Researching Quaker Ancestors

Who were the Quakers?

Quakers, or Friends, are a Christian group formally known as the Religious Society of Friends or Friends Church. It was founded in England in 1647 by George Fox. The first recorded Quakers in the New World arrived in Barbados about 1655 and from thence went to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where they faced harsh repression, including imprisonment and the destruction of their writings. Because of Puritan intolerance, Quakers eventually left Massachusetts and resettled in Rhode Island, and also established communities along the Delaware River, including a settlement at Salem, New Jersey, in 1675. In 1681, King Charles II granted Quaker William Penn (Fig. 1) a charter for the territory that became Pennsylvania, where Penn promised religious tolerance to Quakers and other persecuted believers. The densest Quaker settlements in Pennsylvania were in Bucks, Chester, and Philadelphia counties. Other major Quaker centers included New York, Virginia and North Carolina, Ohio and Indiana, and later in the Midwest and West.

Understanding Quaker Records and Structure

Quaker records differ from most other church records because their recordkeeping is meeting-based instead of consisting of parish or civil records. Quaker meetings were organized by geographic areas consisting mainly of Preparative Meetings (Particular Meetings), Monthly Meetings, Quarterly Meetings, and Yearly Meetings. Quarterly Meeting records consist of overseeing minutes, discipline, and sometimes consolidated lists. Records of Monthly Meetings hold the most vital information for genealogists. They may contain a history of the meeting, lists of members, marriages, deaths, removals, and disownings. Quakers did not practice baptism.

Understanding the Quaker system of writing dates is crucial to successful research. Quakers did not use names of days and months; they indicated them by number because the commonly used names were of pagan origin. Before the 1752 calendar change, March was the first month of the year. For example, March 17, 1727 was written “17th of the 1st month 1727.” After 1752, January was the first month, but the numbering system remained the same: January 7, 1754 = “7th of the 1st month 1754.”

To fully understand Quaker culture and recordkeeping, the best book to use is Our Quaker Ancestors: Finding Them in Quaker Records (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1987). This book is in the Genealogy Collection in GEN REF 289.6 BER.

Clues That Your Ancestor Was a Quaker

Besides the use of the Quaker date-writing system, here are additional clues to determine if your ancestor was a Quaker:

• Unique Terminology: Use of “Friend,” “thee,” “thy,” and the phrase “residing in the compass of” a specific meeting. Several resources listed here include glossaries of Quaker terminology.
• Marriage Records: “Marriage out of unity” indicates marrying a non-Quaker; Quaker marriage certificates were uniquely signed by all attendees.
• No Military Records: Quakers were pacifists; men will not appear in militia lists, but they may appear in records as paying fines instead of serving. This was not one-hundred percent the case, notably during the Revolutionary War; check out the article Quakers in the American Revolution.
• “Removal” Records: Quakers moving between areas usually received a “Certificate of Removal” in transferring membership from one Monthly Meeting to another.
• Wills and Records: Quaker wills often lack traditional religious language like “In the name of God, Amen.”
• Legal documents: Quakers use the term “affirm” instead of “swear.”
• Residence: If ancestors lived in an area with a high concentration of Quakers.

Finding the Correct Monthly Meeting

Gettting the most out of Quaker Meeting records means finding the right meeting, understanding record arrangement, and understanding the terminology used in the records.

First, determine which county and nearest town in which your Quaker ancestor lived at the time, as well as the time period. A helpful on-line resource for locating meetings is Monthly Meetings in North America: A Quaker Index, where you can find the Monthly Meeting name serving that area, check operation dates, name changes, parent bodies, and where its records are currently stored. It’s important to note that one Monthly Meeting could cover several meetinghouses across a wide geographic area. Another resource to use is Index to Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy by William Wade Hinshaw. It’s an every-name index to Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy, the first six volumes of Monthly Meetings compiled by Mr. Hinshaw; however, it does not index all of these meetings. The six volumes cover these states and regions:

• Vol. 1: North Carolina
• Vol. 2: Pennsylvania and New Jersey
• Vol. 3: New York City and Long Island
• Vol. 4: Eastern and northern Ohio, four meetings in western Pennsylvania, one meeting in Michigan
• Vol. 5: South central, western, and southwestern Ohio
• Vol. 6: Virginia

If your Quaker ancestor lived in Indiana, use the on-line Abstracts of the Records of the Society of Friends in Indiana, vol. 7. They were supposed to have been published as volume 7 of the Encyclopedia of Quaker Genealogy, but instead were published as the two-volume Abstracts. The two-volume set is in the Genealogy Collection in GEN REF 977.2 ABS.

When you’ve identified the meeting, read a brief history of it so you know which Yearly Meeting in belonged to, and whether it split into factions. Disagreements within the Quaker community resulted in the formation of different sects, such as Orthodox, Hicksite, and others.

Monthly Meeting Records

Monthly meeting records are usually grouped by type.You should systematically go through each type and record all information found:

• Men’s and women’s minutes (business).
• Birth and parent registers. Get all children to fully reconstruct the family and look for notations added later to the child’s entry.
• Marriage intentions and certificates. Look for the three steps necessary to complete the marriage. These include the intention to marry, a committee appointed to see there were no impediments to the marriage, and a statement indicating that the marriage took place. Then look for the copied marriage certificate (Fig. 2), signed by all who witnessed the ceremony.
• Removal (migration) certificates and registers. Track moves between meetings by certificates sent and received. Check removal registers if they exist, and general minutes, where requests and approvals may be in the text.
• Death and burial registers and sometimes separate membership books.
• Minutes. These are richer records that include admissions, dismissals, discipline, marriage steps, and discussions of members’ conduct. For disciplinary actions and disownments, search minutes for entries about “married out of unity,” drinking, military service, and so on. These may explain why you can no longer find a family in Quaker records. Be sure to check minutes after a key event (marriage, disownment, removal) for any mention of future actions pertaining to that event.

           

Helpful Resources

Several types of Quaker-focused resources are available to help you with your research:

Archives

Earlham College – https://library.earlham.edu/ecarchives/usefulresources Indiana and Western and Northern Yearly Meetings

Friends Historical Collection, Hege Library,Guilford College – https://library.guilford.edu/c.php?g=815508&p=5819861 North Carolina and Southeastern U.S., Baltimore, Philadelphia

Haverford College – https://www.haverford.edu/libraries/quaker-special-collections

Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College – https://www.swarthmore.edu/friends-historical-library New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore

Ohio Yearly Meeting of Friends – https://lib.bgsu.edu/finding_aids/items/show/466 266 record books dated 1760-1965; covers certain areas of Ohio, Michigan, Virginia, West Virginia

Rhode Island Historical Society – https://www.rihs.org/library/organization-records/ Has access to the New England Yearly Meeting archives; look under “Church Records”

On-line Resources and Records

Cyndi’s List – Quaker – https://cyndislist.com/quaker/. This is a portal to Quaker-related web sites.

FamilySearch “US Quaker Research” wiki page – https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/U.S._Quaker_Research_(Society_of_Friends). Search the catalog for records under “Locality” and enter “Quaker” or “Society of Friends”

Ancestry – Has a very good handout, Research Guide to Finding Your Quaker Ancestors, that you can download and print or save. To search for Quaker record databases in the catalog, click on “Catalog,” enter the keyword “Quaker,” then filter by location (USA), then filter by state. These databases include:

• U.S., Quaker Meeting Records, 1681-1935
• U.S., Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy, Vol I–VI, 1607-1943
• U.S., Hinshaw Index to Selected Quaker Records, 1680-1940
• U.S., Published Quaker Family Histories, 1845-1920
• U.S., Quaker Genealogies, 1893-2003
• U.S., Index to Quaker Obituary Notices, 1822-2012
• U.S. and Canada, Quaker Yearly Meeting Annual Reports, 1808-1930

Internet Archive – Some published U.S. Quaker Meeting records are available at the Internet Archive.

YouTube – You can find several videos on YouTube to help you with Quaker genealogy. Enter “quaker genealogy” in the search box and check them out.

This should get you off to a good start researching your Quaker ancestors. Good luck!