Rebecca Carver Scholfield Sets Some Records

Goshen Friends Meeting minutes show Rebecca Scholfield requested
a certificate of transfer for herself and her minor children, Nov. 11, 1785

On her own, my five-greats grandmother, Rebecca (Carver) Scholfield, generated three known records in her lifetime that provide insight into her character. On the 11th day of the 11th month 1785, according to the minutes of Goshen Friends Monthly Meeting, "Request is made for a certificate for Rebecca Schofield & her children to Fairfax Monthly Meeting in Virginia...." The following month, on the 9th day of the 12th month 1785, the committee appointed to prepare the certificate for "Rebecah Scofield & her children namely Elizabeth Rebeckah John Wm & Anne minors...." approved and signed said certificate. Two years later, on the 7th day of the 9th month 1787, the Meeting noted it had failed to deliver said certificate to Rebecca, and arranged for it to be conveyed to Fairfax Monthly Meeting immediately.

Goshen Friends Meetinghouse, Pennsylvania

I often think of distant female ancestors, and of how unfairly history treats them. Being females in a male-dominated and privileged society, they were deprived of the opportunity to leave the kind of records "important" enough to be preserved for posterity which can impart not just a chronicle of a life, but sometimes a sense of a person's character. Women's names appear in marriage records, of course, and are mentioned in their husbands' property deeds. Their names sometimes appear in men's wills. But in these documents, women are not the actors; they are the passive by-standers, known only because they have a relationship with a man--or a brother or a son. What their lives must have been like can only be surmised from what is known about their menfolk. We rarely have the chance to see them as wholly as we often can see our male ancestors.

But Rebecca acted, and there's a record to prove it. One hundred words in three little Quaker records reveal quite a bit about the woman who requested the certificate. She is no longer just a named adjunct to the men in her life, through whose records I first came to know of her.

Fairfax Friends meetinghouse, Virginia

I know Rebecca, the daughter of William Carver, Jr. and Elizabeth Walmsley, was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania about 1735, and brought up in the Religious Society of Friends. I know her parents and their parents and their parents were Quakers. I know her great-grandparents, Thomas Walmsley and Elizabeth Rudd, were part of the Great Migration led by William Penn. I know that in England, they probably experienced persecution for their beliefs. So I know that Rebecca's family was  deeply rooted in the Quaker faith and practice.

I know that when she was about 20 years old, Rebecca (spelled "Rebekah" in the Buckingum Friends' records) married Thomas Scholfield, whose family also belonged to Buckingham Friends Monthly Meeting. I know the couple had at least eight children over the next 24 years.

I know the family moved to East Goshen Township in Chester County in 1764, and became members of the Goshen Friends Monthly Meeting. I know Thomas was disowned by Goshen Friends for "drinking Strong drink to excess" in 1776. I know in 1782, Rebecca and Thomas' son, Thomas, Jr. was disowned by Goshen Friends for "laying a wager & running a horse race."

I know the family moved to Loudoun County, Virginia in 1783.

Goshen Friends minutes record the Meeting's
approval of Rebecca's request

What I did not know, until I found the requests and approval for a certificate to Fairfax Meeting (Loudoun County), was what had become of Rebecca as a result of the disownments, and of the move to Virginia. With those records, I know how very important the Quaker faith and the Quaker community were to my ancestor: She was a committed Friend, and sought to rear her young children as such, regardless of the men in her family. Because of her commitment, I know something about how Rebecca thought: she would have believed there is "that of God" in every human being, and, therefore, that all are equal; she would have valued honesty and truth-telling; she would have kept an ordered and simply-furnished home, and she and her children would dress neatly and plainly; she would have disavowed all strife and violence, and would have opposed war. The fact she was granted the requested certificate by Goshen Friends attests to how faithfully Rebecca lived the testimonies of equality, truthfulness, simplicity, peace in her daily life. That brief little record, those twenty-three words, exist because Rebecca took action. They enable me to see my distant grandmother as a person in her own right, and I like what they tell me about her.