* Quaker records in FH

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Ruth_W
Diamond
Posts: 52
Joined: 26 Jan 2021 16:26
Family Historian: V7
Location: Wirral

Quaker records in FH

Post by Ruth_W »

I'm a long-term family historian but relatively knew to Family Historian. I've been spending time recently going over my standard sources (i.e. parish registers, certificates, census) and using Ancestral Sources to enter details and images.
Now I've come to the Quaker line of my family and I was wondering how others have approached this.
First of all, of course, there is birth, not baptism. I am quite happy entering this in AS and entering the details as free text.
Death/burial is similar - I have actually made my own template for the details of this as there seems to have been a standard request for a grave to be dug. I have got the Keywords to fill in successfully, but I'm not sure if this is overkill and I could just use the information in 'Generic Burial' autotext.
Something similar applies to marriage, as I'm not sure if I should just use the Generic Marriage, and add extra details myself (for example, the parents of both parties with fathers' occupations and residences can be given). What do you do with all those witnesses? Most of mine seem to have a section that I can identify as relatives (reasonably close) as well as the list of all the Friends present (many of whom will be or become more distantly related in the close-knit C18 communities).
I'm not expecting the 'right' answer, but I am interested in others' experiences and the pros and cons of different approaches.
Thanks.
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Mark1834
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Posts: 2458
Joined: 27 Oct 2017 19:33
Family Historian: V7
Location: South Cheshire, UK

Re: Quaker records in FH

Post by Mark1834 »

I've got quite a lot of Quaker sources, as my father-in-law comes from a Quaker family. My experience is probably different to yours, as I use only generic sources entered manually, not either AS or templates/DEAs.

My approach varies according to the detail in the individual source. I transcribe the simpler ones verbatim, but extract only the key details from the more verbose ones. I always keep an image file though, so I can go back and check additional details as required.

A more structured format may not fit in that well with the variety of formats available, particularly as the same event is frequently recorded more than once, in local, monthly and quarterly meetings. Sometimes, the original is straight narrative, but is compiled later into tabular form. I've never found a contradiction between original and later records - the standard of record-keeping and transcription is generally excellent.

Another source you are likely to find extremely useful is the Annual Monitor, a printed compilation of Quaker death records. These vary from basic details similar to C of E Burial Registers, though to multi-page obituaries. Again, I record simple ones in full, but only summarise the longer ones (my longest runs to 12 pages, so that is 12 separate image files attached to the source record as I generally don't use pdf files as media). I might experiment with capturing them with OCR software, but that's a fair bit down my "to do" list.
Mark Draper
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Ruth_W
Diamond
Posts: 52
Joined: 26 Jan 2021 16:26
Family Historian: V7
Location: Wirral

Re: Quaker records in FH

Post by Ruth_W »

Thank-you for your useful input. I suspect that Generic might be simplest and all that’s needed, plus a bit of manual entry for “extras”.
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Mark1834
Megastar
Posts: 2458
Joined: 27 Oct 2017 19:33
Family Historian: V7
Location: South Cheshire, UK

Re: Quaker records in FH

Post by Mark1834 »

If all your records were Quaker, an option would be to create your own source templates, containing all the additional details that are included in most BMD records. However, that would need careful management to sit elegantly alongside standard non-Quaker templates and a fair bit of work to set up.

If you are already using AS without templates for other events and sources, generic sources for Quaker events is the simplest option.
Mark Draper
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