BIRTH 23 MAY 1740 • Exeter Twp, Berks Co, PA DEATH 28 OCT 1817 • Bloom Township, Columbia County, Pennsylvania. When Samuel Boone Webb was born on May 23, 1740, in Exeter, Pennsylvania, his father, John, was 45 and his mother, Mary, was 40. He married Rebecca Paine on May 3, 1764, in Berks, Pennsylvania. They had 11 children in 24 years. He died on October 28, 1817, in Columbia, Pennsylvania, having lived a long life of 77 years. In 1764 Samuel Boone Webb was part of the Quaker community in Pennsylvania that helped form the American identity in the 1700s.
Dubbed the “Quakers” because they “trembled at the Word of the Lord,” the Religious Society of Friends fled persecution in England, Germany, Ireland, and Wales for the shores of the North American colonies in the 1600s. Though the Quaker beliefs of gender equality, universal education, and positive relations with Native Americans were rejected by most colonists, by 1700 more than 11,000 Quakers had made America their home and come to dominate politics and daily life in Pennsylvania and parts of New Jersey. Other colonies were not as tolerant. Quakers stood out from other settlers because of their egalitarianism, rejecting the bow as a greeting and popularizing the handshake. They typically lived plain, disciplined lives as farmers, shopkeepers, and artisans, but in Massachusetts, some faced the gallows for their religion, while others were banished. Many other Christians believed that the Quaker practice of silent worship undermined the Bible. Even so, Quakers remained loyal to their convictions, and over time inspired progress including the abolitionist movement to end slavery by the 1800s.
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