[email protected] wrote: > Message: 5 > Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:19:52 -0600 > From: "piddlinacres" <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Q-R] FW: Re: How did I do? > To: <[email protected]>, "Quaker Roots" > <[email protected] > Hi all.. I am a decendant of a Quaker family in Pa., the Ridgway family, originators of GlenOlden, Pa.... How does a person without any Quaker connections for many years join a present day Quaker Meeting? Thanks, Ray > How does a person become a member? By requesting to do so. The meeting then decides (usually by having a committee speak with you) about your seriousness about becoming a Quaker, your knowledge of what membership entails, your spiritual path and whatever else that meeting thinks is relevant and then decides whether or not to accept your application for membership. A meeting is unlikely to accept into membership a stranger who walks though the door and wants to be signed up on the strength of a claim of descent from some ancestor. In practical terms, begin attending meeting (or church), figure out whether you fit, let people at the meeting get to know you and proceed from there. Some Quakers are reluctant to push the idea of joining on attenders, so if you feel that time has come to formally join the Religious Society of Friends, don't wait for someone to ask you because you might be waiting a long, long time. If you don't know who to ask, ask the clerk, and s/he can point you to the right person(s). Whether your ancestors were or were not Quakers has no relevancy. As it read in the old New York Yearly Meeting Discipline (1810), “Virtue does not descend by lineal succession, nor piety by inheritance...” In the "old days" children of members were considered to be members. In modern usage, children are often considered to be associate members, meaning that at some point after they reach adulthood, they get asked about whether they wish to continue their membership in the Society. The idea that you had to be born into the Society of Friends is not true. There are Quakers who can trace an unbroken lineage back of membership in the Society of Friends back though three centuries but in a typical meeting it is much more likely that most of the members are "convinced Friends" who have no Quaker ancestry and who joined as adults. There are some people who join and only later find out that some long distant ancestor was a Quaker. I once did a study of memorials to "weighty" Friends published by New York Yearly Meeting in the first half of the 19th century. These memorials were to exemplary Friends, born from the 1600s to the early 1800s. About half mention that the subject of the memorial was born to Quaker parents and raised as a Friend. About a quarter clearly state that the person was born something else -- Presbyterian, Anglican, whatever-- and became convinced of Friends principles. The rest don't mention, or are not clear about, whether the person was a "birthright" Quaker or not. So basically, somewhere between 25 and 50% of the most well regarded Quakers, from a time period when Quakers were most withdrawn from the "world" were converts, and not birthright members. So lots of people coming into the Quaker fold, and at the same time, because Quakers were being very rigid about their testimonies at this time, being disowned and leaving the Society of Friends. Christopher Densmore

What a beautiful and detailed response! I would like to chime in on two points. Some Friends meetings have pastors (I am a member of a pastoral family among Friends). In those meetings the pastor is likely to take some educational/counseling role in preparing new attendees for membership. The clerk and elders are responsible for the decision of whether the attendee should be admitted, in any case. My maternal grandmother is said to have been very proud of being a birthright Friend (I am not sure whether birthright membership was still recognized in Indiana at the time of her birth, in the 1880's). Yet she never attended a Friends meeting as an adult and did not raise her children as Friends. My mother later became a convinced Friend. Between these, who was the weightier Friend? That would almost certainly be the convinced Friend, who attended faithfully, served in a variety of leadership roles including clerk of the meeting, and raised her children among Friends. On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 3:22 PM, Christopher Densmore < [email protected]> wrote: > > > [email protected] wrote: > > Message: 5 > > Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:19:52 -0600 > > From: "piddlinacres" <[email protected]> > > Subject: Re: [Q-R] FW: Re: How did I do? > > To: <[email protected]>, "Quaker Roots" > > <[email protected] > > > Hi all.. I am a decendant of a Quaker family in Pa., the Ridgway > family, originators of GlenOlden, Pa.... How does a person without any > Quaker connections for many years join a present day Quaker Meeting? > Thanks, Ray > > > How does a person become a member? By requesting to do so. The meeting > then decides (usually by having a committee speak with you) about your > seriousness about becoming a Quaker, your knowledge of what membership > entails, your spiritual path and whatever else that meeting thinks is > relevant and then decides whether or not to accept your application for > membership. A meeting is unlikely to accept into membership a stranger > who walks though the door and wants to be signed up on the strength of a > claim of descent from some ancestor. In practical terms, begin attending > meeting (or church), figure out whether you fit, let people at the > meeting get to know you and proceed from there. Some Quakers are > reluctant to push the idea of joining on attenders, so if you feel that > time has come to formally join the Religious Society of Friends, don't > wait for someone to ask you because you might be waiting a long, long > time. If you don't know who to ask, ask the clerk, and s/he can point > you to the right person(s). > > Whether your ancestors were or were not Quakers has no relevancy. As it > read in the old New York Yearly Meeting Discipline (1810), "Virtue does > not descend by lineal succession, nor piety by inheritance..." In the > "old days" children of members were considered to be members. In modern > usage, children are often considered to be associate members, meaning > that at some point after they reach adulthood, they get asked about > whether they wish to continue their membership in the Society. > > The idea that you had to be born into the Society of Friends is not > true. There are Quakers who can trace an unbroken lineage back of > membership in the Society of Friends back though three centuries but in > a typical meeting it is much more likely that most of the members are > "convinced Friends" who have no Quaker ancestry and who joined as > adults. There are some people who join and only later find out that some > long distant ancestor was a Quaker. > > I once did a study of memorials to "weighty" Friends published by New > York Yearly Meeting in the first half of the 19th century. These > memorials were to exemplary Friends, born from the 1600s to the early > 1800s. About half mention that the subject of the memorial was born to > Quaker parents and raised as a Friend. About a quarter clearly state > that the person was born something else -- Presbyterian, Anglican, > whatever-- and became convinced of Friends principles. The rest don't > mention, or are not clear about, whether the person was a "birthright" > Quaker or not. So basically, somewhere between 25 and 50% of the most > well regarded Quakers, from a time period when Quakers were most > withdrawn from the "world" were converts, and not birthright members. So > lots of people coming into the Quaker fold, and at the same time, > because Quakers were being very rigid about their testimonies at this > time, being disowned and leaving the Society of Friends. > > > Christopher Densmore > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message >

Hello all, I believe it's time for me to don my List Administrator hat, and steer the conversation back to Quaker genealogy. While informative, the thread about how to join a present-day meeting is not, strictly speaking, genealogy. I think we've covered it pretty well, and should close the topic now. I'd be glad for anyone who still has questions on the topic to contact me directly rather than through the list. I'll try to answer them. -- Dan Treadway P. O. Box 72 Gilbert IA 50105 [email protected] http://showcase.netins.net/web/treadway/