Isaac Eccleston (1743)

Born 2 Jun 1743 in Freckleton, Lancashire, England

Ancestors

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Biography

Isaac Eccleston was born on 2 Jun 1743 in Freckleton, Lancashire. He was the son of William Eccleston and Rebecca Eccleston. His parents were Quakers, and his birth was recorded in the records of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).

Isaac became a successful businessman based in Antigua in the early 1780s.^[1] His brother Daniel's letters to him mention trading in "pottashes", Queen's ware, raisins, tea, currants, packsheets and cords, and Isaac's cotton.

Isaac may have had a wife Sarah and a daughter Sarah - there was a memorial in the church of St John's erected in 1792 to a Sarah Kelsick, wife of John Kelsick, a merchant in Antigua, who died March 20th 1785 in the 19th year of her age; and she was the only daughter of Isaac and Sarah Eccleston.^[2]

Research Notes

Isaac DID NOT marry Ann Naylor, and was not the ancestor of the Ecclestons of St Helens. See the other Isaac Eccleston for that person.

A sister of Isaac lived in Antigua with him, and died fairly young.

Birth

Quakers do not perform a baptism ritual, so their records are of birth dates not baptism dates. However their births were recorded at the local level and then again at a more central level. Two different birth dates given for him - 2 April 1743 or 2 June 1743. In both cases his parents are named as William and Rebecca, and the family's address is given as Freckleton in at least one transcription that gives each date. One of the FreeREG entries is transcribed as pertaining to Preston Meeting, but is indexed as pertaining to Liverpool; the other is indexed as pertaining to Lancaster. One of the three transcriptions on FamilySearch that give the date as 2 June locates the record as pertaining to Hartshaw Meeting, while another only gives the location as Freckleton and links to images of the Quarterly Meeting records (the more central level); the third gives Preston as the location. The only transcription on FamilySearch giving the dates as 2 April gives the location as Cumberland, Yorkshire & Lancashire.

The images on FamilySearch are helpful in resolving this geographical and date confusion. The Quarterly Meeting is named in the titles of the registers as Lancashire Quarterly Meeting; but it certainly covers parts of what is now Cumberland, and presumably parts of Yorkshire as that would explain the location being named as "Cumberland, Yorkshire & Lancashire" in the one case. The book the actual record appears in is for Lancaster and Fild Monthly Meetings.

The birth was not recorded in the book of Hardshaw Meeting; the births for Hartshaw Meeting in 1743 are on this image and the following one. So the transcription giving its location as Hardshaw is probably a transcription error.

The date of birth as written in the FamilySearch image is "2nd of 4th". The confusion over the month is presumably about whether the date is old style or new style. It predates the legal calendar change in 1752, so would be expected to most likely be old style, making 1st month March and 4th month June. However, looking at the dates used, it can be seen that in 1747 a birth on 30 of 12 was recorded, which is not a possible date in the old calendar, because 12th month was February. Therefore the register was using new style dates before the legal calendar change. In 1744, an entry was dated 31 of 11, which has to be old style. So if the dates were worked out and written consistently and the calendar change was made only once, then the calendar change in this register happened between 1744 and 1747, and the date of Isaac's birth would be old style and therefore 2 June 1743 is probably his correct birth date and would only be wrong if the dates were worked out by different people and some were still using the old calendar and others the new, or if the registrar himself alternated unpredictably between the old calendar and the new.

Sources

1. ↑ Downs, Carolyn (2006) "Daniel Eccleston of Lancaster 1745-1821: A Man not Afraid to Stand on the Shoulders of Giants,"Quaker Studies: Vol. 10: Iss. 2, Article 5. Available at: http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/quakerstudies/vol10/iss2/5
2. ↑ https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7fQymq8TPi0C&pg=PA225&lpg=PA225&dq=isaac+eccleston+antigua&source=bl&ots=hYvzjTbG2K&sig=3lQAbvoOMgRlDBRT24qHZSQQbws&hl=cy&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi7mI2GpYrfAhWLB8AKHfx0DlsQ6AEwAnoECAMQAQ#v=onepage&q=isaac%20eccleston%20antigua&f=false

• Birth "England and Wales Non-Conformist Record Indexes (RG4-8), 1588-1977," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FQNJ-ZLP : 11 December 2014), Isaac Eccleston, 02 Jun 1743, Birth; citing p. 65, Hartshaw, Lancashire, record group RG6, Public Record Office, London. Image link https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L92Z-76X6?i=121
• Liverpool : Quakers : Register of unspecified type : "Parish Register" database, FreeREG (https://www.freereg.org.uk/search_records/5b868bb3f493fd69fb54877e : viewed 14 Oct 2020) baptism Isaac Ecclestone
• Lancaster : Quakers : Register of unspecified type : "Parish Register" database, FreeREG (https://www.freereg.org.uk/search_records/5bc48ca8f493fd3b47b4cce1 : viewed 14 Oct 2020) baptism Isaac Eccleston