Guide to Research Quaker Records in the Midwest
By Willard C. Heiss
Indiana Quaker Records
4020 East 34th Street
Indianapolis 18, Indiana
John Woolman Press
Indianapolis, Indiana
Excerpts
from a talk given by Willard Heiss at the 11th Indiana History
workshop at McCormick's Creek State Park in May, 1961. Willard Heiss is the
director of the Records Preservation and Microfilming Program of the city of
Indianapolis. He has done extensive research and writing about early Quakers in
the Midwest. He is an active member of the Lanthorn Friends (Hicksite) Meeting
of Indianapolis.
Reprinted
with permission from the March and April issues of the Indiana Historical
Bulletin, published by the Indiana Historical Bureau with the co-operation of
the Indiana Historical Society.
Guide
to Research Quaker Records in the Midwest
1656. Quakers
first appeared in the American colonies, Within two years monthly meetings were
established in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
1661, the
first yearly meeting in America held at Newport, RI
1671 Virginia
established
1672 Baltimore
established
1681 Philadelphia
established
1695 New
York established
1698 North
Carolina established
Due mainly to the Appalachian barrier,
population stayed on the Atlantic seaboard. The migration of the Quakers was to
move generally south from Pennsylvania into northwestern Virginia, then to move
farther south into the Carolinas. Quakers from Nantucket moved directly to the
Carolinas.
Prior to the Revolutionary War Friends settled in what is now eastern Tennessee.
1800 several
settlements of Friends in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. About that
time settlements were being founded in southern and western Ohio.
1813 Ohio
Yearly Meeting was set off from Baltimore Yearly Meeting First held at Short
Creek in Jefferson County, Ohio, and later at Mount Pleasant in the same
county.
Ohio
Yearly Meeting encompassed western Pennsylvania, all of Ohio, and that part of
Indiana where meetings existed. Migrations of
Friends
from the south in the next few years expanded original settlements and helped
to start many new ones, including one in Washington County and another in Vigo
county, Indiana.
1820 there
were several flourishing Friends meetings in Wayne County, Indiana and in
Warren, Clinton and Miami counties in Ohio. All these were included in the
Indiana Yearly Meeting which was established the following year and met at Richmond, Indiana.
DIVISIONS IN THE SOCIETY
In Ohio Yearly Meeting
After Indiana Yearly Meeting was set off, the limits of
Ohio Yearly
Meeting included the eastern part of Ohio and the southwest
1828 Hicksite (Salem) and Orthodox (Mount Pleasant) split
(The
Hicksite Yearly Meeting was discontinued in 1921)
1854 Ohio Yearly Meeting split Wilburites met at Mount Pleasant until
1877; Gurneyite branch met at
Damascus
All four branches (Orthodox, Hicksite,
Wilburite, Gurneyite), used the name "Ohio Yearly Meeting of the Religious
Society of Friends".
In
Indiana Yearly Meeting
1821 Indiana Yearly Meeting established (western Ohio, all of Indiana and
the meetings in eastern Illinois) After the separation of 1828 Hicksite (Richmond, In & Waynesville, OH / Orthodox Richmond, Indiana
1843 Anti - Slavery Friends met annually at Newport (now Fountain City),
Indiana
1857 reunion of the two groups
1858 Western Yearly Meeting established at Plainfield, Indiana.
1874 (Hicksite) Illinois Yearly Meeting set off from Indiana Yearly Meeting
southern Indiana, all of Illinois and I believe, also meetings in Iowa and
Wisconsin.
1892 Wilmington (Ohio) Yearly Meeting was set off, comprising all the
meetings in western and southern Ohio
In
Western Yearly Meeting
1858 Established limits extended west to include meetings in Iowa where
Friends began settling in the 1830's.
1877 Western Yearly Meeting of (Conservative) Friends held at Sugar Grove,
south of Plainfield
In
Iowa and Kansas
1863 Iowa Yearly Meeting (Orthodox) established by Western IN
1839 Salem Monthly Meeting was established in.
Prior to 1836 certificates of removal were deposited with
Vermillion Monthly Meeting, Illinois, that being the nearest to the Iowa
settlements.
1878 Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) was established.
1872 Kansas Yearly Meeting (Orthodox) was established by Indiana Yearly
Meeting in and met at Lawrence.
1879 establishment of Kansas Yearly Meeting (Conservative) Emporia, Kansas
the last being in 1929 when the Yearly Meeting was laid down (discontinued).
The surviving members were attached to Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative)
GENEALOGICAL
INFORMATION AND WHERE TO FIND IT
Collections of printed minutes:
Friends
Historical Library at Swarthmore College
Website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/Library/
Haverford
College Library.
Website
http://www.haverford.edu/library/
Earlham
has a complete set for Indiana Yearly Meeting
Website
http://www.earlham.edu/~libr/library/
Guilford
for North Carolina, etc.
Website
http://www.guilford.edu/library/
Original manuscript minutes as they exist are to be found in the archives of the
respective Yearly Meetings. For the past few decades many yearly meetings have
been sending minutes and reports directly to the printer and have not compiled
a manuscript record -- hence in many instances, the printed manuscript is all
that exists.
Death notices of ministers and elders Appear in printed yearly meeting minutes.
Minutes of the "Meeting for
Suffering” In America, these records exist from the mid-eighteenth
century and consist of a record of the matters that came before a
representative body (in effect, an
executive committee) that met and functioned for the yearly meeting when it was
not in session. These minutes contain much of the material concerning the
resistance of Friends to wars.
Encyclopedia of American Quaker
Genealogy by William Wade
Hinshaw 6 Vols 1936 - 1950 (unpublished
material available at Swarthmore College, PA)
Volume I The Carolinas
Volume II Philadelphia, PA; Salem and Burlington NJ
Volume III New York City and Long Island
Volumes IV & V Ohio
Volume VI Virginia
Quaker Necrology (2 volumes, Haverford College Library, 1961) an index
of 60,000 death notices from Friends' Periodicals; volume and page number but
no actual dates. Periodicals indexed are:
The Friend (Philadelphia)
The Friends' Intelligencer
The Friends' Review
The Friends Journal
Other Publications
Western Friend, Cincinnati, OH
The American Friend, Richmond, IN
The American Friend (formerly Christian Worker, and different from
periodical above) Chicago, IL obit notices Iowa, Illinois, and Kansas
The American Monitor (New York 1858-1863) brief biographies and obits
A History of Farmers' Institute Monthly
Meetings (IN abt
1951)
Centennial Anniversary of West Branch
Monthly Meeting (OH, 1907)
History of West Branch Quarterly Meeting (OH, 1957)
Quaker Historical Collections (Springfield MM (OH, 1959)
History of the Friends Church in
Leesburg, OH (OH, 1952)
A History of Cincinnati Monthly Meeting (OH, 1899)
Plainfield Friends Mark a Century (IN, 1951)
A History of the Union Street Meeting of
Friends of Kokomo IN (1958)
Miami Monthly Meeting Centennial (Ohio, 1903)
History of Miami Quarterly Meeting (OH, 1959)
Booklet about Friends in Orange County,
Indiana (1958)
West Elkton Friends Meeting (OH, 1955)
Jericho Friends Meeting (IN, 1958)
Memories of New London Community (IN, 1936)
Whitewater -- Indiana's First Quarterly
Meeting (1959)
Early
Friends in Grant County, Indiana (1961)
Early
Settlement of Friends in the Miami Valley (OH, 1961)
Honey Creek Monthly Meeting of Friends,
Vigo County, IN (Abstract of records,
1961)
Milford Monthly Meeting, Wayne County,
IN (Abstract of Records, 1960)
ORIGINAL
RECORDS
All
yearly meetings of Friends have a custodian of records for non-current records.
A list of major repositories in the US was compiled by Fred Tolles and Lyman
Riley and published in the December 1960 issue of The Genealogical Helper
Transcriber's
note: This list was current in 1961, a pre-trip phone call is advised to make
sure this list is still accurate and that access is allowed. Also, many of the
records have been filmed by the Mormons and can be ordered at their Family
History Centers.
The
catalog contains over 1250 films that may be ordered.
Heiss
has added these listings to the above:
OHIO
Ohio
Yearly Meeting (Conservative) Vault at
Friends School, Barnesville, OH
Friends Meetinghouse at Salem
Mt. Pleasant National Bank
Wilmington College Library, Wilmington,
OH
Ohio State Historical society, Columbus
Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland
INDIANA
Vault at Yearly Meetinghouse, Richmond,
IN
Meetinghouse, Fairmount, IN
Vault at Friends home, Waynesville, OH
Vault at the Yearly Meetinghouse,
Plainfield, IN
Vault at Post Office, Bloomingdale, IN
Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis
ILLINOIS, IOWA AND KANSAS
Clear Creek Meetinghouse, McNabb, Il
Friends Meetinghouse, Oskaloosa, IA
Vault at Scattergood School, West Branch, IA
For
a list of early monthly meetings, go
to
http://www.rootsweb.com/~quakers/
On
the right side of the page, click on:
QUAKER MEETINGS
List
of the older Quaker Meetings and where they were located
(Many
of these listings are linked to web sites for the meetings.)
For
abbreviations used in Monthly
meeting minutes, same site, click on
QUAKER TERMS
Guide
to abbreviations used in Quaker records
Heiss
makes a distinction between marrying contrary to discipline (mcd), which is
being married by other than a Quaker ceremony, and marrying out of unity (mou)
that is marrying either in another church, or to someone who is not a Quaker.
He
also points out that unless a person is born, dies, or is appointed an elder,
chastised in some way, he may not appear in the minutes of the Monthly Meeting
of which he is a member. At times, when meetings were "set off" or
"laid down" entire memberships were shifted to a different meeting with
nothing to guide the researcher except that the meeting was closed or
established.
With
today's Internet searches, finding your Quaker ancestor is much easier than it
was in 1961. Hinshaw's books, for instance are available--for a fee--online from
at least two different sites. Use the Internet to find your reference, and then
go to the original source.
By
typing into http://www.google.com
Quaker
Monthly meeting records
I got 3 pages of hits!
Compiled By: Mary Jo Bailey
Randolph County, INGenWeb ©2003-2008 by Gina Richardson
USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping
with our policy of providing free information on the Internet,
Data may be used by
non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material.
These electronic pages
cannot be reproduced in any format for profit or other presentation.