According to D. Elton Trueblood in "The People Called Quakers", "A yearly meeting is a unit which refers to a still larger area and which constitutes the major legistative and administrative body among Friends." (p. 286) There is no reference to London in this statement. In fact the statement is a little misleading since issues come bottom up in Quaker organizations, issues usually develop at the lower levels and move up to the Yearly Meeting. For example, a protest against slavery was sent up by the Germantown meeting in 1688, it wasn't until 1775 that the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting issued an injunction against its members owning slaves. Quakers don't use majority rule, the new ruling has to have a consensus among the body (the yearly meeting for example), if not then the clerk was expected to table the matter until a consensus is achieved. The 1828 Hicksite separation was nothing more than a brawl between two groups in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. I"ve seen a journal written by one of my ancestors (original at the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College) about it, he chronicals the day to day events of its beginnings. Hicksites would lock out Orthodox Friends or vice versa. It was a spontaneous outburst of resentment that had nothing to do with religion, it had to do with how friends interacted with the rest of the world. London Yearly Meeting had nothing to do with it and neither the Hicksites nor the Orthodox Friends needed the approval of London. >I don't agree with the range of influence.. The London Mother Meeting did > establish the current Quaker cultural definition of the era. Even the later > Quaker split of 1828 had to be sanctioned by the London Meeting for both > the Orthodox and the Hicksite. The later Gurneyites and Wilburites all > orginated in London as well, or at least from there. > Here is what Franklin said about his mother, the quote is from his autobiography. The fact that Cotton Mather regarded her family as "godly, learned Englishman" speaks for itself. They weren't Quakers. My mother, the second wife, was Abiah Folger, daughter of Peter Folger, one of the first settlers of New England, of whom honorable mention is made by Cotton Mather in his church history of that country, entitled Magnalia Christi Americana, as 'a godly, learned Englishman," if I remember the words rightly.> >> > His mother was a Quaker, therefore Franklin qualified as a "birth-right" > Quaker. > No, to be a birthright Quaker both parents had to be Quakers. I had an ancestor who was a birthright Quaker, he married Hannah Knorr and was disowned for marrying a non-Quaker. Hannah Knorrs mother, Jemamia Warner was born a Quaker but was disowned when she married Jacob Knorr. She petitioned for readmittance and it was granted. She later petitioned to have one child admitted as a Quaker and it was granted but only that child of hers was considered a Friend. The others could probably have been admitted had they petitioned the meeting. > In Pa. the Penns thought their deal with the King excluded them from English law, they routinely sold land to Germans without requiring them to become citizens, as English law required. By 1730 they scurried to naturalized Germans in order to comply with English law but the issue of oaths never came up. Of course after the revolution the Commonwealth bought out the Penns interest so it didn't matter at that point. > > > Upper Canadian Quakers were also granted the Affirmation by Gov. Gen. > Haldimand, though the formation of the Upper Canadian Legislature of 1792 > remained inconsistent with British Law by omitting the Affirmation. This > wouldn't be rectified until c1830, and not only harmful to Quakers but > other citizens relying on their evidence as witness. No oath, no witness. > > Those that may be researching MA/CT/VT/NY/Upper Canadian Quakers are > welcome to download my Quaker Meeting Map of 1821. It's an Acrobat PDF file > and requires Acrobat Reader 3.0 or greater (free on the web from Adobe). > I've overlayed present day political boundaries to help with geographical > positioning. Map will need to be opened from the launched Acrobat Reader > and then the map will require to be zoomed into at least 400X to be able to > start to read the Meeting names. (Most meetings have indexes for location > of records - but that's another index) > I'll have to check out your index, there were Stokes' who moved to Upper Canada, they were Quakers from Burlington, New Jersey. I don't think their move had anything to do with the Revolution though. Jim

The London Meeting: A example of their directions and it impact on American genealogists. When the British changed from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, the London Meeting dictated to the Quakers as to how to change their method of calendar keeping. This is described in Ben Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanack" for 1752. For those not having Ben Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanack" for 1752 immediately at hand: Before the change, New Years Day was 25 March with 24 March of the same year following 364 days later (365 days later in leap years); i.e., you went to bed on 31 Dec 1749 and woke up on 1 Jan 1749 or you went to bed on 24 Mar 1749 and woke up on 25 Mar 1750. Many records used a double dating system where the days between 1 Jan and 14 Mar, inclusive, were double dated. This means you might find that you went to bed on 31 Dec 1749 and woke up on 1 Jan 1749/50 or you went to bed on 24 Mar 1749/50 and woke up on 25 Mar 1750 The Quakers considered the names of some months to be pagan names so the didn't name the months. In the so-called Quaker system, March was known as "1st month" until 1752 when, in accordance with the directions from London, January became "1st month." Therefore "10th day, 2nd month, 1755" was NOT the fifth anniversary of "10th day, 2nd month, 1750." "10th day, 2nd month, 1750" was 10 June 1750 (o.s.) or 21 June 1750 (n.s.) whereas "10th day, 2nd month, 1755" was 10 Feb 1755. In accordance with the rest of the British subjects, the 4th through 13th days of the ninth month of 1752 were omitted from the Quaker calendar. Incidently, some towns used the so-called Quaker method of dating in the town records well into the 19th century. One such example is Malden, Massachusetts. Don't blame me if you are now confused, blame the London Meeting -- it was their version of the new law. Bob Brooks