Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Drinker, Elizabeth [Sandwith] : 1734 - 1807

Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker, 1734 - 1807, kept a journal for forty-eight years in which she recorded the events in the lives of her family and friends in Philadelphia.  As a faithful Quaker, she noted many of the births, marriages and deaths within the Meeting.  Her journal reflects the trying days of the Revolution when her husband Henry Drinker was exiled with other Quakers to Virginia for refusing to subscribe to a Test of Allegiance.

Left in the house at Front Street & Drinker's Alley with five children she withstood the harassment inflicted upon Quakers and the inconvenience of having British officers quartered in her house.  In 1793 and 1797-1798, she records the terrible death-toll of the yellow fever epidemics.  The exiled extracts from her Journal provide a vivid and personal political document.

 ¹ Henry D. Biddle, ed: Extracts From The Journal Of Elizabeth Drinker, (Philadelphia, 1889).

~ Genealogical Gleanings from the Journal of Elizabeth Drinker, 1759 to 1807, Page 588 in Pennsylvania Vital Records, Vol I, by the Genealogical Publishing Company, Incorporated in 1983.

More information on Elizabeth [Sandwith] Drinker can be found at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

You can visit the memorial page for Elizabeth [Sandwith] Drinker.

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