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From: <>
Subject: [KYSCOTT-L] Re: [PAWASHIN-L] Quaker dates
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 17:12:47 EDT

This may change some of your dates, if you have Quaker ancestors and are
taking the dates from their meeting records. I will have to re-think some of
mine, probably. Will have to check some of the ones from Bucks Co., PA
especially.
Spirit

Family Tree Finders Tuesday June 22, 1999
Recently we looked at how the change from the Julian to the Gregorian
calendars changed the first day of the year, and the first month of the
year.
Under the Julian calendar the first day of the year was March 25. While
you
may find it confusing to
know when to include the double dating, imagine your frustration when trying
to figure out just what the date was when working with Quaker dates.

If you have not yet worked with Quaker dates, you may be wondering why they
would cause additional difficulties. Quakers do not include the names of
the
months of the year or of the days of the week. Most of these names have
been
derived from pagan gods. As a result, Quaker dates appear in the records in
one of the following formats:

17th da 4th mo 1723
4mo 17da 1723

Recently we looked at how the change from the Julian to the Gregorian
calendars changed the first day of the year, and the first month of the
year.
Under the Julian calendar the first day of the year was March 25. While
you
may find it confusing to
know when to include the double dating, imagine your frustration when trying
to figure out just what the date was when working with Quaker dates.

The problem is that if you are not careful you can translate these dates
incorrectly. And newcomers to genealogy very often will mistranslate these
dates. At first glance you may be thinking that the date above is 17 April
1723. However, this is not correct. The actual translated date would be 17
June 1723, because at this time March was the first month.

Of course, after 1752, the first month of the year was January, as we know
it
today.

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