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From: Mary Arnett <>
Subject: Re: [Q-B-I] Quakers and Navies
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2008 03:38:24 +0000
References: <COL102-W71760139F31CFC8F93CEF789510@phx.gbl><BAY113-DS4C55E289200B4355096A9C9530@phx.gbl><COL102-W8CF90811E03C211E79BE689400@phx.gbl><59F56D2C0C26416BA953B7E0CB23ED57@Study> <BAY113-DS7FB519F77E8F5E2D9B02DC9430@phx.gbl>
In-Reply-To: <BAY113-DS7FB519F77E8F5E2D9B02DC9430@phx.gbl>


Dear British Friends,

Reading of Quakers and navies, causes me to wonder whether present day British Friends are aware of the role a British Friend played in the founding of the U. S. Navy. I researched him, because his wife, Anna Miller, the daughter of Peter Miller and Elizabeth Richardson, was a niece of my five greats grandmother. Anna's mother was raised a Quaker but fell away after her marriage. Anna joined Friends after her marriage and remained so during her husband's disownment.

I hope its length is not a problem.

Mary Flounders Arnett
Josiah Fox

In 1794, Anna met a Quaker ship designer and builder, newly arrived from Falmouth, Cornwall, England. They met though John Nancarrow, whose family were long-standing members of Plymouth Friends Meeting, which was located in the vicinity of Anna grandparents’ home in the countryside around the town of Providence in what is now Montgomery County PA. John Nancarrow had immigrated to Philadelphia from Plymouth, England, where he knew Josiah’s family, and could provide them with a good account of Anna. Anna and Josiah were married in St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church in Philadelphia on 9 October 1794.[1]

Though a Quaker, Josiah Fox will forever be associated with the beginnings of the United States Navy. He was disowned by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, the Meeting to which he had transferred his membership from Falmouth in England, but so great was his attachment to the Society of Friends through his upbringing from earliest childhood that he continued to regard himself as a Quaker and to be a regular attender at First Day Meeting for Worship wherever he lived, until, upon his retirement in Colerain, Belmont County Ohio, he was again welcomed into membership.

A synopsis of his biography is told by his and Anna’s great granddaughter, Elizabeth Brandon Stanton[2] of Natchez, Mississippi:

“When the bill was pending in Congress in the session of 1793 and 1794, there was an English Naval constructor visiting in the United States – Josiah Fox, born in Falmouth, England, October 9, 1763. He came to this country to see his relatives and as he was about to return home, he received an invitation from General Knox, the Secretary of War, to call in at the War Office, General Knox having heard from Commodores Barry and Decatur that Josiah Fox was very skilled in naval architecture. Andrew Ellicott of West Point, the surveyor-general, introduced his kinsman, Fox, personally to Knox and Washington, and they discussed the project of building a navy.

“Fox was a master shipbuilder, who had served his apprenticeship under the best ship architects and shipbuilders of that period in England, and the English navy was recognized as the finest of the world. He was offered inducements by those in authority to give his knowledge and skill to serving the young republic. Those in authority were not satisfied with the constructors in their employ, they being unacquainted with the latest methods and improvements in shipbuilding; and, not to be despised on the high seas, the nation’s war vessels must be drafted, molded, and constructed after the world’s foremost maritime power. Fox was a graduate of the English School of Navy Architecture, and was at once employed.

“…Following his introduction to those in authority, Josiah Fox underwent a satisfactory examination as to his qualification in the art of naval architecture before the Secretary of War and Commodore Barry, the latter of whom he had known from his youth up. The principal mast shipbuilders of Philadelphia also bore testimony to his skill in naval architecture. He was thereupon received into the public service as a clerk in the Department of War, until suitable provision could be otherwise made for him. At that time his advice and assistance were required on naval subjects and he confidently asserts that his models, formed to combine buoyance and capacity with fast-sailing, met the general approbation of those professional men to whom the Secretary of War submitted them.

“After the models had been decided on, he was employed the remainder of the year in laying down the draughts in the model loft and superintending making the molds. The four ships which he drafted were the “United States”, “Constitution”, “Constellation”, and the one intended to have been built at Norfolk, the work on which finally fell to him.

“Barry was made Superintendent of Naval Construction and Fox Naval Constructor. It can be said without fear of successful contradiction that no group of vessels designed by any one man in the world’s naval history ever achieved the remarkable and lasting pre-eminence of the frigates and sloops of war which were the creations of Josiah Fox.”[3]

Josiah Fox also designed the “Crescent”, built for the Dey of Algiers; “Chesapeake” (2); “John Adams”; “Portsmouth”, “Hornet”; “Wasp”; and “Ferret”. Captain Isaac Hull took the “Constitution” into battle against the British Man-of-war “Guerrier”, commanded by Captain Dacres, as a result of which “the Stars and Stripes of the Baby Republic waved triumphantly over the British Lions”. In 1799 in the war against France, the “Constellation” under Captain Tuxton captured “L’Insurgente” and again in one of the warmest battles between frigates on record, the “Constellation” was victorious over “La Vengeance”, producing great exultation in America, which proclaimed the new Marine was equal to any on the seas.[4]

Of the three men called into consultation by Washington, Knox, and Carroll, to develop the American Navy, Andrew Ellicott became an instructor at West Point, where he spent the remainder of his life. Commodore Jack Barry died in the service as the first commanding officer of the American Navy and in command of the ship “Constitution”.
Josiah Fox, after spending fifteen years in the service of the United States, removed with his family to Wheeling West Virginia in 1811 and to Colerain, Belmont County, Ohio, where he died. In 1817 he was restored to membership in the Society of Friends and many of his descendants are today members of the Society of Friends in Philadelphia.[5]





[1] Merle Westlake, Josiah Fox, 1763-1847, Xlibris Corporation, 2003.

[2] Elizabeth was the daughter of their granddaughter, Jane Rolf Chapline Stanton, who was the daughter of their daughter, Elizabeth Miller Fox Chapline.

[3] Quoted in Lewis A. Leonard, Life of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, New York, Moffat, Yard and Company, 1918; pp. 236-238.

[4] Ibid., p. 239.

[5] Ibid., p. 240. Josiah and Anna’s descendants are mostly not Quaker and live in many parts of the U. S., many in Ohio, some in Maryland, some in Mississippi, some in New England and yet others in the northwest states of Washington and Oregon.

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