Phebe Comly's father side.
Phebe5, Henry4, Henry3, Henry2, Henry Comly I (Emigrant)
Phebe Comly was the daughter of four generations of men named Henry Comly. Her great-great-grandfather Henry Comly (1615-1684) was born in Somerset County in England and after the death of his first wife, married Joan Tyler, Henry junior’s mother. Leaving the now grown children from his first wife, Henry sailed in 1683 for America with his new wife and their young son. They were part of William Penn’s famous “fleet of 23” that sailed from England in the 1680s. The Comly family sailed in November of 1683 on the ship The Samuel and Mary. The year before, in October of 1682, on the ship Lamb was four-year-old Agnes Heaton with her parents and four siblings. When 21, Henry would marry the 17-year-old Agnes in at the Middletown Quaker Meeting in the borough of Langhorne, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. But between that marriage and Phebe Comly, the mother of Rachel Field, would come several generations of Quakers, the Stricklands and Routledges on her mother’s side; the Gilberts and Comlys on her father’s side.
Henry Comly II (1674-1724) Phebe's great-grandfather
Henry junior’s parents did not survive long in the new world. Father Henry died within a year and his mother Joan, who had remarried Joseph English, died but seven years later in 1689, leaving 15-year-old Henry an orphan, the legal heir to his father’s estate. In 1690 William Paxson and Jonathan Scaife, both of whom would be among the witnesses to his marriage in 1695, were made his Guardians and evidently the only property left him was that in Warminster township in Bucks County. Henry became rather prominent in the area thanks in part to his father-in-law and his brother-in-law, Robert Heaton senior and junior. He obtained two tracts of land totally 900 acres on which he built, in 1704, “Green Briar Spring” in the Manor of Moreland where he and his bride, Agnes Heaton, raised eleven children between 1696 and 1722. Click here for a map showing the approximate location and size of the Manor of Moreland. While it was eventually sold in 1866, the Manor house stood for many years, evidently at least into the 1920s when it was pictured in George Comly’s 1939 book on the family. George Comly’s book, in the Appendix, gives some colorful descriptions of life in Moreland through writings of Henry’s nephews.
Agnes Heaton (1677-1743) - Phebe's great-grandmother
& her father Robert Heaton (1637-1717)
As mentioned, Agnes was four years old when she came to America on one of “Penn’s Fleet of 23,” the ship Lamb with her parents and siblings in 1682. The family came from Yorkshire, her father Robert Heaton producing a Certificate from the Settle, Yorkshire, Monthly Meeting to the Middletown Monthly Meeting in Pennsylvania. Robert Heaton must have had some money. Deeds recorded that titled the 900-acre homestead of Henry Comly and Agnes Heaton are abstracted in the Comly book. Robert Heaton junior was deeded, in 1695, 300 acres which he, two years later, deeded to his sister’s husband, Henry Comly. Robert Heaton senior bought from the estate of Nicholas More 600 acres which he deeded to his son-in-law Henry Comly, making up the 900 acres of the Manor of Moreland on land which had originally been patented by William Penn to More. Agnes was described, in the History of Byberry and Moreland, as “a woman of small stature, possessed of a good stock of common sense, and quite active even in advanced life, so that she could perform the duties of her household or ride on horseback with nearly as much ease as in her youthful days.”
Quakers and Slavery
Henry and Agnes were slave holders. In the inventory of Henry’s property at his will's probate was a Negro girl, £20; a Negro boy, £30. In Agnes’s inventory is found one Negro, Phillis, £28; a Negro boy, Wallis, £14. Quakers, who were both slave holders and traded in slaves, perhaps paradoxically played a major role in the abolition movement. Robert Field (1723-1775), Benjamin Field junior's nephew, was a slave holder, and it is likely others in my family were slave holders if not traders. The tide to abolition began in Pennsylvania with the rantings of Benjamin Lay at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in Burlington, New Jersey. Lay was disowned for his anti-slavery protestations (four times it seems) but had his impact. As Lay’s biographer points out, “Benjamin was, in 1738, the last Quaker disowned for protests against slavery. It would take another twenty years for Quakers to agree even to the possibly of disowning a member for slave-trading and an additional eighteen years to begin to excommunicate slave owners.” While estate inventories could reveal the extent of slave holding among my ancestors, not all are available. Considerable research would be needed to discover, if even possible, how abolitionism played out in my family. (See the end of the Sources page for resources on Quakers and slavery.)
Henry Comly III (1702-1772) - Phebe's grandfather
The third Henry in the line is my 6th great-grandfather who as a small tyke watched the building of Green Briar Spring which was begun in 1704. He was one of eleven children born to Henry and Agnes. After marrying Phebe Gilbert in 1728 he lived out his life at Green Briar Spring, having a family of eight children. The lineages of their children are in George Comly’s 1939 book. Interestingly, one of their sons, Joseph Comly (1740-1778, or 1788, depending on the source), joined the British on Long Island and had is estate confiscated.