Preston Patrick

Part of the 1652 country - it was important in the birth of the Quakers.
George Fox visited.
It was the home of several of the valiant sixty.
From the book by Elfrida Vipont "George Fox and the Valiant Sixty", Ernest Taylor's List of the Valiant Sixty, slightly amended includes from Preston Patrick :
Audland, Ann, Wife of Shopkeeper
Audland, John, Linen Draper (farmer)
Camm, John, Yeoman (Husbandman)
Camm, Mabel, wife of Yeoman
Story, John, Husbandman
Waugh, Dorothy, Servant
Waugh, Jane, Servant
Wilkinson, John, Husbandman

"George Fox went on to stay with John and Mabel Camm, great friends of the Audlands, who lived at Camsgill, a little farmhouse near Preston Patrick, not far from Milnthorpe. The Seekers from all over that area were to attend a general meeting at Preston Patrick chapel on Wednesday, June 16th, and George Fox's arrival was confidently and eagerly expected. The little building stood on the hillock which dominates the village, where now stands the village church. "

Part of the Westmorland Seekers?
A good place to start is by looking at a map of the area, especially one where Quaker related places are marked - so I find this one by google "preston patrick quakers map" and the one you want is Preston Patrick and Crosslands with address something like www.lancaster.ac.uk/quakers/ links/prestonpat_g.html it shows where the church, Preston Patrick Hall, Camsgill and Crosslands are, and if you scroll down southwards you can find Farleton and Lupton.
This website says the meeting house was built in 1691 before then the Quakers would have met in each others homes, even though for a time this was outlawed they continued meeting knowing that their neighbours could be tempted to snitch on them.
An interesting article found through google "George Fox's Preston Patrick Friends" by Ernest E Taylor 1924 on a site with address starting Digitalcommons.georgefox.edu
From this article I would like to know more about "knitting of caps and jerseys for the Kendal trade"
Also this aricle tells us that Camsgill was rebuilt by John Camm and he carved a panel for the brideswain dated 1641.

I feel sure that even just as neighbours these people would have all known each other, that they shared the same religious convictions only indicates that they were even closer.

But Preston Patrick was also the place of early dispute within the Quakers. Elfrida Vipont writes "The new Women's Meetings, and the tighter organization generally, were among the causes of the Wilkinson-Story controversy, which is named for two of its leaders, John Wilkinson and John Story, both of Preston Patrick, and both belonging to the pioneering group of the Valiant Sixty. John Story was the young man responsible for the little scene at Crosslands, when he had offered his pipe to George Fox. It seems likely that the main friction started during the time of severe persecution after the passing of the Second Conventicle Act in 1670, when Friends at Preston Patrick bowed before the storm and began to meet secretly, in "ghylls, woods and unaccustomed places", and were censured for so doing. This was not the only controversy which troubled the growing movement, but it was probably the most bitter, the more so because its leaders were included in the apostolic group of 1652. It involved an attack on George Fox's authority, which seems ironic, coming at a time when he had been at some pains, in his reorganization of the Society, to shift the burden of authority on to other and younger shoulders."
It led to separation within the Quakers.
This point of history leads me to thinking about bias in the history we are left with. Those who were literate and lived a long life left their own record of history as they saw it - were they unbiased? can we know the attitude of those not represented.
For those who share my ancestry we are looking here at our most interesting direct ancestors, for I believe Robert Story was in there at the beginning of the Quaker movement but nothing is written of him and we have little evidence so this is only my opinion. I will write a post on him and his family later but I do wonder if he was somehow related to John Story and suffered from the controversy in the 1670s. Robert Story died in 1665, his wife and one of his daughters in 1670.