io SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD 



Lydia Spencer, his wife, traced her lineage to Thomas 

 Wardell and Isaac Perkins, who were among the first 

 comers to the colony of Massachusetts Bay. According 

 to Professor Goode, they became disciples of Ann Hutchin- 

 son in the Antinomian controversy of 1636, were banished 

 from the colony in company with the Rev. John Wheel- 

 wright, and assisted in founding the town of Exeter in New 

 Hampshire. Their children, Eliakim Wardell 3 and Lydia 

 Perkins, married in 1659, joined the Society of Friends 

 and on account of religious persecution removed in 1663 

 to Long Island, and in 1666 to Shrewsbury, East Jersey. 



The first monthly meeting of Friends in the Province 

 of New Jersey was at Shrewsbury in 1666. Families 

 from New England and Long Island were among the 

 participants. George Fox visited Shrewsbury twice in 

 1672. Among the members of these meetings who were 

 settled in Shrewsbury prior to 1682 are found Eliakim 

 Wardell and Thomas Eatton. The latter, who came to 



3 A note from one of the family states that Thomas Wardell, 

 father of Eliakim, was one of the victims of the witchcraft delusion 

 at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. Eliakim was a deputy to the Gen- 

 eral Assembly from 1667 to 1688; magistrate of Shrewsbury, New 

 Jersey, in 1678, and High Sheriff from 1683 to 1685. 



Isaac Perkins, father of Lydia, who came from Hampton, Massa- 

 chusetts, is described as a wealthy merchant of Boston and founder 

 of the well-known Boston family of that name. The result of an 

 attempt to force his daughter Lydia to attend orthodox religious 

 services in Salem is thus described by her descendant, Jonathan 

 Dickinson Sergeant, of Philadelphia: 



"She was several times commanded to go to church and heavy 

 fines imposed, because being of a different faith she would not. At 

 last finding it impossible to escape, this high tempered young woman, 

 who was also a remarkably beautiful one, appeared in church as 

 God made her, saying that she thus bore testimony to the nakedness 

 of the faith of her enemies.' 1 



