Friends Historical Collection at Guilford College
Quaker Meetings website, with info on records
Quaker Roots Mailing List at Rootsweb — an excellent mailing list for Quaker questions
[The information below was on the old Anson site.]
Pee Dee Preparatory Meeting
I received years ago a bit of information on The Pee Dee Preparatory Meeting which was under Piney Grove Monthly Meeting up until the early part of the 19th Century when many Friends went to Ohio, Illinois and Indiana over the matter of slavery. There is a Quaker burial ground at Pee Dee which was probably associated with this Meeting and other families in the area.
The rector of Prince Frederick Winyaw in Georgetown, SC, made several pilgrimages up the Pee Dee to hold services, baptize the young and perform marriages. Mary and Frances Hicks, daughters of John Hicks, one of the first Justices of the Peace in Anson County, were baptized in SC (?) during one of these excursions. These two young ladies married John (V) and William, the sons of John Hamer (IV) who was the first sheriff of Anson County.
The aforementioned Meeting seems to have been the first religious endeavor in Anson and would have been attended by those who were not members but desired some sort of religious service.
Marker Honors Old Pee Dee Friends Meeting
Due to the persistence of Trent Strickland a new state historic marker has been erected on US 1 near the Cordova community in Richmond County, NC. The marker reads: “Quaker meeting organized, 1755. Westward migration led to a decline by the 1840s. Cemetery located 1 ½ miles west.” The actual location of the Pee Dee Meeting was on the Old Cheraw Highway south of Cordova, near Hailey’s Ferry crossing the Pee Dee River. It existed from 1750s to 1841. Through careful research. Mr. Strickland was able to convince the state that the site was worthy of recognition. The evidence was presented in The Southern Friend, Vol. XXIII, No. 1, “The Forgotten Meeting of Richmond County, N. C.”
Pee Dee:
Existed as early as 1740. A small meeting apparently under the care of many other meetings over time… Carver’s Creek MM, Piney Grove MM. One of the locations of this Meeting was probably in Marlboro County midway between the Great Pee Dee River and Three Creeks (a variant name for Blenheim, SC), where several large Quaker families lived. (Marlborough County Site)
Piney Grove:
Located in Marlboro Co., Monthly Meeting established in 1801 and laid down (closed) in 1815, and members transferred to Back Creek (Randolph Co., NC) Monthly meeting in 1816. Record holdings exist and are available on microfilm, but they were not indexed in Hinshaw’s. (Marlborough County Site)
Marriages in Cane Creek Monthly Meeting and Its Subordinate Meetings, by Theodore E. Perkins (1993). BX7780.C36 P4
Typescripts of the marriage records from Cane Creek Monthly Meeting. Included are marriages that took place at the many meetings that were preparative meetings under the care of Cane Creek Monthly Meeting in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Preparative meetings included Cane Creek, Dunn’s Creek, Eno, Pee Dee, Rocky River, and Spring meetings.
Submitted by Tom Hooker