invited to participate in meetings for business, but otherwise they were left to decide whether they wished to be regarded as members. From 1737, starting with the London Meeting, the concept of birthright membership was formally introduced into Quaker communities. This meant that all children born to Quaker parents automatically became members of the father’s meeting. Later, rules were formalised for other situations. For example, if a person made an application to become a Friend and he/she already had children, the children did not qualify for automatic membership. However, such children could be accepted into the community by application of a parent and at the behest of the relevant meeting, with the proviso that the marriage had been in accordance with the rules of the Society, for example the couple were not first cousins and so on. Sometimes members resigned or were disowned but this did not preclude the possibility of rejoining later, by application.

In respect of this project, all first-generation members of each of the four families became members of the Society by means of convincement and their children, for purposes of this exercise, have been treated as birthright members.

Exiting Membership

The reasons why members left or abandoned the Society of Friends are well documented (Greaves 1997: 332ff., Vann 1969a:128ff.).¹ Members of the Cooper, Lecky, Duckett and Watson families who were Friends, as with those in other Quaker families, left for a variety of reasons. Some resigned, others, through non-participation, opted out without notice. Many were disowned by their meetings because they infringed rules of the Society. Those who were disowned due to serious offences included: Friends marrying first cousins; those ‘marrying out’, that is, marriage to a person who was not a Friend and formalising it by utilising a priest of another denomination; likewise, Quaker couples who chose to marry utilising priests from other denominations; Friends who were in serious debt; Friends who were prone to drunkenness and poor public behaviour; and those who consistently failed to attend meetings of worship. While disownment was generally enacted quickly for marriage offences, meetings tended to be less inclined to evict members for other types of infringements, especially where they nurtured hope that the person or persons charged with the infringements could be redeemed. In many cases the process of eviction could take several months during which time the meetings to which the accused belonged appointed members to work towards his/her redemption.

Longevity of Membership

The next step was to determine how long family members remained within the compass of Friends. Pursuing this aspect can be challenging as there it is no easy way to establish the facts. A member could terminate membership in the following ways: death, resignation, disownment, and immigration from Ireland. In respect of immigration, while many Friends who migrated remained Friends, for the purposes of this study loss of a member from an Irish meeting because of migration is considered in a national context so that what one nation lost another gained.

There are several approaches to the problem of confirming membership. Firstly, the Friends’ Library in Dublin holds an alphabetical list of members who were disciplined and/or disowned with a description of the offence and the date when actions were taken. The list can be consulted but serves only as a guide. It is not complete; and the names in the list are not attached to a secondary source (e.g. a father or wife) making it difficult to identify family associations.

Next, when the date of death for the person-of-interest is known, one can consult the Friends’ death and burial registers for his/her meeting. The last column in these registers was supposed to have been used by the clerks of the meetings to enter a note if the person was a non-member at the time of death. The problem with this is that clerks sometimes did not make the appropriate note and, even when they did, there was no indication when the person ceased to be a member. Well might we ask why non-members were sometimes listed in Quaker death records and buried in Quaker cemeteries? In fact, anyone could apply to a meeting responsible for administering a Quaker burial ground for permission to be buried there. It was up to the membership of that meeting to decide whether to allow the burial. In practice, most applications from non-members were submitted by persons who had been members previously and they were generally looked on kindly (Rules of Discipline etc. 1834: 226).

Where there is a ‘non-member’ entry in the register of deaths and burials, we still need to determine if the person had been a member and, if so, when he/she had left the Society. This is done by searching the congregation notes, generally a long and tedious process. If there is an entry for a person of interest in the Friends’ Lists of Disownments one can use the date to narrow the search.⁵ When the person-of-interest has no entry in the last column of the list of deaths and burials, we still cannot assume that he/she died in membership. The clerk may have omitted to make the appropriate entry in the record book, or the personof-interest may have emigrated and, if so, we need to know when and to where. Once again, the congregation notes need to be checked starting with a search of the records for the decade preceding the persons-of-interest’s death. If there are records for the person-of-interest in this cohort then it is fairly safe to assume that he/she died in membership. If there are no records for him/her in that decade, then the search must proceed until the issue is resolved.

Documentation for Friends who migrated is available in the form of migration notes in the congregation minutes. They may turn up using the ‘migration’ search option in Find My Past, but not always. Many migration notes remain hidden as notes in the minutes of the meetings for business and must be sought from the congregation minutes using the name search option.

Data Processing

Having gathered the requisite basic data for individuals comprising each family within each generation, they were tabulated prior to analysis. To have some measure of the relative degree of family participation in Friends’ affairs an index has been created, based on the average length of time individual families remained within the compass of Friends. For an induvial in family A, if X _n = the length of time he/she was in membership then the average time of membership for his/her family would be (Ʃ X_n)/C where C = the number of qualified members of the family and where n ranges from 1 to C. The rub here is in choosing who were the qualified candidates and how one goes about calculating X_n. As we will see shortly, the survival rate of birthright children in many of the families was poor, children dying in infancy or in early childhood. If they were included in the data used to calculate the indices, the results would be heavily biased downwards. Rather, priority has been given to members who were of sufficient age to contribute to their respective meetings, those who were 18 years and over. Thus, members who died before they turned 18 years have not been included in the index calculations. Likewise, members who migrated overseas were excluded where their status as members offshore could not be reliably established or estimated.

Results of the Analysis

The major aims of this part of the project were to assemble and summarise the demographic data for each generation, determine the attrition rates associated with each of the four families, and to gain some idea of the longevity of membership by calculating average years of membership, for each generation, for both male and female Friends. The analysis produced copious data: for example, the Watsons family consisted of some 210 persons belonging to 30 families spanning seven generations. Likewise, 281 persons belonging to 47 families of the Lecky family were processed. For purposes of presentation the results of the analysis have been summarised in graphical form by generation.

Membership by Sex and Generation

Results for each of the families are presented in Figs 2–5. The data in these graphs comprise numbers of persons, by generation, in each family, who were Friends either by convincement and/or by birthright. Taking the Watson family as an example, the total numbers of Friends in Watson-related families, in say the third generation, was 80. The first entry in each of the graphs is for a person or persons who were ‘convinced’, and thereafter everyone incorporated into them were birthright Friends.

Fig. 2.

Numbers of persons associated with each generation of the Watson family.

Fig. 3.

Numbers of persons associated with each generation of the Lecky family.

Fig. 4.

Numbers of persons associated with each generation of the Duckett family.

Fig. 5.

Numbers of persons associated with each generation of the Cooper family.

Clearly there is no patterned behaviour in these graphs. What one can conclude is that there was little difference in male and female representations for each generation although, in the case of the Cooper family, male representation predominates during the last generation. Peak representations occur in the third generation for the Watson families, the third and sixth generations for the Lecky families, and the fourth generation for both the Duckett and Cooper families. And while there is an upward trend in population numbers for Lecky, Duckett and Cooper families, the opposite is true for the Watson family. Three of the four families have strong downward trends in their last generations, reflecting the progressive attrition of members from the bosom of Friends. But, in terms of population numbers, we conclude that each family had its own unique demographic footprint.

Child and Youth Morbidity

Results are presented in Figs 6–9. The percentages were calculated as follows: if N = (M + F) = total no persons in each generation where M = no males and F = no females; and if M1 = total no males who died under the age of 18 and F1 = total no of females who died under the age of 18, the calculation for males = (M1/M) * 100, for females = (F1/F) * 100 and Total = ((M1 + F1)/N) * 100.

Fig. 6.

Percentage number of persons who died under the age of 18 years in the Watson family, by generation.

Fig. 7.

Percentage number of persons who died under the age of 18 years in the Lecky family, by generation.

Fig. 8.

Percentage number of persons who died under the age of 18 years in the Duckett family, by generation.

Fig. 9.

Percentage number of persons who died under the age of 18 years in the Cooper family, by generation.

Like the previous series of graphs each family has a unique footprint. What can be said is that the mortality rate for the under-18 cohort was significant for all four families: above 20% for both males and females of all families for most generations. Again, we see that the mortality rate for males was generally higher than for females except for parts of the Watson profile where females just surpassed males during the second generation and ran in concert with males during the fourth and fifth generations. Notably mortality rates appear to have been at their worst during the third generation, particularly for males, for all four families.

Rates of Attrition

The attrition rate R can be calcuated by simply dividing the number of persons who left or were disowned by the Society by the number of eligible persons who were members in his/her generation. However we know that a significant number of Friends died before the age of 18 years, Friends who never played a role in meeting governance. As mentioned above, it would seem prudent to exclude this cohort from the attrition calculations. Thus, if AM is the number of males who left (or who were denied by) their meeting, AF the number of females then the membershp eligible for the attrition calculations will be, for males M – M1, for females F – F1, totals N – (M1 + F1). The attrition rate for males, expressed as a percentage becomes (AM/(M – M1)) * 100, for females (AF/(F – F1)) * 100 and for totals ((AM + AF)/(N – (M1 + F1))) * 100. The results of these calculation are depicted in Figs 10–13.

Fig. 10.

Percentage number of persons over the age of 17 who left or were disowned by Friends and who were members of the Watson family, by generation.

Fig. 11.

Percentage number of persons over the age of 17 who left or were disowned by Friends and who were members of the Lecky family, by generation.

Fig. 12.

Percentage number of persons over the age of 17 who left or were disowned by Friends and who were members of the Duckett family, by generation.

Fig. 13.

Percentage number of persons over the age of 17 who left or were disowned by Friends and who were members of the Cooper family, by generation.

While the patterns for each family have their own character, we see that in general the rates of attrition for both males and females for the Watson, Lecky and Duckett families tend to increase over time, although there is some attrition downwards in the last generations of the Watson and Duckett families. In general the rates of attrition are consistantly lower for females than males. Given the evidence that we have from historical sources, the behaviour of the Watson, Lecky and Duckett curves are in line with what one would expect. Attrition increases over time as individuals abandon Friends and enter mainstream society.

The behaviour of the Cooper chart is similar. Here we see generally increasing rates of attrition to the fourth generation, though the rate of loss is much higher for males than their female counterparts. What these graphs suggests is that the attrition rate for all families was ongoing and consistant towards complete abandonment of Friends. This process proceeded differently for each family. Thus, for the Watson and Lecky families abandonment was particlarly dramatic in the sixth generation while the peaks occured in the fourth generations of the Cooper and Duckett families. During the sixth generation the Watsons lost some 70% of its members. Those who left rejoined the established church, mingled with the aristocracy, became magistrates and served in the armed forces, as did members of the other families around the same time.

Once through the evangelistic period and into the early eighteenth century, Friends turned inwardly to beef up their numbers, relying increasingly on their children to become members and/or to maintain membership. As it turned out this strategy failed in the long term and it certainly failed in respect of our four families, as illustrated in Fig. 14. The data derives from Tables 3–6 below. The number of children born into each generation who stayed with Friends has been expressed as a percentage of the total number of children from that generation who were eligible to be Friends. These data have been divided between male and female for comparison. The results tend to reflect what happened in the broader Quaker community. Replenishment of membership through children of Friends generally plummeted from the third generation, though there were differences in the rates of decline between males and females, as we have seen, females tending to be more persistent.

Fig. 14.

Member replenishment through Friends’ children, by generation.

It is not clear why women folk appear to have been more reluctant than males to abandon Friends. Possibly it may be attributed to their economic and social status, being in the main more sedentry and at the behest of a society shaped by males and who had undue influence over their destinies. Extreme conservatism may have been another factor, though there was plenty of conservatism among their male counterparts.

Longevity of Membership

The average lengths of memberships in years, by generation, for each of the families are depicted in Figs 15–18. This time we have four graphs that have some similarity with one another though, once again, the Cooper chart is slightly at variance with the others. The Watson, Lecky and Duckett charts are fairly horizontal, with the averages for the Watsons ranging between 30 and 59 years, those for the Lecky and Duckett charts, between 40 and 50 years. The trend is generally upward initially for the Cooper chart for both males and females, but diverges from the third generaation, females dropping away sharply and then rising again, males falling away towards the fifth generation. Downward trends for both males and females in the later generations of the Watson and Lecky families are also in evidence. Notably females from all the families, for most generations, had on average greater longevity than their male counterparts. There were still members of the Watson and Lecky families in membership long after there were none left in the other two families, though by the middle of the nineteenth century the four families were completely divorced from the Religious Society of Friends.

Fig. 15.

Average length of time, in years, Friends of the Watson family spent in membership, by generation.

Fig. 16.

Average length of time, in years, Friends of the Lecky family spent in membership, by generation.

Fig. 17.

Average length of time, in years, Friends of the Duckett family spent in membership, by generation.

Fig. 18.

Average length of time, in years, Friends of the Cooper family spent in membership, by generation.

Social Mobility

Before tackling this thorny subject, we need first to define the term ‘social mobility’ as it can be applied to an Irish context. The phrase is usually applicable to a society that was/is stratified. Each stratum has implied social status identified by a bundle of characteristics that differentiate it from component strata while the strata themselves are hierarchical with respect to social status. Thus, the stratum with the most respected status sits at the top of the pyramid, for example aristocrats, and the one with least status is relegated to the bottom, e.g.for example menial workers. This model, at a general level, is a blanket description of how Irish society was structured throughout the period we are dealing with.⁶ Social mobility involved the movement of persons and/or families between strata.

While social stratification is widely recognised as a characteristic of Irish society the definitions of the strata themselves have always been a matter of debate compounded because of the significant and evolving socio-economic and political changes that occurred in Ireland.

Secondly, how do we define social status? The most obvious and ready indicator of social status is occupation (Glass 1954: 5–6, Isichei 1970: 172). Occupational records are available from a variety of sources including wills, land records, marriage agreements, newspapers, census and taxation records. However there has never been a universally accepted taxonomy of occupations. Consequently, descriptions of occupations can be and are often misleading and/or ambiguous. Some examples will suffice to illustrate the problem. The oft-cited terms ‘gentleman’ and ‘esquire’ do not describe occupations; they are social status descriptors. No one appointed gentlemen or esquires: the titles evolved to their owners through social mobility and a general recognition of the titles by their peers (Vann 1969a: 61, Keenan 2002: 22–24).⁷ In fact, anybody, in theory at least, could give themselves these titles, but in practice the impetus to do so was kept in check by those that already had them (Barnard 2004: 53). Again, the term ‘gentleman’, as it applied to some who claimed the title, was sometimes regarded with distain by others who held the same rank and who considered themselves ‘real gentlemen’. Indeed, in Ireland ‘gentlemen’ fell into categories such as ‘half-mounted gentlemen’, ‘gentlemen every inch of them’ and ‘gentlemen to the backbone’ (Maxwell 1949: 30, Barnard 2004: 70).⁸

The occupation of ‘merchant’, a term bandied around in the literature, was used to describe a broad range of businesses. There were wholesale and retail merchants, and merchants who mixed both. Wholesalers generally identified themselves by prefixing their occupation with their specialty such as ‘tea merchant’ or ‘corn merchant’. Some merchants were extremely wealthy and claimed one or other of the title’s ‘gentleman’ or ‘esquire’.⁹ In the manufacturing domain, once again some mixed the manufacture of goods with retail shopkeeping.

Among descriptions of rural occupations, one finds terms such as ‘rural worker’, ‘farmers’, ‘husbandmen’, and ‘yeomen’, but these are not always differentiated and are sometimes used indifferently, making it difficult to apply social ranking except at a base level.¹⁰

Sometimes one finds multiple but differing descriptions of occupation/social status for individuals. If the descriptions are consistent enough, they can be used as evidence of social status and/or social mobility during the person’s lifetime, otherwise stability of social status; but equally, inconsistent data can prove difficult to interpret without deployment of common sense.¹¹ Extravagant use of terms such as ‘Esquire’ occur occasionally and invite confirmation from other sources. Such an instance occurs in the 1858 edition of Burke’s Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry etc., where individuals cited in the Duckett and Lecky genealogies are generously peppered with the term (Burke 1858: vol. 1, 321–22; 677).¹²

Establishing the veracity of occupational/social status allocated to family members remains a priority, but it is equally important to ensure the reliability and accuracy of the family genealogies. Those utilised in the current exercise are derived from a variety of sources. While Friends’ records are widely recognised as being accurate and reliable, they do not have universal coverage of the period we are dealing with. Burke’s publications include genealogies for all four families and, collectively, they bring us up and into the twentieth century. Unlike Friends’ records, Burke’s renditions need to be regarded with caution as they are not devoid of personal bias and factual errors (Coutts and Watson 2019: 4–5). Thus, in the case of the Watson family there was an aborted attempt at one stage to link the family with the aristocracy (Coutts 2016a: 328), and notably there has been a reluctance on the part of some of the family biographers to admit their links with Friends.¹³

The Burke’s genealogy for the Duckett family provides us with another example, perhaps not dissimilar to what the Watsons attempted to do in trying to establish links with the aristocracy. The Duckett genealogy has been regurgitated, and circulated widely in the historical literature, without, it seems, critical evaluation. Thus, in the Burke’s renditions we are told that Thomas Duckett (3215) of Philipstown, married Judith, daughter of Pierce de la Poer or Power, while Friends’ records have him marrying a person called Anne.¹⁴ The Burke’s versions, from 1842, have the authority of no other than the well-known Irish genealogist Sir William Betham. However, in December 1920, Philip Crossle, another Irish genealogist, working with the de la Poer genealogy on behalf of a client, consulted the will of Pierce de la Poer (dated 1668).¹⁵ He discovered that Pierce had only one daughter called Ruth and a yet-to-be-born child at the time the will was made. A year later Piece was dead (will proved May 1669). This, together with other misgivings, led him to question the veracity of this part of the Burke’s genealogy. In fact, we know from Friends’ records that Thomas had his first child in 1660, so that he married long before the death of Pierce and the birth of Pierce’s second child. Thus Judith, or for that matter Ruth, were and are not part of the Duckett genealogy. Instead, it seems preferable to accept that Thomas’s wife was Anne, as per Friends’ records.

Another approach to rank individuals is to use their annual incomes for the purpose of measuring social standing. This method has limited application because, firstly, financial data are not available for most persons that belonged to the middle and lower ranks of society; and, secondly, wealth was not necessarily an indicator of social status; it was, in general, more determined by birthright and peer acknowledgement. It has been suggested that an annual income of £40 a year would qualify a person to assume the status of ‘gentleman’, but in fact many so-called ‘gentlemen’ resident in Ireland were penniless and unable to support the lifestyle that accompanied the title.¹⁶ More readily acceptable as a ‘gentleman’ was a person who was settled in a rural environment, lived in a house of large size with associated demesne, and who paid attention to such things as dress, conversation, hospitality and who participated in public duties (Barnard 2004: 55).

Social Hierarchy Table

For purposes of analysis, we need to adopt or create an occupational taxonomy that can be used to infer social status. Ideally, we would like to be able to allocate an occupation/social status tag to each member of the families we are dealing with in this article, as well as to the families of their spouses. A literature review was conducted to search for an appropriate methodology, applicable to the Irish Friends. Several authors have addressed the problem of relating occupations of Friends to social status, but interest has tended to focus on Friends resident in England who were among the earliest members of the sect (Cole 1957, Vann 1969a, 1969b, 1970, Hurwich 1970, Isichei 1970, Anderson 1979, Reay 1980, Vann and Eversley 1992). The authors have approached the issue from different perspectives and utilised a variety of data sets promoting much debate about the relative merits of their analyses (Reay 1980: 56ff.). Vann and Eversley were the first to include Irish Friends with their English counterparts in a broader analysis of Quaker demography, spanning some 200 years from 1650; but finding a deficiency of occupational information in Friends records for Ireland they did not attempt to analyse the Irish data (Vann and Eversley 1992: 48). In summary, while none of these studies provide a tailored template for analysing the Irish data, they are of assistance in enabling an appropriate model to be engineered to process them.

Vann, with some serious reservations, devised a taxonomy for the occupations of early English Quakers, placing them into one of nine hierarchical categories: ‘gentlemen’, ‘agriculture’, ‘professional’, ‘wholesale traders’, ‘retail traders’, ‘worsted weavers’, ‘woolcombers’, ‘artisans and laborers’ and ‘unknown’ (Vann 1969: 60). He was acutely aware of the difficulties of defining occupations and relating them to social status, ensuring that each category was carefully described. Gentlemen he saw as those who were eligible to hold office, such as mayor or JP, members of the military holding the rank of captain or above and those who had obtained university degrees. He distinguished between wholesale and retail traders, and he arbitrarily decided that yeomen were those who made their living by working at least 20 acres of their own lands. Farmers were persons who worked leased land and husbandmen were those who worked the land but were neither lessee or landowners (Vann 1969: 64–65).¹⁷ We learn from Vann’s experiences, reinforced by Isichei elsewhere, that allocating occupation and/or social status based on a single source can be tenuous and that corroborative evidence is best sought before tagging is finalised (Isichei 1970: 177).

Isichei looked at the relationships between occupation and social status for Quakers during the Victorian era and, like Vann, encountered similar nomenclature problems. Her hierarchical lists are simpler and more inclusive. She proposed that occupations be divided between four classes. For example, Class 1, for the period 1840–41, included gentlemen, bankers, merchants, professionals, landowners, brewers, maltsters, millers, and tanners. Class IV included unskilled workers, agricultural labourer’s, machine maker and sailors (Isichei 1970: 288).

Twenty years later Vann and Eversley revisited the problem of analysing occupations. This time they went part way by grouping separately occupations of English Quakers resident in rural and urban environments, each under seven major headings, but without direct reference to social status. Their categories included agriculture, textiles, food, leather, professional and commercial spanning the period beginning in 1650 to 1849 (Vann and Eversley 1992: 70–71). In their taxonomy gentlemen, members of the clergy, merchants, physicians are all included under the heading ‘Professionals’, while wholesale and retail are listed under ‘Commerce’.

For purposes of this exercise, and while guided by what has been done before, no attempt has been made to devise a universal nomenclature. Instead, a limited version has been selected that specifically addresses the occupational data available for each of the four families. Wherever possible multiple sources have been located to infer occupation/social status for individuals. Again, it has been assumed that single females held the same or similar social status to that of their fathers. The taxonomy displayed in Table 2 below is tentative, subject to revision as new data becomes available.

While our sample comprises individuals who were Quakers or Quaker-related, the social status allocations set out in the table are those that were likely to have been recognised by members of the wider community. There was social stratification within the Quakers communities, based essentially on wealth, and Table 2 would no doubt look quite different if it had been created based on an introspective view of how Friends perceived social status (Isichei 1969: 174).

Occupations have been divided into nine social status categories based on information derived from contemporary resources. However, the boundaries are not set in stone and allocation of a few individuals to specific categories remains problematical. Farmers, yeomen, husbandmen have been treated as a single entity (Category 5) as there appears to be no rational basis for distinguishing between them in Ireland. Individuals who were allocated to Category 5 were, in general, leaseholders of lands more than 50 acres and oft times much larger allotments entitling them to vote and thereby giving lessees a voice in local politics.¹⁸ A so-called ‘landowner’ could be a person who held lands by way of freehold, either directly from the Crown or after 1850, by means of an Act of parliament where, upon application, leasehold could be converted to freehold. Alternatively, he could be a leaseholder securing his tenure by way of ‘lease for lives’, usually in perpetuity, but where income was derived by sub-leasing the lands.¹⁹

Quaker ministers, while held in high regard by members of their sect, received little or no recognition or respect from members of the wider community until the nineteenth century. Consequently, what they or their parents owned, leased, or did by way of occupation tended to determine their social status.

Again, it is evident from Quaker tithe data that some Friends who have been classified as ‘gentlemen’ or ‘esquire’ (based on reliable documentary evidence) could equally be classed as ‘farmers’. And in some instances, there appears to be little differences in social standing between ‘gentlemen’ and ‘wholesale merchants’, where they are defined as such. Further, the term ‘merchant’ is often used without descriptive details, so that it is uncertain whether they were wholesale and/or retail merchants. In such instance’s other sources of information and/or consideration of established social context were utilised to resolve these types of issue.

Results of the Analysis

The occupational and social status data for each married individual belonging to the four families, as far as they can be determined, are summarised in Tables 3–6. They are arranged with males on the left, females on the right. Thus occupational/social status data pertaining to husbands of female members of the families are included with male family members, those for the fathers of the wives of male family members will be found on the female sides of the tables. In considering the social status of female family members, as noted in the foregoing, we have assumed that before marriage they would have held a similar status to that of their fathers. Using these data, the occupational/social status for the married males of each family have been summarised by generation as percentages (Tables 7). In this form one can observe, firstly, the predominant occupations associated with each generation, secondly how these changed through time and, thirdly, the attrition rates, shown in bold script together with growing numbers of persons who were never Friends (shown in bold italics).

Women family members who married have been divided between three status categories, namely those who improved their social standing, preserved the status quo, or diminished it through marriage. The results are presented as percentages by generation (Table 8).

The data from the marriage charts suggest that, for all four families, the drift from Friends began in the fourth generation of each family, intensifying thereafter, so that by the seventh generation divorce was complete. Following the male lines of each family, we perceive that from early on the Coopers, Leckys and Ducketts enjoyed superior social status, either as esquires or gentlemen, though the Leckys diversified a little, some members aligning with mercantile, manufacturing and professional categories. Members of the Watsons, by contrast, were much more diversified in social ranking, but during the fifth to the seventh generation they too, consistently, moved to join the ‘the quality’, the upper echelons of society as ‘gentlemen’ and ‘esquires’.

While it cannot be said from these data that the move to abandon Friends was promoted from a conscious desire by the families to elevate their social rank, there is little doubt that, in practice, each family did manage to either maintain and, in some instances improve, their social status during the process of abandoning Friends. What is evident from the review of the historical sources is that by the middle of the nineteenth century members all four families were comfortably established in the rural squirearchy of Ireland, complete with ‘big houses’, servants, tenants, and they held positions of authority such as magistrates, plus, in some instances, kennels where they kept their sporting dogs for the local hunts (Table 9). The four families had always been among the wealthiest in their Quaker communities and, true to form, they followed an established pattern of abandoning Friends and gravitation to the established church (Isichei 1970: 142).

The data pertaining to the social status of women family members who married are limited, making it difficult to generalise and to identify patterned behaviour. Certainly, there is no evidence from these data that marriages were deliberately arranged to elevate social status. Indeed, many of the marriages resulted in social devolution, slight in most instances, as with women members of the Duckett family. Of the four families the Watsons seems to have managed more marriages where social status was balanced between the families of bride and groom. However, there is no evidence currently to determine whether this was deliberate or fortuitous behaviour on the part of the family.