Quaker Ancestors: Sale on Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy Print & eBooks
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Save 25% on ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN QUAKER GENEALOGY at Genealogical Publishing Company! Click HERE for more details!
Inexperienced researchers sometimes make uninformed decisions about Quaker ancestry. For example, one might assume that if he/she or one’s parents are not members of the Society of Friends now, they must not have Quaker ancestry. Nothing could be farther from the truth, inasmuch as countless descendants of colonial Quakers have changed their religious identity since William Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1682.
Speaking of that great philanthropist, another misconception is that Quaker settlements were limited to Pennsylvania. This is also false; early on, substantial Quaker settlements arose in Delaware and what would become New Jersey, and by the time of the American Revolution, many Quaker meetings were operating in other colonies too. Third, most beginning or intermediate genealogists are pleasantly surprised to learn that the Quakers kept extraordinarily detailed records of their members’ births, marriages and deaths, as well as of members’ “removal’ to another meeting or from the faith altogether.
Quaker Monthly Meeting records are an extraordinary rich source for genealogists. Birth, marriage, and death records are just the tip of the iceberg. The Society of Friends also compiled records of removal (migration), disownment (excommunication) monthly minutes, and more. Here are some few of the ways you can profit from searching Quaker records—even if you are not a Quaker:
Quaker records of removal, which document the migration of church members (sometimes entire congregations) from one meeting to another—often across state lines—are meticulously detailed.
Prospective couples announced their intention to marry for two consecutive months in the separate men’s and women’s meetings. These intentions are preserved in the minutes.
The movement of the Quaker population from New Jersey and Pennsylvania into the colonial South went through the Monocacy region of Maryland, crossed the Potomac River, and reached Hopewell Virginia in 1732.
Despite the Society of Friends’ opposition to slavery, some southern Quakers became slaveholders through inheritance.
Painstakingly developed from these monthly meeting records, William Wade Hinshaw’s Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy, [Published with] Index to Hinshaw’s Encyclopedia [Seven Volumes] is the magnum opus of Quaker genealogy. This massive work preserves the records of the Quaker population that extended from New England and the Middle Atlantic states southward to Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia, then west to Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
The records include births, marriages, deaths, and minutes of proceedings, grouped together for each meeting by families, in alphabetical order, and covering the period from 1680 through the early 1930s. The minutes relating to certificates of removal are numerous and of great genealogical interest, as they give evidence either of membership in a previous monthly meeting or membership in a new meeting, thus enabling genealogists to trace Quaker ancestors from one place to another.
The composition of the Hinshaw Encyclopedia is as follows:
- Volume I: North Carolina (including meetings in Virginia, South Carolina and Tennessee)
- Volume II: New Jersey and Pennsylvania
- Volume III: New York
- Volume IV: Ohio (including meetings in western Pennsylvania and Michigan)
- Volume V: Ohio, Part Two
- Volume VI: Virginia
- [Volume VII] Index to Hinshaw’s Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy
Long available in a printed format, the Hinshaw’s Encyclopedia is also available in an easy-to-use e-book format at a fraction of the cost of the print version. The average price for the print edition of the seven large Hinshaw volumes is is about $140. Ordinarily you can purchase their e-book counterparts for the average price of about $75.00, a substantial savings.
But if you act before 11:59 EDT this Thursday, July 20th, you can purchase one or all the volumes in this fabulous collection for 25% below the retail price of either the print or eBook edition. Even if you are unsure if you have Quaker ancestors, this is one bargain you don’t want to pass up!
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P.S. If you are new to Quaker research, consider also the brand-new edition of our handbook, Our Quaker Ancestors: Finding Them in Quaker Records. Second Edition
©2023, copyright Thomas MacEntee. All rights reserved
