February 1, 2026 | By S. Richter | 5 minute read
We recently received a new donation: an 18th century marriage certificate from a Peabody resident! Looking closer, this new addition to our collection helped us piece together a few previous mysteries about Quaker women’s history during the Revolutionary period.
Dorcas Osborne
In 1768, Dorcas was born to Paul Osborne and Abigail Chase in Peabody (then known as South Danvers). Paul was a yeoman, someone who owned land and cultivated it himself. When Dorcas turned 23, she and her fiancé, Joseph Buxton, published their intent to marriage.
PHSM 2026.1 Peabody Historical Society Archival Collections
The above marriage certificate, signed on October 21, 1791 indicates that Dorcas and Paul followed the marriage traditions of Quakers. Before they were able to declare their intentions to marry, they had to stand before “several monthly meetings of the people called quakers in Lynn and Salem” so that the Quaker community could deliberate over the proposal. At the bottom of the certificate are the signatures of roughly forty witnesses.
PHSM 2026.1 Peabody Historical Society Archival Collections
PHSM 2026.1 Peabody Historical Society Archival Collections
PHSM 2026.1 Peabody Historical Society Archival Collections
Just a year later, in 1792, Dr. William Bentley of Salem, Massachusetts added these queries regarding the neighboring community of Lynn to his diary: “How happened it that so many Quakers settled on this spot? Did they come over Quakers?” (273).
Quaker Heritage
Looking into the genealogical history of the Buxton’s and the Osborne’s, there is a long history of Quakerism. Five generations before Dorcas, her grandparents were Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick on her great grandmother’s side. As it turns out, four generations before Joseph, Lawrence and Cassandra were also his grandparents on his grandmother’s side.
Lawrence and Cassandra migrated to colonial Salem in the 1630s, joining the First Church of Salem in 1639. Lawrence would become one of the first glassmakers and practiced his craft in Peabody. Between 1657 and 1660, Lawrence and Cassandra would become victims of religious persecution, leading to their death on Shelter Island.
Despite the turbulent history of Quakerism in the Salem region, they persisted through the Revolution.
Lydia Osborne
Born about a decade before Dorcas, Lydia Osborne was born in 1757 to Abraham and Mary Osborne. The Peabody Historical Society has a sampler that she embroidered, dated 1776.
PHSM S-14 Peabody Historical Society Textile Collections
The sampler reads:
Lydia Osborne is
My name English is
My nation, Danvers
Is my dwelling
Place, Christ is my
Salvation. When I
Am dead and laid
In my grave and all
My bones are rotten,
When this you see
Remember me
And let me not be forgotten.
Aged 19 1776
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We have been trying to understand what it might have meant for someone like Lydia to write in 1776 that “English” was her “nation”, while “Danvers” was her “dwelling place”.
Looking into Lydia Osborne’s family history, she too is a direct descendant of Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick, Dorcas’ cousin.
While we cannot know for sure, the Osborne’s of Peabody were a large Quaker family and some of them may have taken a neutral position during the American Revolution. Many Quakers pursued a pacifist stance at the start of the war, at times sympathizing with Loyalists. Even in 1776, a large number of colonists believed that the battles would end in reconciliation with England. Whether the Osborne’s were loyalists or not, we may never know.
Researching 18th century women’s history
One of the central challenges to researching women’s histories is that records were most often created after a woman had married, and thus tend to only record their married last names. It was such common practice for women to take the last name of their husbands, thus obscuring their own family lineage from the written record. Vital records that record their marriage, children’s’ births, and death, tend to exclude their maiden names. Some times, records do not even include the woman’s first name after marriage, making it almost impossible to trace their lives.
And yet, here are two of the best examples of objects and records that provide a clear window into women’s history.