Hi all, At 03:53 AM 10/13/00 EDT, [email protected] wrote: >Howard you are coming up with some goodies! I had kinda thrown up >my hands in despair, as I continued to see references to Thones >Kunders dying in the fall of 1729, in Dec 1729, late in 1729, all >without sources, but consistent key words like "inoffensive in >character" and his "hospitable" nature, giving me a clue that they >all lifted parts from some previous chronicle. You have gotten >closer if not at the actual report--and we thank you for that. That is interesting. I don't recall seeing the mention of the words "inoffensive" and "hospitable" in secondary sources; but I'd bet they got them from Thomas Chalkley's Journal. You raise an interesting point that maybe Chalkley got those characterizations from somewhere or someone else. There are many mentions in his Journal of attending meetings at Abington and Germantown. So, I think there is a good chance that he knew Thones (Dennis) personally. It is unfortunate that somewhere along the line the exact month of Thones' burial (which is contained in Chalkley's Journal) got lost in these secondary sources. >Madtis Conders (how he signed it at least once) did die in 1726, >and your 1725 reference is close, perhaps in that no-mans land, >old style vs. new style. This is always a question with Quaker dates by month number before 1752: Are they using Jan as first month or March? Chalkley gives us some clues, though. He mentions that "winter is coming on apace, the nights dark and long" during the 9th month. This seems to me to be more likely Nov than Sept. He also mentions in 1727 that the 6th month was "exceedingly hot" and that "divers people died suddenly of the heat". This seems to me more likely to be Aug than June. And the clincher, I think, is this from p. 228: "On the 25th of the tenth month, being the reputed birthday of our Lord Jesus Christ,..." So, his 10th mon. is clearly Dec. So, from the above I conclude that his dates are based on March 25 as the first day of the new year and thus March as the first month, as was the norm for England and its colonies before 1752. So, when Chalkley wrote that the son of Dennis Conrad was buried on the 21st day of the twelfth month of 1725, that would be February. But it would be 1726 if you considered that the year began on Jan 1. So, we can write it (as I understand the people of that era did from time to time) as 21 Feb 1725/26 to indicate that it was in 1725 for those who began the year on Mar 25, and in 1726 if you began the year on Jan 1. The abstracts of Pennsylvania wills shows a will for "Cunrade, Matthias" dated August 29, 1725 and proved April 2, 1726. So, this would be only about 5 weeks after his burial. (I've noticed that these people did not seem to take long to get wills proved.) Lastly, for completeness, let me add that when (from the surrounding dates) it appears that the burial of Dennis Cunrad occured in the 10th month of 1729, that would be December. Regards, Howard [email protected]