Before they were Quakers

There is a website online by Paul Swan, and he explains why it is so difficult to take the Quaker Satterthwaites back into the parish registers to identify which families they belonged to. So really our family tree has to begin with the beginning of the Quakers. Basically our earliest known ancestor was called Clement Satterthwaite and there were two Clement Satterthwaites at that time. The will which might have solved the problem has not survived.
Now, although the Quakers kept records it is still hit and miss what you find. In theory the local meeting (called the monthly meeting which I abbreviate as MM) made an original record which was then sent to the regional meeting (Quarterly meeting - QM), but for some events you might only find one record another you might find four. Some are the same but occasionally you can find extra information. Some are very difficult to read, others beautiful. Not all the records survived. The Quakers were quite strict about marriage. It came to be that they were only allowed to marry other Quakers - if they married in church they could not continue to be members but (I am still trying to find out more about this, so I might be incorrect) could still attend. Their children were recorded in Quaker records with the notation that the parents were not in unity. However, not all children of ex-quakers are so recorded (did they give up attending meetings altogether?). I have several instances where there is no record of a Quaker marriage but I think we can be sure that they were married and it is just a case that the records have not survived.