What Does the Place Designation MM Mean?
I keep seeing place names in Pennsylvania with the designation MM after the town name. Below it, it says "Place of Worship". This creates problems when attaching records such as Census records, because "MM" comes before "Township" alphabetically, so the records show up as MM instead of Township, and I have to correct them all. Certainly, no one lives in a "Place of Worship". Here is an example.
Best Answer
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Quaker Monthly Meeting records often recorded details of not only vital events, such as weddings, but births of children, and moves to other monthly meetings. The area served by a monthly meeting might cover more than one county, or even cross a state line.
Knowing the geographical area covered In the Monthly Meeting can be an important research tool.
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Answers
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MM as a place of worship using refers to a Quaker “Monthly Meeting”
https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/U.S._Quaker_Research_(Society_of_Friends)
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Thank you, Miss Jessie. Certainly, a Monthly Meeting is not a place of residence, a place of birth, death or marriage. So I don't understand why "Highland MM" for example, is included in the dropdown list for such places. I can't envision any case where a Monthly Meeting would be a correct selection for any of the place fields in FamilySearch. Under what circumstance would an MM be the correct selection? Thank you.
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Places of worship are generally the locations for religious rites. A Quaker monthly meeting could be the correct place selection for a wedding, for example.
There's always a question of "which place do I use"? Nowadays, it's hospital versus mailing address; for our ancestors, it's place of worship versus residence.
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A bit of clarification might help here. Monthly Meetings are business meetings -- with the understanding that every moment of one's life has religious significance and so business meetings are or were conducted in a solemn manner with several minutes of silent reflection throughout the meeting. The men held their men's meeting and the women held there women's meeting. Thus there were always two monthly meetings held simultaneously.
These meetings occurred in the same building where the first day (Sunday) meeting the actual "worship" meeting would occur. Quakesr did not generally use the term 'worship' in denoting these meetings calling them first day meetings instead. The monthly meetings were held at night during the work week.
Weddings never occurred during the monthly business meetings. 3-6 or so Quaker meetings would send representatives to the monthly meeting. Marriages were accomplished (you'll never see them called weddings nor will you see the words bride and groom used) at the various Quaker meetings or at private residences with a couple of observers appointed by the business meeting present to insure the marriages were accomplished in an orderly manner.
Marriages were then recorded by the monthly business meeting. Typically the marriage certificate would be copied into the records and from those certificates you can sometimes discover where the marriage was actually accomplished (i.e, where the wedding occurred). If the two people getting married belonged to different monthly meetings the record of the marriage can be found in the records of both meetings.
These marriage certificate records are especially helpful because most of the people belonging to meeting sign the certificate as witnesses. Signatures are aligned in columns with the parents of the married couple signing at the top of the right hand column and then other members of the two families signing below the parents in that same right hand column. Examining the right hand column can be helpful in determining family membership.
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