Irish Quaker Wylys

Date: 1650 to 1750
Location: Ireland
Surnames/tags: Wyly Irish_Quakers Quakers

Irish Quaker Wylys

This page discusses the genealogy of various families of Irish Quakers with surnames including Wily, Willy, Wiley, Willey, Willie, Wilie, Wyly, Wylly, Wyllye, Wyley, Wylley, Wylie, Wyllie, Weiley, Weilley, Weilly and Weily - there are quite probably others.

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Gloucestershire/Munster Weillys 3 Antrim Wylys 4 County Londonderry Wylys 5 Ballymoney Wylys 6 Summary

Introduction

Many of these families are first found in the Ulster province of Ireland at the end of the 17th century. Unfortunately, very few of the Quaker birth, marriage and death records for the meetings in Ulster in that period survive. The result is that much of the families' genealogy has been confused. Guesses have been made in place of facts, and many of these have been copied from one pedigree or family tree to another.

Fortunately, we do have some real facts to work with, and the purpose of this page is to list them and put them and the families concerned in context, sorting the genealogy out as much as possible. These facts include

• family lists of Irish Quaker Wylys in provinces other than Ulster,
• family lists of the children of families in Ulster which show not only the details of their marriages and children, but also details of their own births and the names of their parents
• records in the meeting minutes of approvals for couples to marry
• other records in the minutes (whether those of monthly meetings whose records remain or of provincial and national meetings)
• records of Quaker sufferings, either of people assulted or imprisoned for their beliefs or more frequently of tradespeople or farmers whose goods were seized in lieu of tithes - these records having been maintained meticulously by the national meeting from 1655 onwards
• wills (whether in the Quaker records or otherwise) and other non-Quaker records like deeds and land records.

Gloucestershire/Munster Weillys

Our first group of Wileys or Weillys starts with Thomas Wiley (1651-1690) and Sarah (Weilly) Cherry (abt.1662-1730) who lived in Munster, the southernmost province of Ireland. Thomas Weilly gave a testimony aginst tithes dated 1680. This group is the only one to use the spelling Weilly and the only one with no link to Ulster. The two were probably brother and sister, although this is not certain. Thomas's family list identifies him as the son of Henry and Jean Weilly of 'The Drop', Gloucestershire. This is the only clear record that we have of an origin outside Ireland for any of these Quaker families. Other records on Familysearch, Wikitree and elsewhere, have sometimes added this Henry Weilly of Gloucestershire as a parent of other Irish Wylys or Wileys. I have not seen any justification for this.

Antrim Wylys

Another group, often spelled Wyly or Wylly (but also sometimes Willy or Wiley) centres around the parish of Aghalee in the county of Antrim. This group starts with Robert Wyly (abt.1632-abt.1674) and Grizell (Unknown) Wyly (abt.1635-1674); Robert appears in the Quaker sufferings and the couple both make testimony aginst tithes. Their testimonies are not dated, but all those that are carry dates in either 1680 or 1681, showing Robert and Grizell to have been alive and in the Society of Friends at about that date, members of 'the meetings in and about Lisburn'. Also giving testimonies against tithes from 'the meetings in and around Lisburn' were their children John, William and Alexander and John's wife Anne nee Boys.

Robert and Grizell are also identified in the family list of their daughter Jane (Wyly) Miller (1658-abt.1740), which shows her as born in 1658 in 'Scorry', county Antrim. Scorry has not yet been identified. Her will, and various records discussed below, allow us to identify three of her brothers, John Wyly (abt.1654-1729), Alexander Wyly (abt.1667-abt.1730) and the husband of Sarah (Wiley) Lightfoot (abt.1661-bef.1724). These names in turn allow us to identify various places associated with the family. As we have seen, Jane was born in Scorry, county Antrim and Robert, Grizell, John, William and Alexander were members of a meeting in or around Lisburn. One of Alexander's children John Wyly (abt.1695-1726) was shown as born in Ballinderry, which is situtated between Lisburn and Lough Neagh. Jane Wyly was married there. And two of John Wyly's children are recorded as born in Aghalee which borders Ballinderry to the south. There are various entries for Wylys in the sufferings Ballinderry and rather more in Aghalee.

The first appearance of a Wyly in the Quaker records for Antrim is not Robert or Grizell, the supposed progenitors of this family, but their son John. He appears there in 1677, suggesting that he joined the Quakers first. His initial entry in the sufferings does not indicate where he lived, but subsequent entries show him in Aghalee. Robert follows in 1680, the year in which he also gave testimony against tithes, and continues there until 1697, mostly in Aghalee or Ballinderry, probably dying shortly thereafter. Also appearing from 1686 to 1688 is William Willy who appears both in Aghallee and in Magheragall which borders Ballinderry to the east, ie closer to Lisburn. This was very probably the William who married Sarah Hunter (later Sarah Lightfoot) in 1685. The fact that his last appearance in the sufferings was in 1688 may indicate that he died shortly afterwards, consistent with the couple having had two children and Sarah re-marrying in 1693. Then Alexander Wyly appears from 1698, although his parish is not mentioned. All three of the parishes mentioned fall in the Barony of Massareene Upper, county Antrim.

William and Alexander both gave testimonies against tithes in 1680 but did not appear in the sufferings until 1686 and 1698 respectively. Clearly they were both Quakers living in county Antrim in 1680 and were old enough to sign the testimony (certainly not young children, but not necessarily adults), but they had probably not set out on their own at this stage, and tithes were only taken from heads of households. William's appearance in 1686 is consistent with his marriage in 1685 when he may have started his own farm; Alexander's appearance from 1698 is rather less consistent with his marriage in 1693. Dispite this small discrepancy, this was clearly all one family. Adding to the consistent picture is the fact that William married Sarah Hunter in 1685 and Alexander married Margaret Hunter in 1692, probably two bothers marrying two sisters, although the Hunters remain to be investigated.

There is also some confusion about the children of these Wyly brothers (grandchildren of Robert and Grizell), notably because of the lack of Quaker BMD records for Ulster in this period, and it is worth tracing the families some more.

As noted above, William Wyly married Sarah Hunter in 1685 and probably died in about 1689. Sarah Hunter probably went on to marry Thomas Lightfoot whose will mentions the two children of her first marriage, John Wiley and Mary (Wiley) Jackson.

Alexander Wyly married Margaret Hunter in 1692 and moved from Antrim to Kildare in c 1704. They appear not to have had further children after arriving in Kildare; two of their children born in Aghalee, county Antrim, are identified in their own family lists.

Jane (Wyly) Miller married Samuel Miller in John Boys' house near Ballinderry, Antrim in 1698, when she was already 40 years old. They did not have any children. The couple moved to Timahoe, co Kildare. Her will mentions her nephews, who were children of the three brothers mentioned here.

John Wyly married twice, to Ann Boys in 1677 and to Margaret Courtney in 1691. He must have kept good relations with his sister-in-law Sarah and her new husband, because in the same month of 1694 the two families moved from their neighbouring farms in Ulster to neighbouring farms in the parish of Kilkenny West, county Westmeath, at Annagh in John Wyly's case. The children born to the two families after they had moved were recorded by the Westmeath meeting, but not those before then. Some children born before then can be identified from various records. One person of particular interest is Joseph Wiley (1690-1751) who married Abigail Lightfoot in 1716 and then emigrated to Pennsylvania with her parents.

A genealogical record produced by the Pennsylvania Quakers - not a contemporary record, but a sort of family tree produced long after the event - shows both Joseph Wiley and John Wiley (-1754) as children of Sarah Wiley and an unknown father. As we have seen, John Wiley is identified in Thomas Lightfoot's will as the son of his first wife Sarah, and the implication of this record is that Josephy Wiley was his brother. This might have been the case if, as stated in many secondary sources, Abigail Lightfoot had been the child of Thomas Lightfoot's first wife Mary, but she was not. She was born after Thomas married the widow Sarah Wiley. Plainly Joseph Wiley did not marry his own sister.

Another possibility is that Joseph was the son of another Sarah Wiley. Notably Sarah (Adams) Wiley (1677-1770) married Allen (Wiley) Wyly (abt.1664-bef.1735) in Ulster in 1695. However there are strong reasons, explained here, to believe that this was not the case; the Pennsylvanian Quaker record was wrong, and Joseph Wiley was the son of John Wiley and his second wife Margaret Courtney.

• First is the couple's Quaker marriage certificate. Although Joseph Wiley's parents are not specified, he is described as 'of Annagh' where John and Margaret Wyly lived. Added to this, the signatures of those attending the wedding are headed by Thomas and Sarah Lightfoot and John and Margaret Wyly, surely parents of the bride and groom. The only Wyly signatures are for immediate members of John and Margaret's family, although Quaker minutes indicate that his parents had approved the marriage so that one would have expected them to have been there.
• More circumstantially Abigail Lightfoot had lived next to the family of John Wyly and attended the same Quaker meetings as them her whole life. If Joseph was born between his parents' marriage and their move to Westmeath, then he would have been compatible with Abigail by age, and an obvious person to marry her and then accompany her and her parents to Pennsylvania.
• Then there is the relationship between the families. We know from the will of Jane (Wyly) Miller that both John and Joseph Wiley of Pennsylvania were her nephews, ie both grandchildren of Robert and Grizell Wyly. There is also a very specific minute in the Quaker record concerning the couple's marriage expressing concern at their closeness, 'the young woman's mother being aunt by affinity [marriage] of the young man she intends to marry'. ie Sarah Lightfoot was Abigail's mother, and her first husband had been Joseph's uncle. These relationships fit Joseph being John Wyly's son, but they don't fit him being the son of the only other Wyly known to have married someone called Sarah, Allen Wiley who married Sarah Adams. Allen Wyly did not appear in any of the records of Wylys in Antrim, and it will be shown below that he was part of a different family. What's more, if Joseph had been a child of their marriage, he would have been unusually younger than his bride.
• Finally and most directly, the removal certificate that the couple received from the Moate monthly meeting (together with Thomas Lightfoot and his family) described Joseph as son to John Wyly, a Friend of our meeting.^[1]

For completeness, it is worth commenting here on the identity of Sarah (Wiley) Lightfoot and her first husband. We know from the record of her marriage to Thomas Lightfoot that she was then Sarah Wiley, and from his will that she had two Wiley children, ie that she was a widow when she married and that Wiley was not her maiden name. We have seen above that Sarah (Adams) Wiley married Allen Wyly. However she is not a candidate as her marriage took place after Thomas Lightfoot married the widow Sarah Lightfoot. Another candidate is the sister of English/Irish Quaker Joseph Maddock (1643-1703), as his 1703 will mentions his sister Sarah Lightfoot. However, no records of her have been identified; we don't know whether she was a Quaker and cannot place her in Ireland, let alone in Lisburn in 1692/3. Much more likely is Sarah Hunter who married William Wyly in 1685. Both Sarah Hunter and William Wyly were from county Antrim, William was part of the family of Robert and Grizell Wyly as required by various sources and Sarah Hunter very likely the sister of Margaret Hunter who married William's brother Alexander in 1692. The date of their marriage (1685) and of William's last appearance in the sufferings (1688) meet the facts of their having had two children and of Sarah's re-marrying in 1693.

County Londonderry Wylys

The Irish Quaker records also reveal a family called Wyly, Wylly, Willy, Wily or Willey in the parish of Killowen, barony of Coleraine, county Londonderry. The first of this family to appear in the sufferings was John Willy, who lost crops worth 17s 6d to tithe mongers in 1680. He continued to appear in the sufferings until a final entry in 1688. The will of a John Wyllye of Coleraine was proved in 1689. From 1691, a Widdow Wylly, later clarified as Jannet Wylly, lost crops in the same place featuring a last time in 1701. In 1693, she was joined in the sufferings for the same parish by William Willy and in 1695 by Allen Wyly. Allen Wyly appears three times, 1695, 1698 and 1700, always losing tiny amounts indicating a very small farm. For example, in 1695, he lost crops worth 1s 6d, his brother William lost 5s 6d, his mother Jannet (then a widow) lost 14s whereas the Antrim Wylys usually lost amounts between £2 and £5.

Allen (Wiley) Wyly married Sarah Adams in 1695, consistent with his setting up on his own and appearing in the sufferings in the same year, and disappears from view in the Irish records after 1700. He and some of his children appear in Pennsylvania after 1724. His brother William Wylly got permission to marry Ruth Courtney in 1704. In the minute discussing the prospective marriage, he is described as William Wyly of Coulrain (Coleraine).

William died in 1718. An abstract of his will reads

Wyly, William, parish of Killoan, co Londonderry, merchant, dated 23 Feb 1717/18 pr 12 June 1718, mother Jane Wyly, brother Thomas Wyly decd, John son of same, brother Allen, son Samuel, brother Tobias Courtney and ______________ Thomas.

At some point Allen and Sarah Wyly migrated to Newgarden, Chester County, Pennsylvania. Two of their children married there in Quaker ceremonies, Thomas Wily who married Rachel Rowland in 1729 and William Wiley who married Susanna Prew, their first child being born in 1736. This William Wiley's Quaker family list confirms that he was born in Coleraine. A further two children were disowned by the Quakers for 'fornication', Margaret Wiley with Nathaniel Richards and Martha Wiley with Thomas Coulson. An Allen Wyly was disowned in 1740/41 for 'marrying out,' and may have been another son.

Plainly, this is another family group, parents John who died c 1689 and Jannet (c 1702) with sons Allen, William and Thomas, who did not appear in the Quaker records and had died.

Ballymoney Wylys

To complete the picture, we also have a father and son in Ballymoney which sits on the border between Antrim and Londonderry, rather close to Coleraine. Mathew or Matthew Wyly appears in the sufferings for County Antrim in the years 1694-1711, losing crops worth about 10s most years. None of the entries in the sufferings describes his parish but he is described as 'of Ballymoney' in minutes of the Quarterly Meeting. William Wyly is described in his family list as having been born in Ballymoney, county Antrim in 1687, parents Matthew and Jane. The Matthew Wyly in the sufferings there in 1696 was plainly the father of William born there in 1687. Presumably Matthew had not become a Quaker when his son was born.

Summary

In summary we have two Weillys in Munster, probably brother and sister, children of Henry Weilly of Gloucestershire and no evidence linking them to our Ulster Wylys.

Three families can be identified in Ulster, the largest group based around Aghalee and other parishes in the barony of Massareene Upper, county Antrim, was associated with the family of Thomas Lightfoot. Thomas married Sarah the widow of William Wyly, and their daughter Abigail married Joseph Wiley, her nephew by affinity (son of her first husband's brother John Wyly).

Based around Coleraine in county Londonderry, we have John and Jannet Wyly and their children Allen who married Sarah Adams and William who married Ruth Courtney.

And in Ballymoney, on close to Coleraine, but on the border with county Antrim, we have Matthew Wyly and his wife Jane and their son William Wyly who married Dorothy Haughton.

These three Ulster Wyly families and Thomas Lightfoot are shown on the map below.

Map of Ulster showing Thomas Lightfoot and the various Ulster Wyly families.

Interestingly, there were also Wylys among those seizing goods from the Ulster Quakers for tithe.

It is quite possible that these three Ulster Wyly families - and possibly the tithe mongers too - were themselves related, perhaps all the descendants of some earlier immigrant who had taken part in the plantation of Ulster or arrived with or after Cromwell, but it will require further research to settle that.