Thanks Jim, I agree with much you've stated, but a few items I believe need further research. >> Each Yearly Meeting was independent and didn't have to answer to London although they may look to London Yearly Meeting for guidance. << 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. Items of interpretation were up to the local Yearly Meeting, much influenced by the Monthly Meeting recommendation, guided by precepts laid by the London Meeting. >> Ben Franklin was never a Quaker although he was politically aligned with the Quaker Party in Pa. politics << His mother was a Quaker, therefore Franklin qualified as a "birth-right" Quaker. >> in Pa. Quakers would be asked to take an oath which they would affirm rather than swear << 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) http://www.interlog.com/~mmccombs/QkrPDF/QkrPDF.html To activate download to your hardrive, IBMs: right mouse button click and select save file as... MACs: Option key and mouse click to activate save as function... Best of Luck Murray McCombs