Person:Francis Reynolds (6)

Francis REYNOLDS was the third of Henry and Prudence REYNOLDs' ten children, all born in the village of Chester.

    He married fellow Quaker Elizabeth Acton in the fall of 1712. She was the daughter of Benjamin Acton and Christiana England and was a member of the Goshen Montly Meeting. Apparently after the marriage he moved to her home area of Chester County, Pennsylvania, just to the west of Delaware County where his home village of Chester was located. There they raised a family of five sons and three daughters.
    The early and middle 1700's saw a torrent of immigrants flood into eastern Pennsylvania, with what had been predominantly English colonists being joined further to the northwest by a large contingent of Germans pouring into Berks, Lancaster and Lebanon Counties. This incursion of white faces alarmed the Indians, who cast aside the peace that William Penn had fostered and began sporadic attacks against the new settlers. The raids were often incited by the French, who had built forts in Western Pennsylvania to stem the advance of the British and maintain their tenuous claim to the region spreading eastward from the Mississippi River. They enjoyed good relations with the Indians because they were traders and did not set up permanent colonies.
    There is no record of any REYNOLDS family victims during this period, probably because they lived in the more established and protected southesastern corner of the colony. Both Francis and Elizabeth died around 1760 at ages 76 and 70, respectively. (Taken from: A Family History, by Donovan Faust)

1. ↑ A. Donovan Faust (Foust). A Family History: The Ancestors of Thomas Wilson Faust. (1997).