Collectors of Customs

The Ancestors of Richard Acklom and Elizabeth Harrison

Thomas Bowser married Elizabeth West in the village of Acklam near Malton in the 17th century.  Their daughter Elizabeth married Thomas Harrison.  This couple were Quakers who attended the Malton Monthly Meeting in the late 17th century.  Their son Thomas married Elizabeth Dennison, and they had two sons, neither, mercifully, called Thomas.  Joseph was born in 1709 and Peter in 1712.

Joseph Harrison married Eleanor Ridgway.  The Ridgways were also Quakers.  Ralph Ridgway's home was registered as a Quaker meeting place in 1692.  His son Daniel, born in Crich, Derbyshire, in 1679, married into the Acklom family of Wiseton Hall near Bawtry.  Anna Maria Acklom was possibly a daughter of Jonathan Acklom, although this cannot be proved.  Eleanor was one of two daughters of Daniel and Anna.

The origin of the connection between the Ackloms and the Harrisons is difficult to establish.  A 1949 biography of Peter Harrison by Carl Bridenbaugh states that "as a boy Peter often visited the home of Peter Acklam at Hornell, as well as Wyeston Hall, the house near Bawtry of a family friend and patron, Jonathan Acklam [sic], High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire."  "Hornell" was possibly Hornsea, a small town on the East Yorkshire coast.  The Acklams of Hornsea were a well-documented Quaker family, and a Peter George Acklam was imprisoned for his beliefs in 1664.  Another Peter Acklam was the son of George Acklam, an Alderman of Hull who died in 1683.  This Peter was an unsuccessful Parliamentary candidate for the city in 1705, and was notable for his refusal to buy votes.  An early account of Joseph Harrison states that he made friends as a boy with "Jonathan Acklam of Wyeston" (Acklam and Acklom are used interchangeably at this period) but there was no Jonathan Acklom of the Wiseton Hall family contemporary with Joseph.  There is no evidence of a connection between the Hull and Hornsea Acklams and the Wiseton Ackloms (or of either with the village of Acklam); but it is quite likely that Quaker families from across the region met regularly.