Annals of Smith of Cantley, Balby, and Doncaster Book

General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1878 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: SMITH OF BALBY FRANCIS SMITH, yeoman, eldest surviving son and heir of Francis Smith of Brockhole and Mary Haughton, his wife, (see p. 3), was baptised at Cantley church, 6 February, 1652, but in early manhood must have united himself to the Society of Friends, as in the beginning of his 28th year he married a member of a family already very prominent in this new but growing religious community, and at a village where neither church nor chapel existed. His sister Sarah had married a member of it 17 years previously. Great allowance should be accorded to all genealogists who unfortunately have to chronicle the pedigrees of families which wholly or in part -- as in the present case -- have seceded from the established church before the commencement of the last century, seeing that whilst their births, marriages, and deaths, cease to be chronicled in the parochial records, they but very partially appear elsewhere. Although the practice of registering such events, was from an early period of its formation recommended to its members by the heads of the Society of Friends, it was some time before such was systematically followed, as in later times, when they have proved to be far more reliable and complete than many parish registers. Francis Smith was married at Balby -- no doubt at the private house where meetings for worship were held at the time -- 18 III. 1680, to his first wife, Martha Killam, 3rd daughter of Thomas Killam of Balby, where she was born 25 III. 1655, (see Killam, later on). The date of his removal from the old family mansion of Brockhole, to take up his residence at Balby is not precise...Read More