I agree with Anne. The system used to record birth dates is written assuming the child was born a month or two before baptism. Only if the child is older than that is the date expanded to remove ambiguity. For those baptized on 21st March 1802 the dates refer to the previous few months, except for Maria who was born in 1799. So, Harriot was born Feb 21st 1802 Steve -----Original Message----- From: Anne Chambers Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2012 11:20 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [MDX] Help with Date on Image I don't agree - if you look at the page, the only years that are written out are *not* 1802. It would seem that if a year is not stated, then it must be 1802....they cannot all be baptisms of children born before 1802. Anne South Australia Connie wrote: > sylvia wrote: >> Hi: Can anyone with ancestry look at Harriot Higgs, baptized 21 March >> 1802, >> St. George Hanover Square (this exactly), please help me understand what >> the >> date of birth is. I can't quite figure out what the date is as the >> months >> and days and years keep changing in the "born" column. Thx > > Hallo > > Harriot was baptised March 21 1802 and was born November 21 1799. > > The entry before for Maria is November 6 1799. The vicar has not > included the month or year of birth for Harriot because it is the same > as Maria's. > > The vicar is using a kind of shorthand. He gives the date of birth in > full where it is a new month, day and year. He gives the month and > day where the year of birth is the same as the previous entry. He > gives just the day where the month and year are the same in the > previous entry. > > The last five entries for baptisms that took place on March 21 are: > > Thomas born February 16 1801 > Maria born November 6 1799 > Harriot born November 21 1799 > George born November 28 1799 > Thomas born January 30 1799 > > The entries are probably in the order they were booked, hence the > apparent jumping around of birth dates. I think this may be a day > book. Ancestry had access to what was in the LMA. St George Hanover > Square is in Westminster which has their own archives. It isn't > included in the LMA records. > > You should be able to get confirmation of Harriot's age from the 1841 > census (40) and 1851 census (51) and her death certificate if the > informant knew how old she was. > > Connie in London ************************************** Send your List messages using **PLAIN TEXT** and always **TRIM AWAY** superfluous old messages in replies. **MEANINGFUL Subject Lines - who, what, where, when, with SURNAMES in CAPITAL letters** List Admin can be contacted at: [email protected] ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message