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Subject: [ROOTS-L] Re: ROOTS-L Digest V05 #387, message #17, Mennonites vs Quakers
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 14:20:20 EDT


In a message dated 8/25/05 10:55:31 AM Central Daylight Time,
writes:
> X-Message: #17
> Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 19:41:02 -0600
> From: "Barbara Walker" <>
> Subject: Unmarked Graves
> To whomever was asking about unmarked graves:
> I recently discovered that one of my relatives had no gravestone, and I was
> going to rush to Illinois and find his grave and honor him with a marker.
> After thinking about it for a few days, I remembered that he came from a
> long line of Mennonites. Mennonites are a very simple people, and don't
> want, need, or believe in having headstones or markers for their graves.
> They are Christians, but a sect of Quaker (Benjamin Franklin was a Quaker).
> There were many of these very simple, religious people living in
> Pennsylvania and the Midwest from the 1600's to the 1800's and even some
> today. Families were all buried together, of course.

Issuing a blanket statement with the modifier "of course" is always
dangerous. The last sentence above is false, at least in regard to Quaker burial
grounds I have visited, where the next person to die is the next burial in that row,
whether he or she is a member of the family of the last burial or not. "Of
course" I would not presume to state that ALL Quaker cemeteries are laid out
that way.
PLUS, please!, Mennonites and Quakers are totally different religious groups
who do NOT share a common root. Perhaps Barbara is thinking of the Amish, not
the Quakers.
AND FINALLY: "(Benjamin Franklin was a Quaker.)" NO, wrong yet again:
"Benjamin Franklin was not a Quaker. He was baptized in 1706, at the Old
South Church congregation's Cedar Meeting House on downtown Washington Street,
Boston. Built in 1729 as a Congregational church, Old South was the largest
building in colonial Boston.
In Philadelphia he occasionally worshiped at Christ Church, the Church of
England parish established in colonial Philadelphia in 1695 and later reorganized
into the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America."
Perhaps Barbara means William Penn, founder of the Quaker colony of
Pennsylvania. He WAS a Quaker.
All in all, I fear I would hate to take at face value any genealogy compiled
by Barbara Walter.
steven coulter






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