Question

At least 5 of my PA forebears were dismissed from meeting.

Comments

Do you know the reasons? Mine involved participating in war.

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I don't know if there may be a way to look up the entire story.  According to birth records, both members of a couple belonged to the same MM, but she was dismissed for marrying out of meeting (according to family records).  Next, her mother, grandfather, and great-grandfather were declared out of unity. Two children from the marriage married a brother and sister from Mennonite and Brethren background, the later of the marriages recorded in the same MM.  My grandmother and step-grandmother were cousins from this family; another cousin enlisted in WW II and died in a military plane crash in Alaska.

I'll tag on the stranger story of my ancestor who married as Presbyterian, later baptized and proselytized as Roman Catholic; her death record is in Quaker MM and she was buried at her catholic church which was vandalized a few years later.

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Congrats!  You come from a long line of misbehavin' free thinkers ;-)

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Ancestry has meeting house minutes available at

 https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2189

I discovered the handwritten minutes showing that my 5th great grandmother was disowned in 1753 for "drinking hard liquor" in a Chester, PA house.  She applied and was received into membership in an NC meeting house later that year. (Hinshaw's).

At the front of Hinshaw's is a list of abbreviations

ie . mou - marrying out of union.  Two other ancestors were guilty of that.

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Dismissed isn't a typical Quaker term you'd find in minutes.  Do you mean disowned?

Answer 1

If the records on the meeting are available, such as in Hinshaw, the meeting notes should have the reason for their dismissal. The reason could be cryptic, such as “mou,” which means “married out of unity.” Hinshaw defines the abbreviations.