England Quaker Marriage Records, Burials, Monumental Inscriptions - International Institute

Quaker Marriages
Quaker marriage registers are of especial interest for many details and all the witnesses, often more than 50, are given in the originals (but not in the Digests), with relatives and friends usually listed separately (see chart below). Not all the witnesses are necessarily Quakers, since non-members were allowed to attend.

The form of the ceremony was of an open declaration by both parties, which followed an exhaustive check of their eligibility to marry. In the certificates the names of both parents of each party were given, and variations included the use of printed forms from the end of the 18th century; whether the couple’s parents were still alive and where they resided; or the additions of children’s and grandchildren’s names and birth dates to the marriage certificate copy in the register.

One copy of the certificate was copied or pasted into the each party’s monthly meeting register along with a summary, and another was sent to the quarterly meeting which generally entered a summary into its register.

Chart: Quaker Marriages

Quakers were the only Nonconformists whose marriages were deemed legal between 1754 and 1837. In contrast to the Anglican Church list of Prohibited Degrees of Consanguinity, marriage between first cousins was not allowed, and the records can reveal such relationships of the intending parties. This may have resulted in the couple choosing not to marry or leaving the Quakers, but occasionally the impediment was ignored. Prospective marriage partners were subjected to exhaustive checks for their suitability, which allows glimpses into the respectability or otherwise of their families.

Quaker Burials
Quakers would not have their bodies buried in consecrated ground and hence provided their own burial grounds, or utilized their own orchards or gardens. The occasional record in a parish register usually refers to burial elsewhere, not in the Anglican churchyard. Quaker burial records were also duplicated, one being given to the quarterly meeting and the other staying with the monthly meeting where the burial took place; another was sent to the home meeting of the deceased if this was different. Names, ages, and at least the town or village of residence were generally given, and sometimes occupations. Records may take the form of instructions to prepare a grave, signed by the meeting’s registrar; the third one in the chart below of this type.

Chart: Quaker Burials

In the columnar Gainsborough Burial registers in RG6/1538 it was noted that several entries were noted as Not a Member of our Society, so non-Quakers were also buried there—a point worth noting when burials can’t be found in parish registers. Among the microfilmed Quaker burial records is a letter from the Staines Urban District Council with a list of tombstone inscriptions of those disinterred from the Friends Burial Ground in Staines, Middlesex and re-interred in Jordans Burial Ground, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire in 1973. The originals are in RG37/149 at the PRO and on, and dates range from 1865 to 1933 and most are rendered in Quaker fashion as in Chart 64.

Quaker Monumental Inscriptions
Quakers disapproved of mourning, tombstones and ‘other vain funeral customs’ and until the 19th century Quaker M.I.s are non-existent. Examples are shown below in which the earlier ones still use numbers for the months.

Chart: Examples of Memorial Inscriptions from Friends Burial Ground, Staines, Middlesex 

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Information in this Wiki page is excerpted from the online course English: Non-Anglican Church Records offered by The National Institute for Genealogical Studies. To learn more about this course or other courses available from the Institute, see our website. We can be contacted at [mailto:wiki@genealogicalstudies.com wiki@genealogicalstudies.com]

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