September 13, 2011

A Quaker Family Album

Location: 1466 Susquehannock Dr, Drumore, PA 17518, USA
Cross-posted on my wife's blog, Adventures of a Costumer.

Yesterday's post recounted what we know about how William T. Clark left his family's farm near Chestnut Level, Drumore Township, Lancaster County, to join Col. Hambright's regiment in Lancaster on September 12, 1861.  That very same day  less than a mile away in Chestnut Level village, a daughter was born to Edwin and Margaret Shoemaker, and they named her Anne Kensel.  Fifteen years later in 1876, Annie's uncle presented her with an album, which she filled (or he had filled for her) with twenty-seven family photographs from the 1860s.

Over 130 years later, the album was listed on Ebay, and I purchased it as a Christmas present for my girlfriend (now wife).  I didn't really know what I was getting, but it has turned out to be a very interesting photographic documentation of an extended Quaker family in southern Lancaster County.

Family album belonging to Annie K. Shoemaker


The album contains photos of many of Annie's parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and other family members--Shoemakers, Kents, Boltons, Lamborns, Kensels, Smiths--most of whom lived near Liberty Square, another Drumore Township village just west of Chestnut Level.  Some were even very close neighbors of William T. Clark.  Almost all were buried at the Drumore Friends Meeting cemetery in Liberty Square.  I haven't mapped out the genealogical connections explicitly, but cursory research makes it pretty easy to jump from one person to another through siblings, children, and marriages. 

Drumore Friends Meeting, with cemetery in background (Source)
Detail of Drumore Township map of Bridgens 1864 Atlas.  Many of the people pictured in the album lived on farms denoted on this map, including W. L. Lamborn and Jason Bolton north of Liberty Square, George Smith south of Liberty Square, and Edwin Shoemaker (Annie's father) in Chestnut Level next to Rev. L. C. Rutter.
Another interesting question would be the families' opinions on slavery and what they knew of the Underground Railroad, as southern Lancaster County near the Susquehanna River and the Maryland line was supposed to be a hotbed of activity.  As mentioned in yesterday's post, we know a fairly extreme anti-war wing of the Democratic Party was active near Chestnut Level, so that might have dissuaded some activity.  However, one of the Quaker men pictured in the album was W. L. Garrison Kent, a rather pronounced statement of sympathies by his parents who upon his birth in 1839 named him in honor of the outspoken abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.  (But, then again, if you are a fugitive slave, you might wonder if the house of the people who just named their child after William Lloyd Garrison is the first place a slave kidnapper would look.)

Tomorrow's post will feature a couple surprise discoveries about the album, but for now I'll just remark that the through this album we can see the Quaker community beginning to lose the cohesion as a sectarian(?) community that the Mennonites and Amish have more or less maintained to the present day.  Wealth and education seemed to have begun to draw the younger generation of Quakers away from the simple farm life.

Research on the album's younger Quakers shows many of them leaving Liberty Square for opportunities in cities (including Annie, whose family moved to Lancaster city) or the West and becoming much more liberal in their Quaker faith.  Also, this appears to be the generation where traditional Quaker garb went out of style, as we can see a clear difference in dress between the older and younger generation of women.  I'll have to ask my wife for a more thorough assessment of their fashion and wealth.



Enjoy viewing the album, and check back tomorrow for the surprises to which I alluded earlier.   

See also:
Photographs of Drumore Friends Meeting

5 comments:

  1. A fellow Lancaster County expat in Pittsburgh (whom my wife and I have just so happened to sit next to at the church we've joined) just contacted me to recommend a book, _Liberty Square Observed and Noted_, which he read as his maternal grandparents attended Chestnut Level Presbyterian Church. It apparently reflects on life in Liberty Square in the mid-twentieth century, a potentially interesting companion to what we're learning about mid-nineteenth-century Liberty Square.

    http://books.google.com/books?id=jymZPQAACAAJ&dq=liberty+square+observed+and+noted&hl=en&ei=Rm5xTujEJobX0QGgzIGJCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA

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  2. Another update: One man pictured in the album and a couple of the other family members not pictured were granted conscientious objector status in 1862.

    Drumore Township had six conscientious objectors: 3079 Amos Bowman, 3096 Benjamin Cutler, 3097 Aquila Lamborn, 3106 Isaac Shoemaker, 3082 George Smith, 3105 Howard Smith

    http://www.genpa.org/CivilWarConscientiousObjec.html

    http://www.genpa.org/CivilWarCO2A_J_L_c.html

    Note that Aquila Lamborn's younger brother, William Lewis Lamborn (pictured in the album), joined Company E, 79th Pennsylvania, in September 1861.

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  3. I am only finding this now--and the Adobe Flash version of the album is no longer supported. I am a direct descendant of Aquilla's brother George Smedley Lamborn. I would love to see the photos (I see some of them in your post about donations). Do you have them online in some other form?

    I have a picture that seems to be of a Union soldier that had belonged to my grandmother Esther Elizabeth Lamborn Palmer or her sister Helen Lamborn--a case photo behind glass--and wonder if he one of the Lamborns, or another family member. I'd be happy to send you a scan by email. As far as I know, all of my direct ancestors were conscientious objectors.

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    1. Hi Cindy, thank you for the comment! Here is a newer link to the photo album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/m9GhncfWCu6iU2859

      If you have a chance, please send me more about the photo that you have at vince@lancasteratwar.com.

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