William Yardley - History

History

William Yardley was born in 1632 in Ransclough, England, located in Staffordshire. The Yardleys are supposed to have arrived England with William the Conqueror in or after 1066, but the earliest record of a Yardley in England was a William Yardley's appearance as a witness at the placing of King John's seal on the Magna Carta in 1215. The name Yardley next appears 185 years later, giving documented support to the claim that William Yardley's ancestors were in England in 1400.

Yardley was raised as an agriculturist, but associated with the mystic religious community in Renaissance England called the Family of Love. When Yardley was 15, English Dissenter George Fox began preaching an unusual and uncompromising approach to English Puritanism. This led to the founding of the Religious Society of Friends, also called the Quakers, a year later in 1648. In 1656, at age 23, Yardley began preaching on behalf of the Quakers. Two years later, he became a Quaker minister. Over the next twenty-five years, Yardley preached throughout England and was imprisoned several times along with many other Quakers, including William Penn. In one harsh imprisonment, Yardley's only resting place for three months was the bare, unheated floor of his cell.

In March 1681, Penn founded the Province of Pennsylvania as a primary refuge for persecuted English Quakers. Yardley was an uncle of one of Penn's most trusted friends and counselors, Phineas Pemberton. With plans to leave England, Yardley made an agreement with Penn to buy 500 acres (2.0 km2) for ten pounds (about nineteen U.S. dollars). At age 50 in 1682, Yardley and wife Jane (nee Janney), sons Enoch, William and Thomas, and servant Andrew Heath sailed to the America on the ship Friend's Adventure. On the ship, Yardley brought with him 2 bundles, 2 tubs, 3 chests, 1 pack, 2 boxes qty. 2 cwt. wrought iron, 1/2 cwt. pewter, 30 lbs, woolen cloth, 100 ells English linen, 40 lbs. new shoes, 2 cwt. nails; 1/2 chest window glass, 1/2 cwt. haberdashery wares.

On arriving in America, Yardley became the first person named "Yardley" to immigrate into America. The family eventually made their way to Falls, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, arriving there on September 28, 1682. Within the next few days, Yardley located 500 acres (2.0 km2) on the west bank of the Delaware River covering what is now Yardley, Pennsylvania. Penn gave Yardley a warranty deed on October 6, 1682 and the land officially became Yardley's about five years later on January 23, 1687 through a land patent.

By the end of 1682, Yardley built his farmhouse on what is now called Yardley Dolington Road, about a mile from Yardley, Pennsylvania. He called his farmhouse and adjoining 500 acres (2.0 km2) of land "Prospect Farm." In 1683, Yardley presided over the marriage of Richard Hough, one of the first marriages among the English settlers. In addition, Yardley almost immediately took a prominent part in the affairs of the Province of Pennsylvania.

Over the next ten years, Yardley signed one of the frames of Pennsylvania's Great Charter, represented Bucks County in the first Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly, and was a member of the Executive Council of the Province of Pennsylvania. Yardley died on May 6, 1693 at the age of 61 as a result of a smallpox epidemic. Thomas Janney (1633–1696), Yardley's brother-in-law, wrote of him, about the time of his death: "He was a man of sound mind and good understanding."