JOSEPH GOURLEY > SUSANNA GOURLEY m Daniel ThompsonWe don't have a plethora of southern antecedents. Most come originally from the Puritan northeast US, not the more free-wheeling commerce-driven settlers who landed in Virginia and parts south.
Yet, the Gourley's had long been in Loudoun County, Virginia. Their origins are most likely Scottish and their presence in Virginia goes back until at least the mid 1700s. I've found indications that they were Quakers. Waterford, the town in which Susanna's father Joseph was born, was a Quaker settlement started by Pennsylvanian Amos Janney in 1733. Joseph and his wife Grace Morgan's antecedents started from Pennsylvania. I'm slowly chipping away at the story.
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| The birthday gift giving list looks like Who's Who of my family tree |
Susanna was one of at least eight children born to Joseph Gourley and Grace Morgan. In some of my research of Grace's family, it appears they may have been part of the Keithian Quakers, a group that split from the Friends in 1690 over disagreements on things like water Baptisms, which the Quakers had foregone some time previously. These Keithian Quakers often ended up as Baptists. If you hear the term Baptist Quaker or Primitive Baptists, that's most likely what's being referred to. It walks like a Quaker and talks like a Quaker, but isn't a Quaker. This makes sense as most of the Cooper's who settled in Iowa ended up as Baptists.
This interesting story comes from a Gourley relative, Patty, who shared the information online:
"A letter from Mary Verniece Byrd, one of the descendants of Susannah Gourley Thompson, dated April 18, 1973, to Reeva Decker. Susannah Gourley, born 1801, married Robert Thompson, born 1799, in Louden County, Virginia. She was born in either Pittsylvania County or Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Susannah Thompson had a son Scott who was much younger than her other children and full of the devil. Scott's wife Marietta was alive in 1937 as my little boys and I stopped to visit her a few hours in passing through. It is through her that I got my history about Susannah Gourley Thompson as she knew her well before she died. She told me that Susannah Gourley Thompson said that she well remembered the War of 1812. She had 3 brothers who fought in it. Her father - Joseph Gourley- was too old but he hauled provisions to the soldiers at Point Lookout, Maryland. If you look on your map it is a point south of Washington, D. C. at the edge of the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River joined. She said she wore a blue dress and stood in a wagon, and waved a flag as the soldiers marched by. She would have been at least 11 years old."
Susanna married Daniel Thompson about 1819. Daniel was born about 1800 in Virginia. Unfortunately, after having 11 children, he died in his 40s after their arrival in Stephenson County, Illinois. Susanna's siblings spread out as well, some staying in various parts of Virginia and some moving to Clark and Crawford County (remember, there was a very large contingent of Quakers in the area), and then on to Livingston County or Stephenson County, and one to Champaign County, Ohio.
Susanna's son Daniel, born in 1828 in Virginia, married into the Quaker Cooper family, marrying Ann Cooper on 05 May 1850 in Illinois. They had seven children before he died prematurely at age 37 in Osage, Mitchell County, Iowa in 1864. His will made his wife not only the beneficiary of his estate, but the sole executor of Daniel's will.
Susanna eventually became Rock Grove's oldest citizen. She had her 83rd birthday in 1884, but she still had a lot of life left in her. She resided with son-in-law CJ Cooper in some of the last years of her life. "Grandma Thompson," as she was known by all, lived on to the age of 97 and died of complications of age cared for by her daughter Grace. She outlived all but two of her children.
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