Quaker Births of Thornbury

We have begun to compile a list of the births of Thornbury people as recorded in the Quaker registers.  Unfortunately the registers don’t show details of where a family lived but we have tried to limit the entries to those families with connections to Thornbury.  See also  Quaker Marriages  Quaker Burials and  Quaker History

In the case of Quaker births you will note that these records show the date that a child was born NOT a baptism date.  It was not the Quaker practice to baptise children, nor did they have naming ceremonies.  The parents simply brought their new babies to the meeting house where the group welcomed them.  No vows would be made as the Quakers regard baptism not as a single act but as a “continuing growth in the Holy Spirit and a commitment which must be continually renewed.”  Young members of Quaker families may be asked at the age of 16 whether they wish to join but the decision must be theirs without pressure from the families.

In these older records Quakers typically did not use the names of the months or days of the week because most of these names were derived from pagan gods (e.g. Thursday came from “Thor’s Day”).  Instead, they recorded dates using numbers to describe the day of the week and month of the year.  To confuse things even more,  up to and including 1751 they were still using the old Julian Calendar in which the year started on 25th March.  The existence of two calendars led to the use ‘double-dating’ in respect of recording dates in January, February and March.  Thus as you will see below the dates of ’31st day 11th month 1705/6′ would be 31st January in 1703 under the old style Julian calendar, but 31st January 1704 under the new style Gregorian calendar.

From 1752 onwards the dates were still recorded using numbers of the days and months in a particular year but the numbers were based on the modern calendar so the dates are the same as we use today.  In the listing of  Quaker births below we have included the date as shown in the register and the date as expressed under the modern Gregorian calendar.  Please note that the ‘Piece and Folio numbers’ where quoted are those used by the Public Record Office.