The Society of Friends (Quakers) maintains detailed records of births, marriages, and deaths.

If you have a Quaker ancestor, you may be able to find something like the following record from the Middletown Monthly Meeting in Bucks County, Pennsylvania:

Children of Nicholas and Jane Waln:

• Jane Waln born 16th day of 6th month, 1675 [and married 27th day of 3d month, 1691 to Samuel Allen]
• Richard Waln born 6th day of 4th month, 1678
• Margaret Waln born 10th day of 11th month, 1680
• Hannah Waln born 21st day of 7th month, 1684
• Mary Waln born 7th day of 2nd month, 1687
• Ellen Waln born 27th day of 1st month, 1690
• Sarah Waln born 9th day of 4th month, 1692
• John Waln born 10th day of 6th month, 1694

For those of you who wonder about the dates, the first month was March, the second month was April and so on under the Julian calendar. For more about the Julian and the Gregorian calendars, see my calendar article.

Monthly Meeting Records

William Wade Hinshaw began researching his Quaker ancestry in 1923. He found the monthly meeting records were a great help to his genealogical research. He decided to copy all of the records of all of the monthly meetings and publish them. Using both paid staffers and volunteers; he scoured the countryside for monthly meeting records.

At the time of his death, he had published six volumes of the Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy. The books covered monthly meetings in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, and Virginia.

In addition, Hinshaw transcribed the records of more than 300 meetings in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. His widow allowed his records to be copied onto index cards, over 285,000 of them. These are filed at the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.

Willard Heiss took the Indiana records and published them in seven volumes.

If you know you had Quaker ancestors, or if you suspect you had Quaker ancestors, you will want to check these books.

Where to find Hinshaw and Heiss books:

Genealogical libraries have assorted copies, and you can purchase a CD with some of the books. If you live in Oregon, a good place for researching Quaker records is at the library of the George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon.

The library, called the Murdock Learning Resource Center, is located at 416 N Meridian Street, Newberg, OR 97132. Phone: 503-554-2410.

The library is open six days a week. This provides genealogists with the opportunity to take a "field trip" and trace their Quaker ancestors. The Quaker materials are located in the Special Collections room on the second floor of the library, a bright sunny location with comfortable seating.

You can check out the library catalog on-line at http://catalog.georgefox.edu/ and get the "call number" for the books before you go to the library, or you can check the library catalog on-site.

If you are interested in other helpful articles, go to my Columns page.

© 2000–2009

Connie Lenzen, CG^SM

CG, Certified Genealogist, is a service mark of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used under license by board certified genealogists after periodic evaluation, and the board name is registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office.