The Norwich Clockmaker Who Rode Thirteen Thousand Miles Through America
“There was a care on my mind, that as I believed in the Truth, I might also walk in it, that being a good example I might be an encouragement to others.” — Joseph Oxley
Born on the 4th day of the ninth month, old style, 1715, at Brigg; his father John Oxley came from Criggleston in the parish of Sandal, Yorkshire, and his mother Ann was the daughter of Joseph and Catherine Peckover of Fakenham, Norfolk.
His mother, 'sometimes publicly engaged in meetings', died on the 27th of the sixth month 1720 and was buried at Castlethorp; his father died on the 29th of the twelfth month 1723, aged forty, leaving Joseph, Ann and John to the care of their Peckover grandparents and uncle Edmund Peckover.
After Gilbert Thompson's school at Sankey and seven years bound to Robert Henderson, clockmaker of Scarborough, he left in the twenty-second year of his age (about 1737) for London to learn watch-making; there he was nearly crushed to death hearing George Whitefield on Kennington Common, an hour for which he ever after gave thanks, 'in that thou didst not call me away in that unprepared hour'.
With the approbation of his Monthly Meeting he set out on the 26th of the third month 1743 from Fakenham to Lynn with John Norris of Mattishall, visiting Lincolnshire and Yorkshire and staying two nights with John Richardson at Hutton-in-the-Hole.
Married Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Fenn of Norwich, on the 28th day of the then fourth month, called June, 1744, 'in a very large and solemn assembly'; on the united judgment of Norwich Friends he settled in that city.
Set forward on the 1st of the eleventh month 1750 as companion to his uncle, an 'eminent minister of the Gospel', through London, Oxfordshire and Bristol.
Elizabeth having died of a fever on the 15th of the seventh month 1753 after about nine years of marriage, he married Mary, daughter of Thomas Burr of Royston, at Huntingdon on the 5th of the first month 1757; his eyes failing, he had left watch-making to become principal partner in a Norwich worsted manufacture, travelling on that account to London and Holland.
A concern that had 'attended me more or less, for fifteen years' took him to Ireland on the 31st of the fifth month 1762; Samuel Neale and James Toomey accompanied him to Bandon, Limerick, Mallow, Birr and Roscrea, and he lodged at Neale's house at Christian's town.
Left Norwich on the 2nd of the eighth month 1766 with John Roper for the north of Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland and Scotland, crossing to Jedburgh and Kelso; his son Joseph managed the business at home.
His uncle 'resigned his life to Him that gave it'; Oxley inserted Wells Monthly Meeting's testimony to him, signed the 4th of the fifth month 1768, into his own journal as to 'a father in Christian experience'.
With certificates from Norwich Monthly Meeting, Norfolk Quarterly Meeting and the Yearly Meeting of ministers and elders in London, he set forward on the 13th of the seventh month 1770, landed at New York eight weeks out from London, attended Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, and on the 20th of the tenth month rode out with John Pemberton and Samuel Emlen to meet Samuel Neale arriving from Cork.
Rode through Virginia and Maryland, was met at West Nottingham by John Churchman, embarked for Rhode Island on the 30th of the fifth month, was at Nantucket on the 2nd of the seventh month and Boston by the 8th of the eighth month, and passed through Newburyport 'where George Whitfield departed this life a little before'.
Sailed with Sarah and Deborah Morris, landed at Dover on the 10th of the fourth month and reached Norwich on the 15th of the fourth month 1772, after an absence of about one year and nine months in which he travelled 'thirteen thousand seven hundred and fifty-five miles'; he kept no journal after his return.
After attending two meetings held in silence on first-day the 22nd of the tenth month 1775 and spending the evening with his family, he went to bed and died within a few minutes 'without a struggle'; interred in Friends' burial-ground at Norwich the 26th of the tenth month 1775, 'in the sixty-first year of his age, and thirty-fourth of his ministry'.
Neale accompanied him through Munster in 1762, exchanged letters with him from Glanmire in 1769 and 1770 about the American concern, met him outside Philadelphia in the tenth month of 1770 and travelled with him through the colonies; his letter of the 19th of the first month 1776 to Oxley's widow closes the journal.
Met at West Nottingham in 1771 'that good man, John Churchman, an eminent minister of the Gospel, whose services are well known to many in England', went home with him to East Nottingham, and sat with him again at London Grove Quarterly Meeting before sailing.
Rode out with Pemberton and Samuel Emlen seventeen miles from Philadelphia to meet Samuel Neale in 1770, and shared with him and Sarah Morris the service of a 'meeting for the Negroes' on the 13th of the eleventh month 1771.
On his first journey in 1743 he stayed two nights at Hutton-in-the-Hole with 'our worthy and honourable friend and minister of the Gospel, John Richardson', who accompanied him to Kirby Moorside and the Pickering Yearly Meeting.
Writing home from Philadelphia in the winter of 1771–72, Oxley reported that 'John Woolman, a wise sensible man, having a good gift in the ministry and well approved of', had laid a concern before the Monthly Meeting to visit Yorkshire.
On his 1760 journey through Essex Oxley lodged at Stephen Levitt's near Felsted, 'our friend John Griffith being at that time from home on a religious visit to Friends in Ireland'.
Joseph Oxley's journal of his life, travels and labours of love, from his Brigg boyhood and the Kennington Common crowd to the letters home from Virginia, Nantucket and Boston, with the Wells testimony to Edmund Peckover and Samuel Neale's letter to his widow; reprinted in the Friends' Library, volume 2 (1838); the corpus calls it simply 'his journal', and the title here is the one the Dictionary of National Biography gives John Barclay's 1837 edition.