The earliest documents in the collection pertain to Thomas Embree (1755-1833), who was born in Berks County, Pennsylvania, and moved with his parents south, first to Orange County, North Carolina, and then to the Bush River Quaker settlement in Newberry County, South Carolina. Late in the 1770s, the Embree family moved again, to the Nolachucky settlement in Washington County, Tennessee, where they were among the first Quaker settlers. In 1781 Thomas Embree married Esther Coulson (1752-1830) of Frederick County, Virginia. They lived in Virginia and Tennessee, where Thomas became a prominent ironmaster. In 1805, they moved to Green County, Ohio, settling near Oldtown. In 1824 Thomas and Esther moved to Logan County, Ohio, but remained only a year before returning to Greene County, where both died. One of the children of Thomas and Esther was Elihu Embree (1782-1820), who remained in Tennessee. In 1819 he began publishing the Manumission Intelligencier, later called the Emancipator. Thomas and Esther Embree's daughter Rachel (1786-1874) married William Thorn (1781-1853), the son of Isaac and Hannah (Shotwell) Thorn, Quakers from New Jersey who had moved to Harrison County, Ohio. William and Rachel Thorn spent most of their married life in the Green Plain settlement of Friends in Greene County, Ohio, and most of the other documents in the collection relate to them.

Note written by