This guide to the records in the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College and the Quaker Collection of Haverford College lists the minutes of men's and women's preparative, monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings, birth and death lists and removals, marriage certificates, and membership registers as well as other types of records.
Complete inventories are available for reference in the libraries.
In the service for worship, men and women gathered to share their experiences of the Inward Light and to seek guidance in their search for a spiritually sensitive and ethically demanding pattern of life. Friends remained an influential people who shared in governing Pennsylvania until the Revolution. They pioneered the Native American rights movement after 1755, created the antislavery crusade, and played significant roles in the temperance and women's rights movements. Since the 1660s, Quakers have been pacifists, and their peace testimony has affected the meetings' responses to imperial, revolutionary, civil, world and cold wars. In 1986, the Quaker Collection of Haverford College and Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College began a cooperative project to describe the archival records of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, its committees, and subordinate meetings.