Daniel Cook-December 11 ,1732
Ihave found in the Old Quaker Burial Ground (Windham,Maine) aCOOK Daniel,Feb 22,1732-1800.
Before finding this I had from a cousin the date of Daniel as being December11,1732.I had seen somewhere that the Quaker system of dating was different so I looked into this and found the following----
The first problem stems from the Quaker tradition of avoiding the use of the pagan names for the months. To avoid pagan names, they numbered the months, 1st month, 2nd month, ... 12th month. This leads us to the problem.
Until 1752, England and its colonies dated events according to the Julian Calendar. According to the Julian Calendar, March was the 1st month of the year and February was the 12th month of the year. So in general, for any year prior to 1752 when the modern Gregorian Calendar was adopted, "12th month, 12th day", would be translated as "February 12" rather than as "December 12".
The second step is to calculate the appropriate day of the month. At the time The Society of Friends or Quakers came into existence and started keeping records, the Julian Calendar was ten days off. Thus 12mo, 12day, 1656 on the Julian year on the Julian but not on the Gregorian Calendar), eleven days need to be added to the Julian date to determine the Gregorian date. And, of course, February 29 (or 12th month, 29th day, 1700) should be rendered as March 11, 1701.
III. The third problem would not exist if everyone had followed George II's edict and adopted the Gregorian Calendar. Unfortunately, many people continued to use the Julian Calendar after 1752. With secondary material, especially with genealogies compiled by later generations, the problems can be multiplied. For example, a date in the original records may appear as 12th mo 12th day 1753/54. An interpreter of such a record might have entered this date as December 27, 1753/54 not realizing that the use of the dual year notation implies that the Julian Calendar is being used and that 12th month is February and that the year is our Gregorian 1754.
Using this information it can be seen that if one found a date listed by the Quakers as 12-11-1732 this could be interpreted as February 22,1731/32 not December 11,1732. Would appreciate any input that anyone has into this.
Harold Bruning