Valentine Hollingsworth

Valentine Hollingsworth (August 15, 1632 – October 13, 1710) was one of the first to lead his family to the New World. He was descended from the Hollingworth family of Hollingworth, England.

According to Ancestry.com, the name meaning for the Hollingsworth surname is:

"habitational name from places in Cheshire and Lancashire called Hollingworth, from Old English hole(g)n ‘holly’ + worð ‘enclosure’."

Born in County Armagh, Ireland, he married first Anne Rea in 1655, by whom he had four children and who died in 1671, then Anne Calvert in 1672 by whom he had four more children.

He was the son of Henry Hollingsworth, who had moved to Ireland from England and was a member of the Hollingworth family of Hollingworth Hall, in what was Northern Cheshire.

Hollingsworth became a Quaker while in Ireland and suffered religious persecution. In 1682 he and his family sailed for the New World, many on the ship "Antelope". He settled on a large farm near Shellpot Creek in the Brandywine Hundred, in what is now New Castle County, Delaware.

Hollingsworth was a member of the First Assembly of the Province of Pennsylvania. He served as a justice of the peace. He was one of the signers of William Penn's Great Charter.

He died on October 13, 1710 in Delaware. A large monument (normally abhorred by Quakers) now sits at his gravesite.

External links

• Biography
• Genealogy and brief biography
• Brief biography
• Anecdotes
• Some biography, some geneaology
• Hollingsworth family website
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• http://www.ancestry.com/facts/hollingsworth-name-meaning.ashx