Clendenon Family Papers

Quaker ministers Joel Swayne, Halliday Jackson, and Henry Simmons arrived in 1798 to establish a school for Native Americans at Tunesassa in Cattaraugus County, New York, which was close to the Pennsylvania border. In 1812, Robert and Elizabeth Clendenon left their farm in Drumore, Lancaster County, to answer a call for teachers at the Quaker school. They were accompanied by two daughters, Hannah and Lydia. Son Isaac had married and the other daughters either were teaching or in boarding school. After four years, Robert and Elizabeth returned to Drumore, receiving a certificate together with daughters Ann, Mira, and Lydia from Kennett Monthly Meeting to Little Britain Monthly Meeting, Lancaster County. In about 1826, they moved to Ceres on the border of Pennsylvania and New York State where daughters Hannah King and Abigail Wright had settled with their husbands.

Robert Clendenon (1756-1833) married Elizabeth Battin (1756-1833) at Center Meeting under the care of Kennett Monthly Meeting in 1779. They had twelve children, two sons and ten daughters. Phoebe, the eldest, was born in 1780 and died in 1813. Isaac (1782-1850), the only son to survive to maturity, married Mercy Maule in 1810 under the care of Radnor Monthly Meeting. Daughters Rachel (1783-1856), Sarah (1785-1879) and Elizabeth (1787-1825) became teachers and did not marry. In 1817 Hannah (1789-1861) married John King, son of Francis King, agent for the John Keating real estate group which developed McKean County. Ann (1790-1819) worked as a teacher in Hopewell, Virginia. A second son, James (1793-1795), died in childhood. Abigail (1795-1844) married Asahel Wright in 1825. Lydia (1798-1878) married Henry Chevalier (1801-1892) in 1834. Mira (1799-1875) married Thomas Bell, all of Ceres. Ceres Township, McKean County, in the Northwest corner of Pennsylvania bordering New York, had its roots end of the 18th century with the John Keating Group of investors headquartered in Philadelphia. Francis King, a Quaker from England, was hired to locate a promising property in the undeveloped region of northern Pennsylvania. His son John King (1784-1865) succeeded him at Ceres and married Hannah Clendenon in 1817. John's sister Mary married the Quaker minister Joel Swayne; they later removed to Delaware. Daughter Abigail married another early settler to the area, Asahel Wright. About 1826, Robert and Elizabeth Clendenon purchased property in Ceres, and the family attempted to establish a Quaker meeting. However, the area which was under the care of Muncy Monthly Meeting was remote from established Quaker settlements, with the nearest post office being Jersey Shore on the Susquehanna River, Pennsylvania, and the population couldn’t sustain an active meeting. Lydia remained with her parents into their old age and was named the sole heir at her mother's death in 1833. The following year, she married Henry Chevalier, a Swiss immigrant who had participated in the Napoleonic Wars before emigrating to Pennsylvania. A committee of women friends from Muncy Monthly Meeting assigned to visit Friends in Ceres in 1834 reported that the Ceres meeting consisted of 25 members not including four women who had married out of unity. In 1839 Lydia Chevalier and her sister Mira both were disowned from membership for their marriages contrary to Quaker Discipline.

While too distant to participate in active Society membership, the King and Clendenon families adhered to Quaker values. They attended meeting, supported the abolition of slavery, and were said to support the Underground Railroad. Lydia and Henry Chevalier had three daughters: Jane Esther (1836-1856) who married Byron Weed; Marion (1830-1928); and Cornelia (1840-1887) who married Asabel Holcomb, a Civil War veteran. The family papers were preserved by Jane Chevalier Weed's descendants.