Person:John Piggott (13)

John was the oldest Piggott child by his father John's second wife Margery Brown.  His father's first wife was Rebekah Handiman, whom he married 17 May 1705 in Concord, PA and who died in his father's arms in childbirth on 26 Sep 1711 on their farm on Duck Creek, Kent, Delaware.  This farm was near their Quaker community of Nottingham MM, Cecil County Maryland, and John changed his name spelling to Pigott sometime between leaving the community and travelling first to Richmond VA in 1774 with his new fiance Elizabeth and thence to Orange County (now Alamance County), North Carolina and finally Darlington District (now Florence County), South Carolina.  In either North Carolina or South Carolina, he married Elizabeth and began a new life outside the Quaker community he had left behind. 

He lived for many years in the 1750s and 1760s in Orange County, and  records show he did join the Duck Creek MM for some time, possibly until word reached the Quaker elders of his being disowned by Nottingham - whereupon he would have been cast out by Duck Creek and made to reapply after years of penance and contrition.  He chose not to, and moved to South Carolina to begin a life outside the Quaker community.  Many others did this in those years, as discussed below.

The Quakers did not allow the purchasing of Negro Slaves.  In South Carolina, John was free to own slaves, and he did.

The Quakers did not allow "joining with the People to know carnal war", a popular charge against Friends who fought in the Revolutionary War of 1776.  By leaving the Society of  Friends, John was able to proudly fight in the war. He became a Baptist during his move through Virginia and North Carolina to settle in Darlington District, and having befriended Elias Dubose became close in family and friendship.  His son married a daughter of the Dubose family.

John most likely moved to Carolina in 1752-1757 with a large number of his lifelong Quaker neighbors from Nottingham MM.   Most of the highly traditional Reynolds and Brown families stayed behind and never left the Nottingham area, but many of the Reynolds and Brown lines who were loyal and close friends of the Piggotts did leave.  They represented the young, rebellious, adventuresome generation of Quakers, and they were seeking opportunity and the promise of cheap and large plots of land available in the recently-opened Carolinas.  Bycomparison, land was all occupied by this time in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and purchasing more was becoming prohibitively expensive.  The saying at that time was "Go South, Young Man" if you were a farmer.  Over 97% of colonists were farmers in these years, of course.

These Quaker families who emigrated south included the Cox family (of Virginia), Reynolds, Brown, Piggott, Davis, White, Vestal, and others.

Many of John's generation were disowned by Quakers on or before 1771 at Cane Creek or Deep Creek Meeting House, Orange County, along with his friend Samuel Cox in 1771.  The families had somewhat militant views against the British - particularly because their lineage was Irish (from earlier Scottish stock) and they had reason to dislike the traditional British.  The Quaker prohibition against knowing carnal war irked these younger men.  There was a huge trend in this period between 1760 and 1775 among colonial Quakers to reform or leave, and members such as John left in droves for the more liberal new Society of Baptists associations.  The Baptist allowed the owning of slaves, whereas the Quakers did not.  Having slaves eased the burden so much on the new Carolina farms that strong economic pressures helped the schism between John's generation and the traditional Quaker dogma.  The Baptists did not seek to control every aspect of family life as the Quakers had, thus represented greater personal and religious freedom of the individual.