George Fox, of the Religious Society of Friends ( Quakers ), rejected the sacrament of baptism as practiced by other churches. He believed that the true baptism was not external but internal. The external washing with water was without consequence, a holdover from Jewish practices. That external baptism was without merit, seems to be the implication of Luke 23:43. This records the saying of Jesus to the thief who was crucified beside him, "I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise."
They rejected the sacraments, ordination, churches, and ministers. The organization structure of the Friends was also much different from other churches. They organized around a series of "Meetings", all of which kept records. The Weekly Meeting was the lowest level, and applications to join the Friends were received at this level. Intentions to marry were also received at this level. Records were maintained of every activity.
Different Weekly Meetings joined together for a Monthly Meeting. The Meetings from a still larger area joined in a Quarterly Meeting. The summit was the Yearly Meeting. All of these meetings entailed worship and records. In 1656, they adopted the rule that all births and deaths would be recorded. Three years later, marriages were added to the list of things to be recorded.
Per George Fox's instructions, the (Weekly) meeting was to record births, marriages, and deaths. This information was to be taken to the Monthly Meeting and recorded there. These Monthly Meeting records were to be taken to the Quarterly Meeting where they were to be recorded. This duplication was on purpose as insurance in case one set of records was destroyed. In practice, in Pennsylvania, only Monthly Meeting records are to be found.
When reading the records, please be advised that the Friends do not use the names of the days and the names of the months. If God called the days of the week, the First Day, the Second Day, and so on, then that was good enough for man. The names of the months, being largely pagan in origin, were dropped in favor of numerals.
Children of Friends were birthright members of the Society. There were procedures to be followed though. After the child was named, the record was made out and it was to include the names of witnesses to the birth. The implication is that the records would be in chronological order but it appears that more often family sheets were made out and that the witnesses were omitted. Friends who immigrated to America where encouraged to fill out family sheets including the children who were born before immigration. Therefore the records cannot be taken as proof that the child was born here.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.