Early records of Dartmouth Friends are being transcribed and digitized by the Dartmouth Historical and Arts Society. Images of the scanned documents are now available on the Dartmouth HAS website, along with some transcripts. When the project is finished, all 17 volumes, covering the years 1699 to 1968, and including the first London Yearly Meeting Book of Discipline manuscript, will be available online. Here are some excerpts from the most recent progress report, which you may read in full here.
We have been authorized by the Dartmouth Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends to take possession of their 17 volumes of historical records, to preserve them in electronic form (by scanning them), to make them publicly available (on our website), to return the originals to the Dartmouth Monthly Meeting (DMM from here on), and to proceed in a carefully designed process, to transcribe the manuscripts and type very faithful copies, carefully edited and checked, and also post these on our DHAS website, DartmouthHAS.org. Likewise, our mission has been to make these historic and valuable Dartmouth records and their transcriptions available as widely as possible by linking access to them with various outside groups of genealogists and historians. In this vein we have reached agreement with the Colonial Society of Massachusetts (CSM) to publish a two-volume hardcover set of our transcriptions of the Men’s Minutes 1699-1785 and the Women’s Minutes 1699-1782.
It is with great satisfaction that I report to all Members and Meetings of the New England Yearly Meeting that the status of our Quaker Record Transcription Project, both the current working status and for the long haul, is "strong and steady" and moving forward positively. All 17 volumes have been photographed, posted for viewing and been transcribed (first pass) by the vendors. This is a total of 3,301 images, about 6,602 manuscript pages.
With the advice and support of John Tyler, Editor of Publications at the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, we are in discussions with NEHGS (New England Historic Genealogical Society), publishers of the website americanancestors.org in regard their linking to our transcriptions on that popular website. Likewise, we are advised to discuss the possibilities of placing an article in their magazine, American Ancestors.
Another exploration being considered is seeking funding and publisher(s) for hard copy printing of more of our DMM record transcriptions. In addition to those records from the Men’s and Women’s colonial era minutes being printed in two volumes by CSM, there will be material for several more volumes if we find it feasible to print more. One consideration we have been advised to think about is "on-demand" printing arrangements with a printer/publisher. We will explore this possibility.