THE HOLLINGSWORTH REGISTER

VOLUME I., NUMBER 1.

     "Someone has said that the reason that the United States has become the greatest of all nations is that its early colonists came here seeking God while those to other countries went seeking gold. Thus it was that to this community came a little band of Friends hoping to find in a new country the right to worship in a way which had been denied to them in the lands they had left behind. Of this little band many had endured sufferings, persecutions and imprisonment because of their faith, and the marks of their hardships were plainly written in their gaunt frames and hollow cheeks. The country they found here was wild and uncivilized. Penn aptly named it "my Manor of Rocklands."

     "The leader of this little group was Valentine Hollingsworth. Under his guidance a Friends' meeting was held at New Castle. Soon after, it moved to this place where a meeting house was erected on ground which he had donated. The meeting house was small and plain, built, it is said, of logs. It had nothing in common with the great cathedrals of Europe. More than two centuries ago it was moved to another location, and its founder passed to the great beyond, but each left behind an influence for good, which is still spreading in ever widening circles.

     "It was here that Valentine Hollingsworth instilled in his family the principles of honest, upright living, which his descendants, now numbering many thousand, have carried to the remote places of our country. It was here that Newark Monthly Meeting, the first in Delaware, became the founder of many other meetings which are still teaching the simple truths of Quakerism, which have done so much for mankind.

     "We are here not so much to commemorate a man long dead, nor a meeting house long abandoned, as we are to acknowledge that principle for which they labored are still a living force in our daily lives.

     " Numerous legends and traditions have centered around the ancestry and early history of Valentine Hollingsworth, many of them contradictory. Early public and meeting house records prove some of these to be true, others are likely to remain forever in the realm of conjecture.

     "Valentine Hollingsworth is said to have been born in Ireland, but it is claimed that his family was originally from the ancestral estate "Hollingsworth Manor" in Cheshire, England, and had removed to Ireland to escape persecution. This estate was held by an ancient Saxon family of the name as early as the year 1022. Red berried trees abound on the estate. The name comes from the words, "Holly" and "Worth", a farm. The old manor hall and church still stand. (See Editor's note following this article.) Both are emblazoned with the family coat of arms. It consists of three holly leaves. The crest is a stag & the Latin motto means "Learn to suffer what must be borne." The fact that many descendants of Valentine in America use the Hollingsworth arms ad color to the belief that the two families were originally the same.

     "Valentine Hollingsworth was not the first of his name to come to America,