Brown, Dorcas Barney, 1744-1830

Dorcas Barney Brown was a Quaker from Nantucket who also lived in the Delaware Valley and upstate New York.

She was born to Benjamin Barney and Lydia Starbuck Barney in 1744, and in 1770 she married William Brown. In 1773 the couple moved to the Delaware Valley, where William had grown up, and settled near Wilmington, Delaware, staying there for seven years. In early 1780 the family briefly relocated south to the area around Smyrna, but moved north again to Philadelphia in summer 1781. After seven years in Philadelphia, the family returned to Nantucket in 1788. They stayed on the island until 1806, when they moved to the vicinity of North Easton, New York; it seems that William and Dorcas stayed there the rest of their lives. Brown died in October of 1830.