Are there Quakers in your family tree? Learn about free Quaker genealogy resources online in this post.
But before we dive into congreation records, let’s start out with a brief explanation of Quakerism from belief.net.
Who are the Quakers?
The Religious Society of Friends is the name of the group commonly known as Quakers. Friends are a Christian group who believe in the presence of God within each person, often referred to as the “Inner Light.”
Quakers emphasize a personal commitment to God and humanitarian causes. The Religious Society of Friends was founded in the mid-17th century in England by George Fox (1624-1691). The Society of Friends is commonly known as Quakers because the original Friends were mocked for “trembling with religious zeal.”
Read more about Quaker beliefs here.
Quaker Resources
Begin with the Quaker Information Center at the Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana. Their site features information on Quakerism, a resource list of printed publications, and information on major Quaker collections of U.S. archives.
And here are some of the major collections of the records of U.S. Friends meetings. Please review the web pages for these collections before making inquiries to these archives:
- Most archives of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and Baltimore Yearly Meeting located at one or both of the two libraries listed below.
- The records of New York Yearly Meeting located in the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College. Friends Historical Library Swarthmore College Phone: 610-328-8496 Email: [email protected] (See the link for “genealogy.”)
- Quaker Collection: http://www.haverford.edu/library/special/collections/quaker/index.php Haverford College Phone: 610-896-1161 Email: [email protected]
- North Carolina and the southeastern U.S. archives located at: Guilford College’s Quaker Archives (formerly Friends Historical Collection): Guilford College Phone: (336) 316-2264 Email:[email protected]
- Archives for Indiana and Western and Northern Yearly Meetings housed at Friends Collection: www.earlham.edu/library/content/friends/Earlham College See: Genealogy at Earlham Phone: 765 983-1743 Email:[email protected]
- New England Yearly Meeting archives located at: The Rhode Island Historical Society: www.rihs.org/libraryhome.htm Quaker archivist: Jodi Goodman Phone: 401-237-8107 (Ext. 19) Email: [email protected]
- Archives of Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative branch) located in the Center for Archival Collections: Center for Archival Collections: www.bgsu.edu/colleges/library/cac/
So those are some of the free Quaker genealogy resources online for your family history research. Let me know what you find.
My family were founding members of the first American meeting house, in what is now Eliot, Maine. i would like information and physical verification of that fact. We still have family members that live in that area.
I’ll send you email, Corinne. Sounds interesting!