Quaker Resources (Religious Society of Friends Genealogy) 🕊️
Quaker genealogy is highly reliant on the meticulous records kept by their local meetings (Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Meetings), often documented in digest registers (births, marriages, deaths, removals, and disownments). These resources provide access to the essential academic collections, specialized family history societies, and key databases needed to navigate these unique records across the United States, Canada, and the British Isles.
Master Indexes & Search Tools 📜
- Hinshaw's Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy (Guide to the key multi-volume set of abstracted meeting records)
- Quaker Meeting Records (via Ancestry.com) (Largest commercial index/collection of digitized Quaker records)
- Quaker Electronic Archive (RootsWeb)
- NEHGS - Quaker Genealogy (Guide to research)
- Quaker Information Center (Genealogy Guide)
- The Religious Society of Friends (General Information)
North American Academic & Archival Collections 🇺🇸🇨🇦
These archives hold the original or microfilm copies of most North American Quaker Meeting records.
- Swarthmore Friends Historical Library (Pennsylvania/New Jersey focus, major repository)
- Haverford College Quaker and Special Collections (Pennsylvania/New Jersey focus, major repository)
- Earlham Digital Archives (Indiana/Midwest focus, digital collections)
- Pennington Research Association Archives (Earlham College collection)
- Friends Historical Association (FHA) (Scholarly society publishing Quaker History)
- Canadian Friends Historical Association (CFHA) (Focus on Canadian Quaker migration/history)
- Earlham Exhibits
- Plowshares Digital Archive for Peace Studies
British Isles & European Resources 🇬🇧🇮🇪
- Quaker Family History Society - UK (QFHS) (The primary UK society)
- Quakers in Britain - Library & Archives (Friends House Library) (Holds the central original records for Britain)
- Irish Quakers (Genealogy Toolkit guide)
- LDS (Mormon) British Quaker Microfilms (Guide to records filmed and indexed by FamilySearch)
Specialized Digital Exhibits
- Esther Griffin White Collection (Earlham Exhibits)
- Josiah Parker Papers: A Digital Exhibit (Earlham Exhibits)
Credits
Compiled by Mark Rabideau, Opa & Professional Genealogist.