Hinshaws Encyclopedia of Quaker Genealogy

Volume 28, No. 1 Spring Number, 1939 Bulletin of Friends' Historical Association THE ANNUAL MEETING of Friends' Historical Association was held in the meeting house at 20 South Twelfth Street, Philadelphia, on Second-day, 11th mo. 28, 1938, at 8.15 p. m. At the business meeting the President and Treasurer presented their annual reports, and the members elected the Directors listed on the opposite page. The Directors later met for a brief organization meeting, and re-elected the officers. At the close of the business meeting, Henry J. Cadbury gave the address of the evening on the subject: "The Hangings at Boston 1659-1661 : Motives and Sequels." Dr. Cadbury raised some interesting questions, and threw fresh light upon possible answers, as to why in young America, the land of the free and the refuge of the non-conformist, the Quakers should have been treated with harsher barbarity than in England, where no Quaker was hanged for his religious convictions. The material which he presented, however, was not in shape which he deemed satisfactory for publication, and Dr. Cadbury did not wish at this time to give his manuscript to the Editor for the Bulletin. After Dr. Cadbury's address, those present were invited upstairs to a collation, and for the usual social opportunity. HINSHAWS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF QUAKER GENEALOGY THE FIRST volume of Hinshaw's Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy, covering the thirty-three oldest meetings of North Carolina, appeared in 1936. We had heard of it before its actual appearance, and knew it represented a very ambitious plan—no less than the orderly excerpting of personal, especially genealogical, information from the original 3 4 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION record books of all American monthly meetings ; but the book itself carried a conviction of magnitude that no advance notices could achieve. It was at once obvious that this book would become an essential reference work for the genealogists and historians of America. The second volume has now appeared, covering the four great monthly meetings of Salem, Burlington, Philadelphia, and Falls. This volume has 1126 pages and is of course of special interest to families of Philadelphia and environs. Records of both branches of all four meetings after the separation of 1827-28 are given without distinction. A reference to the list of abbreviations shows the variety of information excerpted: births, burials (with specification of twelve different burial grounds), certificates (from or to a specified meeting), children, condemnations, deaths, disownments, liberations for marriage, marriages, marriages contrary to discipline , removals, reinstatements, and others not conveniently listed, with dates and sources of information. There are brief historical introductions to the records of the several meetings by Thomas E. Drake and a general introduction by Thomas W. Marshall, to whom William Wade Hinshaw makes most generous acknowledgment of indebtedness for his devoted and skilful work in compiling and tabulating the mass of raw data. Of course the entire work is indexed. To genealogists the significance of this work is obvious, but even to them it may be long before the full measure of their indebtedness to William Wade Hinshaw becomes clear. Over much of the period from the 1680's to about 1850 the Quaker records were, with few exceptions, the only ones of the kind kept in the country-, and as William Hinshaw estimates that some forty million living Americans are connected with the Quakers, there should certainly be a wide range of genealogical interest in the book. The historian, too, will use it to check his records ; the editor to find the true spelling of an illegible name, or to ascertain whether two occurrences of a name refer to the same or to different individuals. May we hope that the support given to these volumes will encourage William Wade Hinshaw to carry his great work through to completion. ...