Regardless of where you go, you will find consistency in the nature of the Friends' records. They do not vary extensively either with the passage of time or from one locality to another. The records are based on a "Meeting" system. The local congregation meets weekly and is called a Weekly Meeting. Each Weekly Meeting group has a Preparative Meeting wherein the business of the congregation belongs. A Monthly Meeting comprises several Weekly Meetings and is the meeting wherein most of the business of the church is transacted and recorded. There are both men's and women's Monthly Meetings. It is the Monthly Meeting records that are generally considered to be of the most genealogical value, though other records do have some value.

Several Monthly Meetings make up a Quarterly Meeting and several Quarterly Meetings come together to make up a Yearly Meeting, and some branches of the organization have Three‑Year Meetings. These latter three are mainly administrative divisions and their records are not so useful to the family researcher.

    Thomas W. Marshall, writing in the introduction to Hinshaw's Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy (Vol. I), made the following observations about Quaker records. I recommend your careful study of this material if your ancestors have Quaker connections:

    The records kept by Friends Monthly Meetings during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries usually consisted of a record of births and deaths, a record of marriage certificates, and minutes covering all proceedings and discussions coming before the monthly sessions of the meeting. As the men and women met separately, two sets of minutes were kept. In some meetings the marriage records were kept in the same book with the birth and death records; in others they were kept in a separate book. The birth and death records are never complete. In some cases whole families are omitted; sometimes the older children of a family are recorded and the younger ones omitted. The percentage of births recorded appears to be considerably higher than that of deaths. In only a few meetings was it the practice to record the birth dates and parentage of the father and mother of a family. Place of birth was not usually recorded, for either parents or children.

    None of the earlier meeting records contains a list of the member­ship. When a monthly meeting was divided to establish a new one, all members of the old meeting who lived within the verge of the new automatically became members of the new meeting without any list of their names being entered in the records of either meeting. A person who became a member in this way, unless he took some active part in the affairs of the meeting, was married, or was complained of for some breach of discipline, might continue in membership until the end of his life without his name ever appearing in the records.

    The records of marriage certificates are much more complete than birth and death records. In a few meetings every marriage accomplished in the meeting is fully recorded. Others are nearly complete, with only a few marriages missing. Since the regular procedure in the marriage involved two appearances of the couple before both men's and women's meetings prior to marriage and subsequent reports of the committees appointed to attend the marriage ceremony, there is ample record of each marriage in the minutes even though recording of the marriage certificate may have been overlooked. The record in the minutes, however, does not give the names of the parents of the persons married nor the exact date of the marriage. The report of the committee that the marriage had been accomplished was made in the next succeeding meeting, thus fixing the date within a month.

    The minutes of sessions of the monthly meetings cover many subjects . . . During the periods of migration the minutes relating to certificates of membership received and issued are the most numerous and have the greatest interest. Records of disciplinary action against members for violation of the rules of the Society occupy much space. Members were "dealt with" on a great variety of complaints, including fiddling and dancing, drinking intoxicating liquor to excess, serving in the militia or, other armed forces, using profane language, fighting, failure to meet financial obligations, marrying contrary to the order used by Friends, deviation from plainness in apparel or speech, joining another religious society, etc. Unless the offending member expressed sorrow for his misconduct and brought a signed paper condemning the same, he was usually disowned. The number so disowned runs into thousands. Many of them, after a shorter or longer time, produced the necessary paper of condemnation and were reinstated in membership. A minute showing that a person presented a satisfactory paper condemning his misconduct, implies that he was retained or reinstated in membership, as the case might be, whether the fact is specifically stated or not. Often, following the disownment of a member (perhaps many years later) the minutes may record a request for membership coming from a person of the same name, but with no reference to previous membership or disownment. In such cases it is usually impossible to tell whether the two minutes refer to the same person or to two individuals with the same name. A great many of those who were disowned never asked to be reinstated but, remained outside the Society for the rest of their lives. The names of these persons never appear in the records again.

    When individual members of families removed from one monthly meeting to another they were furnished removal certificates setting forth the fact of their membership in good standing and recommending them to the fellowship of the monthly meeting to which they were removing. In the earlier days these certificates were usually pre­pared and signed in advance and carried by the members to their new place of abode. Later, it appears to have become more the custom to wait until the new home had been established and then send back a request that the certificate be forwarded. A condition to the granting of a certificate was that the member's "outward affairs" be satisfac­torily settled. The certificate usually stated that this had been done. When a certificate was issued to a family the fact was generally recorded in the men's minutes so far as it applied to the husband and sons, and in the women's minutes as it applied to the mother and daughters. The names of children were frequently omitted in the minutes of the issuing meeting but were usually recorded by the receiving meeting. The fact that John Jones and family (men's minutes) and Mary Jones and daughters (women's minutes) were granted certificates to the same meeting on the same day does not guarantee that John and Mary were husband and wife. Such an assumption would be correct in the majority of cases but would sometimes be erroneous. Confirmatory evidence should always be sought.

    If a man and woman contemplating marriage were members of different monthly meetings they made their declarations of intention in the meeting of which the woman was a member. The man was required to bring a certificate from his meeting stating that he was a member in good standing and free from marriage engagements with others. This certificate did not transfer his membership to the woman's meeting, but only made it possible for him to marry there. After marriage, the wife usually obtained a certificate, issued in her married name, transferring her membership to her husband's meeting.

    Marriage contrary to the Friends' order, variously referred to in the minutes as "marriage by a priest," "outgoing in marriage," "marriage contrary to good order," "marriage out of unity," "marriage contrary to discipline," etc., and spoken of in every day speech as "marriage out of the meeting," was the cause of more complaints and disownments than any other single offense . . . Unfortunately the minutes rarely give the name of the person to whom the offend­ing member was married. The record relating to a woman usually refers to her as Mary Jones, formerly Brown, thus giving a clue which is not available in the case of a man. In a large percentage of cases of marriage contrary to Friends' order, only one of the parties was a member. When both parties to a marriage engagement were members in good standing, there was usually no reason why they might not apply to the meeting, and receive permission to marry under its authority, but there were some exceptions. Marriage between first cousins or others of close relationship was forbidden by the rules of the Society. Parental objection may have been a bar to a marriage in meeting in some cases. In other cases the couple married out of meeting for no other reason than to accomplish their purpose more quickly and without the formality which was necessary to a marriage in meeting.¹

A Note about Quaker Dating:  The Quakers did not accept the ecclestiastical calendar but began their year on January 1, even though they otherwise accepted the dates of the Julian Calendar.

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¹ Thomas W. Marshall, Introduction to Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy, Vol. I, ed. by William Wade Hinshaw, 1936 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1969 reprint), pp. ix‑xi.