The Society of Friends, generally known as Quakers, is a denomination of Christians dating from about 1647.

     Their founder was George Fox of Fenny Drayton, Leicestershire, England, who, like the Wesleys, never intended to found a new sect, but, dissatisfied with the practices of the times, longed for a higher and more spiritual life.

     Until 1652 Fox's missionary labors were confined to central England. At that time he met Judge and Mrs. Fell who became his supporters. From their home, as a center, sixty Quaker missionaries went forth.

     The labors of Fox and this band, enforced by the simplicity, truthfulness, and spiritual power of their message, caused the movement to grow to large proportions. Their leaders were not ignorant men as often supposed but independent ministers, officers of Cromwell's army, school masters, and not a few people of property.

     The doctrines held by the Friends, and their refusal to take any oath, to pay tithes, to obey laws, doomed by them iniquitous, such as the Conventicle Act and the Five-mile Act, brought them into constant conflict with the government authorities.

     During the reign of Charles II, 13,562 were imprisoned in various parts of England, one hundred and ninety-eight were transported as slaves, and three hundred and thirty-eight died in prison of wounds received in attacks upon their meetings. It was not until after the Revolution of 1688 that they were secure from serious molestation.

     The organization was almost entirely the work of Fox and its original essential features still exist.

     The Quaker movement spread to Scotland, Ireland, and in some degree on the continent but principally in America where Fox, himself, traveled in 1671-1672.

     In 1656 Ann Austin and Mary Fisher arrived in Massachusetts. They were cruelly treated, imprisoned, and sent back to Barbadoes. Similar treatment and even execution on Boston Common was meted out to others, yet converts were made and meetings established in nearly all of the English

     The Friends have no formal creed or confession. In their declarations of faith, the essential points of doctrine are substantially the same as the great bodies of Protestant Christianity. Their most distinguished doctrine is that of the immediate personal teaching of the Holy Spirit to the individual.

     The Holy Spirit calls and qualifies for religious service and there is no division into clergy and laity. Their ministers are not paid a salary but are entertained and supplied their needs as gifts while teaching. It is not a means of livelyhood. They reject the ordinance of baptism and the holy communion. Baptism is spiritual. They constantly protest against war as being opposed to the teachings of Christ. They opposed slavery and banished it from their midst. Discipline meant all those arrangements and regulations for the guidance of the church.

     They established Meetings or assemblies, four in order first. Preparative dealing with local affairs and prepared for the second or Monthly Meeting which is the executive session. At it all questions of dispute, business, marriage, etc., are settled or appealed to the family tribunal of the 4th or Yearly Meeting. The third is the quarterly meeting. They hold no law courts but all disputes are settled in their meetings. If they do not abide by the decisions they are cast out or lose their rights. If they marry outside of the church, that is, a non-member of the church, they lose their rights. Discipline is enforced and orders obeyed or they are no longer members of the church.

     According to their records, each month committees were appointed to investigate all reports of lax living or dress. Absence from church or irregularities of conduct of members were reported and acted upon at the next meeting. Their records were kept carefully often being revised by committees appointed to assure the correction of all errors.

     Men and women met separately, each having their own business to perform and keeping their own records. Therefore, in their old records, you will find the Men's and Women's Book.

     In going over their records, which are written with exceptionally good ink, one is compelled to stop and consider with amazement the open simplicity of their lives. We find records like the following: Lulitia Ratcliffe was absent from meeting; committee consisting of ---------------- to investigate

     In moving from place to place a man carried his Clearance Rights for himself and his sons. The mother for herself and daughters to certain definite meetings and those meetings returned reports to the original meeting. Thus to the genealogist Quaker records are invaluable. If you know of one meeting your person ever belonged to, you can trace forward and back. You will find reports similar to these: Samuel, William, and Joseph Ratliff presented their Clearance from Back Creek N. C. M. M. dated 25th day of 8th Month 1810 accept this - its at White Water Meeting. Later they established a meeting at Duch Creek, Ind., and we find the date of clearance from White Water and later Milford and thence Duck Creek. At Duck Creek those of the children now grown have clearance to Salem, Iowa, and so on. You can trace every town they have ever lived in and find the records of births and deaths.

     The records I have dealt with have been very complete along these lines. In the old cemeteries you will seldom find families buried together but people were apparently buried in the order of their deaths. In the later years of 1800 the grouping became more marked and a few family plots will be found while in other grave yards the family plot predominates for centuries.

     The first Quakers generally came from the continent to Barbadoes and thence to the colonies. These scattered over the different colonies as before mentioned. In North Carolina and Virginia where the Church of England was dominant we find records of people leaving the church and joining the Quakers because the ministers sent them were wine-bibbers and lustful men. The Bishop pleads for good men to be sent him that the "falling away may be averted." William Penn left the Church of England and the home of his father because "they pay too much attention to hypocritical forms and manners." Rebellion against bowing and worshipping worldly things instead of things spiritual. Penn said, "A clean body and mind is all that is essential," and his doctrine that the poor child should be taught to work that he might not always be poor and the rich child so that if he lose his riches he would

     The trek of the Quakers from Barbadoes seems to have been to Boston, principally as a port of entry thence spreading like a fan to Pennsylvania, especially Lancaster County and Philadelphia, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Maryland  From these down into Virginia and North Carolina. Few went farther south but there they turned west. From all these places centralizing in Ohio, Centre Meeting and Seven Mile, a settlement near Cincinnati spoken of mostly in the records of Westen Meetings, seems to have been the stopping place. From Ohio they first settled at Richmond, Indiana, and thence every twenty-five or thirty miles across Indiana will be found traces of their travels into Iowa.

     Retracing: The Salem, Iowa, records were destroyed by fire when Whittier College was burned. The burial ground alone remains as records. Hopewell records can be found at Straughn, Indiana. Duck Creek at Spiceland, Indiana, both small towns and the records are in the bank vaults, also Clear Springs records are in the bank at Spiceland. Richmond is the treasure house for White Water, Milford, Clear Creek, and several others. These records have been gathered together and placed in a vault in the Quaker church there. The key is held at present by Mr. Robert W. Randall, patent lawyer and a Quaker. His wife has done a lot of research work. Mrs. Ona Allen of New Castle, Indiana, near Straughn and Spaceland, has made extended study of those records.

     North Carolina records are generally found at Guilford College, a Friend school, established in 1837, and situated six miles from Greensboro, N. C. These records are accessible during the school year by paying one dollar a day for admission to the vaults where the records are stored, or by writing to the librarian arrangements can be made at the rate of four dollars for the first hour and seventy-five cents per hour after. The address for this work would be Miss Eva Losley, Guilford College, N. C. Whether one could go there during the summer months would depend on the custodian. Virginia and Maryland records can be found at Baltimore. Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Lancaster. As a rule you will not find Quaker records except in the control of the Quaker churches and colleges. A large collection of material about the Quakers is at Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. The records are written in long hand and generally very legible and well preserved. When a meeting was abandoned, the records were sent to the mother church, hence the gradual centralization of all the records.

     The October, 1929, number of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register is of special interest to those who claim descent from Governor William Bradford, as in it Mr. William Bradford Browne, the kindly genealogist of North Adams, Massachusetts, has published the first installment of his account of the English ancestry of Governor Bradford. Mr. Browne has spent several years in working up this carefully documented pedigree. In substantiation of his statements he quotes many hitherto unknown wills, tax records, subsidies, and the like. His findings are endorsed by the eminent genealogist, Col. Chas. E. Banks, M.D.

     The same issue of the Register contains a report on some recent discoveries regarding the identity of Geoffrey Chaucer's mother, who is positively identified as Agnes, daughter of John de Copton, and niece and heiress of Hamo de Copton.

     Our worst fears have been realized! The first (August, 1929) issue of The Magazine of American Genealogy has been received. It is published by The Institute of American Genealogy, the self-styled "National Clearing House of Genealogical Information." It is poorly printed on cheap paper. It is made up of sections, hence to bind it properly, each number must be torn apart. In the main it is made up of reprints from various and sundry sources, some of which are reliable and others worse than worthless. There is apparently no attempt made to distinguish between the value of these sources. So, in the main, the publications of the Institute, if they are all of the caliber of this, will be of little use to the serious genealogist, for no statement made in them can be taken as an authoritative reference. Everything will have to be backed up by recourse to the original documents.

     From the first appearance of the announcements regarding the Institute of American Genealogy we have had our grave doubts as to its value. Very few reputable genealogists have had much faith in it, as a canvas among our friends of professional standing has shown. There has been too much high-faluting language used in advertising it; its claims have been too inclusive; it has catered altogether too much to the amateur genealogist whose propensity for accepting anything in print as the gospel truth is only too well known.

     The October, 1929, issue of The Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine contains a short account of Gen. John Stark and his descendants. Gen. Stark made himself famous at the Battle of Bennington in August, 1776. A great deal of confusion about his descendants has arisen because there was present at the same engagement a Capt. John Stark, who was, in spite of the claims of his descendants, not of the same family. Gen. John Stark married Elizabeth Page. Capt. John Stark married Eunice Adams. An account of Capt. John and Eunice (Adams) Stark will be found in Frank L. Fish's Horace Ward Bailey, Vermonter (1914), pp. 153-61.

     On March 23, 1929, The Nebraska Farmer instituted in their weekly issue a genealogical department, which is being edited by Mrs. Lue R. Spencer. This is patterned mainly on the genealogical page of the Boston Evening Transcript. It is serving a double purpose. In the first place it preserves a lot of contemporary genealogical data for future genealogists; and, in the second, it stimulates and fosters interest in genealogical matters among a class of people who are far from libraries and sources of genealogical information, and enables them to get into shape and to amplify such data as they already possess at practically no expense.

     69. JACOB BEST⁵ MURRAY (William Cogswell⁴ Solomon³ Jehiel² Jonathan¹), the son of William Cogswell and Sarah (Best) Murray, was born at Copake, New York, 17 December 1827; he died at Brooklyn, New York, 24 August 1880. He lived mainly at Brooklyn.

     He married, 20 June 1855, Martha Hill Wheeler, daughter of Russel and Esther (Hull) Wheeler. She was born 29 August 1834, and died in June, 1922.

     Issue:

     70. WILLIAM⁵ MURRAY (William Cogswell⁴ Solomon³ Jehiel² Jonathan¹), the youngest son of William Cogswell and Sarah (Best) Murray, was born at Copake, New York, 22 September 1831; he died at Hillsdale, Columbia County, New York, 19 November 1903.

     He married, 31 January 1866, Julia Dorr, who was born 17 July 1836.

     Issue:

     71. ABNER ⁶ MURRAY (Jamison Delamarter⁵ Philo⁴ Abner³ Jehiel² Jonathan¹), the eldest son of Jamison Delamarter and Julia (Seeley) Murray, was born at Woodbury, Connecticut, 26 February 1812; he died about 1875 in California. He lived at one time in Carlisle, Ohio.

     He married, about 1835, Drimmis Gilbert, who was born in 1819, and died 9 April 1911.

     72. PHILO⁶ MURRAY (Jamison Delamarter⁵ Philo⁴ Abner³ Jehiel² Jonathan¹), the son of Jamison Delamarter and Julia (Seeley) Murray, was born at Woodbury, Connecticut, 29 August 1815; he died at Santa Monica, California, 23 August 1901. He lived mainly at Put-in-Bay, Ohio.

     He married, 1 January 1845, Louisa M. Holly, who was born 9 April 1826, and died 27 January 1879.

     Issue:

     73. DELAMARTER⁶ MURRAY (Jamison Delamarter⁵ Philo⁴ Abner³ Jehiel² Jonathan¹), the son of Jamison Delamarter and Julia (Seeley) Murray, was born at Woodbury, Connecticut, 12 December 1817; he died at Munroe, Wisconsin, 30 August 1863; he lived mainly in Lorain County, Ohio.

     He married, firstly, Elizabeth Terril, who died 11 December 1851, aged. 30 years.

     He married, secondly, in September, 1852, Mary E. Ball, who was born 28 March 1832, and died 2 September 1912.

     Issue (all by the second wife, all born at Munroe, Wisc.)