Here's a response to one of the notes kindly forwarded to us by Tom from Pat Curry. This may be of interest to many people tracing lines through Samuel[2] of Thomas[1]. I think I made this point once privately to Sherry, but I don't think I've mentioned it to the group. Pat said, via Tom: > --Joseph Abbot, husband of Deborah Blanchard, was b "2 Feb 1705" [per > Abbot's Geneal. Reg. of ... Abbot, 1897]. Perhaps he was b 22 Jan > 1704/05 [as suggested by J. Chandler] & was baptized on "2 Feb 1705"... A careful comparison between the Abbot book and the published vital records of Andover (primarily) reveals a startling fact: the Abbot book's dates have been retroactively converted to the Gregorian calendar ("New Style"). Actually, now that I think of it, I believe I found a blurb in the introduction that explained the compilers' treatment of dates and confirmed the empirical fact. Suffice it to say that this treatment is rare among historians nowadays, but the lesson is clear: when consulting an unfamiliar source that deals with Colonial times, always read the notes that explain the calendrical conventions. In any case, the apparent conflict mentioned above vanishes in light of this convention: 2 Feb 1705 NS = 22 Jan 1704[/5] OS. John