Maybe It Is About Ireland

In looking through some documents I have, I found two sources that stated that the blacksmith Matthew Rea was of Irish Quaker descent. Both sources track to Jeremiah Rea, who was born in 1824 and died in 1912. He was the grandson of the blacksmith. Perhaps there is no Scottish ancestry here. I signed up for a trial subscription of an online resource to search arrival records on the east coast. But the early records in this country are sparse at best. I could find nothing of any possible ancestors arriving between 1660 and 1740. I am sure that other people have tried that approach before!

I did read that the Irish Quakers came from English parts of Ireland. They made up about 10 percent of the Delaware Valley Quakers according to estimates in the Hackett book, Seeds of Albion. I have always wondered why someone had not been able to find where we came from in the British Isles. Could we have been looking in the wrong country.