An Early Quaker Minister
In the 18th Century both Warborough and Shillingford had a strong dissenter population.
“Thirty-seven Quakers were listed in 1781, of whom 30 lived in Shillingford: they included the young Ann Crowley (1765 – 1826), a maltster’s daughter who went on to become a travelling minister. By 1808 there were Methodists as well as Quakers, but the size of the Quaker meeting may have been declining, and in 1810 it was amalgamated with that of Reading.”
Victorian County History VCH Oxfordshire – © University of London
In the deeds of Morland’s Brewery, who bought Shillingford Brewery, there is a mention of a Shillingford maltster, William Crowley, who was one of those Shillingford Quakers.
“In 1747 William Crowley built a wall, apparently on an adjoining property, and entered into a deed with his neighbours James Lambeth and Anthony Clackson, under which he, Crowley, would be responsible for the maintenance of the wall, and the ground on which it was built would belong to him.
In 1749 William Crowley married Katharine Stiles and the property was transferred to a Marriage Settlement, as was the mortgage term. He died in 1783 and his wife was entitled to a life interest in the property. Under his Will it was to be sold after her death and, after payment of a small legacy to his daughter Elizabeth (who had married Thomas Saunders), the proceeds were to be divided amongst his 7 remaining daughters on attaining the age of 25″.
By kind permission of Wallingford Museum
Ann was one of the eight daughters of William and Katherine Crowley and was born on 8 th . May 1765 in Shillingford and her birth was recorded at the Quaker Meeting House in Warborough.
Monthly meeting of Reading & Warborough (1650-1786)
Ann was brought up following a simple Quaker way of life but was aware of temptations set before her. She wrote in her journal:-
“A fondness for dress and music were some of my greatest foibles; and I am bound in gratitude to acknowledge, that had it not been for parental care, advice, and prudent restraint, I might have gone great lengths in these gratifications”.
Ann became aware of her calling to God when she was sixteen. The following year Ann had been away from home for some months when her dearly loved father died of a stroke.
It upset her greatly that “I had been deprived of the satisfaction of fulfilling the last offices of filial duty, and prevented the consolation of witnessing the peaceful close of an affectionate, indulgent parent”.
However she was content with her life in Shillingford with her mother and sisters but this life was disturbed when three of them married and one of those three, Mary Ashby, died in 1791.
Two Quaker ministers, Sheffield born Deborah Darby and Rebecca Young, visited Warborough from Coalbrookdale and their example matched Ann’s feelings that she was called to minister too. She left with the two ministers and gradually her own confidence for preaching grew. She shadowed other ministers and in 1794 she toured Wales with Mary Stevens and George and Sarah Dillwyn.
The following year her mother died.
She thus became the head of the household in Shillingford as she was the eldest unmarried sister but she decided to move them to Uxbridge where another sister, Catherine, married to Thomas Ashby, was living. When Catherine died the other sisters created a rota to care for her six children, but Ann needed to preach.
She set off travelling and preaching with fellow Friends Sarah Harrison, Sarah Birkbeck and Priscilla Gurney.
Her journal describes the counties they visited including a trip to the Isle of Man. “We embarked at Liverpool the 9th of the ninth month, and had a tedious voyage of two nights and nearly three days. We had about 80 passengers on board, many of whom were dissipated characters, whose unchristian conduct caused us sorrow”.
Later she says:- “I pretty directly journeyed homeward and was favoured to reach my own habitation, then at Shillingford in Oxfordshire, in safety, after an absence of three months and three weeks, having travelled upward of 900 miles and attended 63 meetings”.
In 1797 Ann became a guide to Phoebe Speakman of Pennsylvania as she preached on a 4,000 mile tour of England, Wales and Scotland. Speakman had been brought from America by Deborah Darby. During their journey they preached at 397 meetings.
Their tiring tour took two years. She was to blame “northern blasts” as her health declined. After three years she toured again with Priscilla Hannah Gurney as they ministered in Norfolk, Essex and Suffolk. This again exhausted her and she went home to Uxbridge where her youngest sister Rebecca died after an illness.
After recuperating she set off again and in 1801 visited Hampshire, Dorset, Devon, Somerset and Cornwall covering 1266 miles and attending 115 meetings.
From 1782 to 1816 she travelled the length and breadth of the country being away from home for months at a time and becoming increasingly ill in later life. To the modern reader the thought of a single woman travelling in unheated, poorly sprung stagecoaches for day after day is hard to imagine but she had this to say:-
“The suffering I endured from frequent indispositions and a weakly constitution, though trying to bear, was scarcely worthy of notice, compared to what our predecessors underwent, in paying similar visits of gospel love to their brethren and sisters, when they were haled to prison, suffered cold, hunger, and hardships, which we, in this day of ease, are scarcely able to comprehend.”
In 1815 and 1816 she toured for the last time and doctors sent her and her sister to recuperate by the sea in Hastings.
She returned for the last time to Uxbridge where she worshipped locally. She became more ill and it was seen as a release when she died at her home on 10 April 1826.
Researched by Ray Thackrah