John Hollingsworth

Notes:

Birth:
2 Mo. 19, 1684

Notes:

Valentine and family, along with son-in-law Thomas Connway, left Ireland because of religious persecution. Their refusal to adhere to the State Church had brought penalties & fines upon them. They sailed in 1682 aboard the "Sea Lion:, settling in New Castle County, Delaware. Valentine had a plantation of 1000 acres on Shelpot Creek.

The family is originally English. Though persons of this name lived in Cheshire, there is no proof that this immigrant traces his roots to that shire. Nor is there any proof that he was son-in-law to Henry Cornish, the High Sheriff of London who was executed in 1685. Valentine came from Lurgan MM in County Armagh. Newark Meeting House (Delaware) was built on land that he donated. He served as Justice of the Peace, and an Assembly-man for many years.

Valentine's name seems to appear frequently in early histories. his descendants, however, fan out & straggle away. [Source: Immigrant Ancestors of Miami 'Valley, Ohio, Quaker Families: Summer 1984, pg. 7]

...The meetings in New Castle County "on Delaware" received an important migration of Irish Friends, and although now within the State of Delaware, in those early days were in that part of Penn's possessions known as "The Territories" or "Lower Counties" of Pennsylvania.
...About 1682, several Friends with their families arrived and settled near each other on the east side of Brandywine Creek, in New Castle County. Among these were; Valentine Hollingsworth, from Parish of Segoe, County Armagh, justice of the peace and for many years a representative to the Provincial Assembly.
...They held meetings for worship at the houses of Valentine Hollingsworth and Cornelius Empson. Valentine Hollingsworth lived on a large plantation of nearly a thousand acres on Shelpot Creek, in Brandywine Hundred, about five miles north-east of the present City of Wilmington, Delaware, and in 1687, he gave "unto ffriends for A burying place half an Acre of [his] land for ye purpose there being Some already buried in ye Spot. ffriends have referred fencing of it." A meeting-house was afterward built on this plot and the meeting known as Newark, from the name of the plantation which in the original survey of 1684 was called 'New Worke,' doubtless a corruption of Newark. A meeting was continued here until 1754, when the Friends "being suited with a better conveniency, it was laid down." [Immigration of Irish Quakers in Pennsylvania 1682-1750, with their history in Ireland, Albert Cook Myers (1901), pg 119-120, PDF, Archive.org.]

Birth:
[6mo 1632]

Valentine married Ann Calvert on 12 Jun 1672 in Lurgan, County Armagh, Ireland. Ann was born in Nov 1650 in County Down, Ireland; died on 17 Oct 1697 in Shellpot Creek, New Castle County, Delaware, British Colonial America. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]