Manifolds in America

Date: 1635 to 1730
Location: Pennsylvania

From The Story of Benjamin and Annabel Manifold and Their Environments and Descendants by J. B. Manifold, before 1964:

The only previous record of Manifolds is that of John and William who came to America from different ports and in different ports in 1635. Whether either of these was the ancestor of Benjamin who married Annabel Danger in St Paul’s church in Chester, Pa., Nov. 10, 1730 and who in turn is the ancestor of most Manifold and related families in the United States today is unknown. The author suspects that the William Manifold who landed in Virginia, which then embraced Pennsylvania, was the ancestor this this Benjamin, but unable to bridge the gap, cannot prove it.

The name “Manifold” we are told originated because of their being dwellers along the Manifold River in Staffordshire, England. However Benjamin’s early descendants had more characteristics of the Scotch-Irish, Irish who were people of Scotch descent living in Northern Ireland. The fact that they lived in Scotch-Irish communities and early attended the Presbyterian church indicates Benjamin may have been of that stock. Some claimed Benjamin was a Quaker, but the fact the he was married in the Episcopal church, that his four sons were connected with the Revolutionary War and that his children, when marrying into the Payne and Cowgill families, caused their spouses to be promptly disowned by the Quaker church proves conclusively to the contrary. The intermarriage of these families in defiance of Quaker church rules was very persistent, five of Benjamin’s six marriageable children so doing. This is why most descendants of Benjamin and Annabel are also descendants of Henry Cowgill and Josiah Payne and prompts the author to call this a Payne–Cowgill–Manifold history–genealogy.