Photostat of certificate, partly written and partly in the form used by Quakers in England. The certificate is of "Thomas of Barking in the County of Essex, shoemaker, Son of George Browne, late of the same place Mealman Deceased." dated this seventeenth day of the fifth month called July, in the year, according to the English account, one thousand six hundred ninety and four." There are at least 37 subscribing witnesses, some of the names being illegible. As the photostat is badly smudged, no attempt was made to copy the certificate here, but the following interesting letter covers the facts relating hereto:
The Cottage
Smithville, Burlington co., NJ
9mo 21st 1936
Mr. George MacReynolds, Librarian
Doylestown, PA
Dear Sir,
On Saturday last, I left with a woman in charge of the Historical Society's rooms a photostat of the marriage certificate of Thomas Brown & Mary Eyre (Ayre, Ayer), made in Plaistow, Essex, in 1694. The original parchment was, in 1890, in possession of the late John Shaw Brown, of Swarthmore, PA, one time owner of the Bucks County Intelligencer.
I had lost trace of this document for many years, but found at the Historical Soc. of PA a negative mady by my friend, the late Gilbert Cope, and had a few copies made, one of which I promised to Mr. Russell Hayes, of the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore. The copy I left for your collection was intended for Warren S. Ely, but his decease precluded my giving it to him. The reason I passed it on to you is that possibly some descendants of Thomas Browne, through female lines, may be interested, Bucks County being the home of Thomas in his late years, and for two or three generations his descendants intermarried with other Quaker families in that section - Dyers, Shaws, Michener, Paxson, Ellicott and others.
Thomas Browne and his family came to Philadelphia in the winter of 1700-1701, lived on Second Street near the site of the present Christ Church, exchanging that property in 1708 for 245 acres in Plumstead and in 1722 an additional 500 acres in Buckingham, dying in 1747-8 at his home at Brownsville, now Gardenville. Friends Meeting was held in his house 1727, 8, and 9, and in 1730 he and two of his sons transferred for a nominal sum, 15 acres for the use of Plumstead Meeting, then organized.
The descendants are mainly through female lines, but I may note Thomas Brown, Minister among Friends, Philadelphia, 1787, London 1788; also, Major General Harvey Brown, graduate of West Point, etc. The Ellicott genealogy gives many descendants due to numerous marriages to Browns daughters who were born Brown. Among these I may mention is M. Cary Thomas, of Bryn Mawr College.
Being interested in genealogy, I wrote a number of notices of Bucks County families for the second edition of General Davis' History. If you know of any descendants of Thomas Browne interested in the family history, I shall be glad to hear of them.
Sincerely yours, F. Wiston Browne
