In what month was John Searle buried?

Question

The profile of John Searle currently says he was buried 06 August 1641.  However, the burial record at Ancestry says 06 July 1641.

When I looked at the actual image all I can see is two dots where the month number should be.  Can anybody make out an actual number?  Or do the two dots represent a number??
Here's the weblink to the burial record and image:  
https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=2495&h=5095210&tid=&pid=&usePUB=true&_phsrc=yWB5730&_phstart=successSource

 P.S.  The two preceding entries say 8 mon 8 day and 9 month 15 day, so if they were recorded chronologically, I would think it would have to be 10 month or after.

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Answer 1

The vital records transcript at http://ma-vitalrecords.org/MA/Hampden/Springfield/DeathsS.shtml lists his burial month as 7th month.

Answer 2

What you're looking at is a transcript see image 465, evidently month was illegible. I would use what's in the printed transcript. 6 7th month 1641. 7th month is Sept. not July. Did you look for a will or probate record? If there is one it might clarify.

Comments

I see there's a will on his profile but it's undated and the complete will was removed from the website.

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According to my notes, he made his will on 21 December 1640, and it was probated 20 April 1642.   So that doesn't really help much with the burial date.

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We must have been typing at the same time. Your right that's not going to help.

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The Inventory of the Goods and Chattayles of the late deceased John Searle was taken the 8 February 1641/42.  So that doesn't help either.

My notes say he was buried 06 September 1641, but off hand I don't what my source was.  

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I'm pretty sure that my source was Pope's Pioneers of Massachusetts.

Answer 3

John Searle

Massachusetts, Springfield Vital Records

Name	John Searle
Event Type	Death
Event Date	Jul 1641
Event Place	Springfield, Hampden, Massachusetts
Gender	Male

Citing this Record

"Massachusetts, Springfield Vital Records, 1638-1887," database with images, FamilySearch(https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XPJ4-Z2V : 9 February 2018), John Searle, Jul 1641; citing v 1 p 46, Springfield, Hampden, Massachusetts, Springfield City Hall; FHL microfilm 185,414.

View the original document. The original may contain more information than was indexed.

Massachusetts, Springfield Vital Records, 1638-1887

Reference ID	v 1 p 46
GS Film number	185414
Digital Folder Number	4375670
Image Number	57

Comments

Looking at the original image, the date has clearly been mistranscribed or misinterpreted.  The record reads:  "John Searle buryed ye 7 mon: 6 day 1641" which of course is 6 September 1641.

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Looking at some other entries, the entire page has been misinterpreted.

• Sarah Smyth dyed 4 mon: 30 day 1648 - this was called April instead of June.
• Margaret Smyth dyed 4 mon: 24 day 1648 - this was called April instead of June.
• Thomas Bridgeman dyed 12 mon: 28 day 1647 - This was called December instead of February.
• etc.

This is really a terrible and unexpected error for FamilySearch to make.

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January continued to be the first month of the year. The Romans later renamed months after Julius Caesar and Augustus, renaming Quintilis as "Iulius" (July) in 44 BC and Sextilis as "Augustus" (August) in 8 BC. Quintilis was renamed to honour Caesar because it was the month of his birth.

Julian calendar - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar

 

July is the 7th month of the year. 

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The Romans changed consuls in January.  A.D. numbering wasn't invented until centuries later.  At that point the Church seems to have decided that A.D. 1 would start with the Conception on Mar 25, with the Nativity 9 months into year 1.

Logically month 1 would have run Mar 25 - Apr 24 with month 10 starting Dec 25, but that was too complicated. So March was month 1 and Feb was month 12 and the year started and ended in the middle of month 1.

What this doesn't explain is

- how the Roman months got their names, which is lost in the mists

- why the Church picked Dec 25 for Christmas (centuries before they invented  A.D. numbering)

- whether it's just coincidence that the two things line up, so that the 7th month of the A.D. year was September.  Looks like it probably is.

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"July is the 7th month of the year."

No Frank, it was not.  You need to read that page more closely.  While the Romans may have used January as the first month of the year, the Western Christian world had been using March 25 as New Years Day since the 12th century at least.  This is what Old Style vs New Style dating and double dating is all about.

It is fundamentally important to understand the difference between the Julian and the Gregorian calendars, or really Old Style vs New Style dating.  While the Gregorian calendar was instituted by Pope Gregory in 1582, the British Empire did not officially adopt it until 1752.  The English were very much aware of the different calendars and a mix of dating styles can be found in the records.  Old Style dating was used almost exclusively in early records (say 1582 to1650) and New Style dating became more common later (say 1650 to 1750).  Don't hold me to precise dates it varies wildly according to place and time.

These months when written as "7 mo 6 day 1641" is Old Style dating with the first month of the new year beginning on March 25, and the 7th month therefore being September.

This is a Genealogy Dating Page I started but haven't quite completed.

Answer 4

Pope (Pioneers of Massachusetts) apparently also interpreted it as 7 month (which would be September).

Answer 5

However, after studying the image at the familysearch website, what looks like a 7 could actually be a roman numeral vj (i.e. 6).  That would indeed be August.  

Near the end of the same page there is an entry for the burial of a daughter of Thomas Sowells. It looks very similar and even more like vj month.

Comments

None of the other dates are using roman numerals.  I think that you are seeing an added little swirl as the scribe is starting to make his numeral.  You can see another example of this "7" in the second to the last entry.

Answer 6

squinting at the image of the blot on the original record, perhaps the lower of the two dots is the end of the quill's downstroke on a numeral 9.  If so, that suggests a burial date of 6 November 1641.  In a post two years ago on ancestry.com, Tracy Williams stated that there was a copy of his will dated October 21, 1641.  If that's accurate, the timelines almost make sense.  (If  we posit that the two entries for November were made in reverse order.)

Answer 7

I have changed the burial date from 06 August to 06 September, since September seems most likely to be correct.