It seems that some of the earliest Quakers (Society of Friends) in the UK were residents of Burnham, notably the Moore, Petherham, Hilbert, and Wride families, amongst others.
The founder of The Society of Friends (Quakers), George Fox (1624 – 1690) was imprisoned numerous times, mostly for blasphemy. In 1655 he spent a year in Launceston prison for such an offence and on his return north he spent time with a Burnham resident, also a Quaker, by the name of Henry Moore.
According to George Fox’s diary:
“Henry Moore of Burnham “gave up his house for meetings, and endeavoured to get his neighbours to come and hear, truth “”
St Andrews has an entry for a Henry Moore baptised there 20/05/1619. Presumably he was not yet a convert as he married Mary Rogers, at St Andrews, 16/02/1645 and had a daughter Mary Moore who was born 07/12/1648. Henry married three times and had six children. Two of his wives died in childbirth.
Henry and Mary seemed to have converted sometime around 1646, which was very early in the life of the Quaker movement.
The Quaker movement arose during the very turbulent 17th century, becoming established in the mid 1640’s. It was so successful that from 1659 all Friends Meetings became formalised in which each meeting house recorded births, marriages, deaths and “sufferings” of each member. Neither baptisms nor burials were recognised or recorded.
“Sufferings” are a record of the persecution that early Quakers had to endure.
The document containing all of the local information for Burnham Friends is kept at the Somerset Heritage Centre, Taunton, and is known as The Watchen Register (ie Watchfield). Reference DD/SFR .m50.
This document is on parchment and is handwritten. Although the majority of it is legible there are parts which are hard to decipher.
The family trees shown below are compiled from the information recorded in the Watchven Register, as shown above.
