Middlesex, England - year of birth?
Hello - I have a case of the year of birth being recorded as eg, November last and another one of November lnstant. Is the last year the year before, is the instant year the same year? Do I even index that year, as it is not actually written? Entries 15 and 16 are examples. 29th December. Thank you in advance, Pam
>https://www.familysearch.org/indexing/batch/adc9b154-2d20-42c6-8f50-4e5064f1eeee
Answers
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Record 15 date is "25 of Oct last", meaning last month. (It's not November.)
Instant means current. The date on record 16 is indexed correctly.
The year for all the records is written at the top left.
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Hi Pam - As Dellory has said, 'Inst' or 'instant' means the current month, i.e. month of baptism (from the Latin instante menses - current month), 'last' means what it sounds like - the previous month of October. So, the year of birth is the same as the year of baptism. I think the more fundamental problem is that the indexer has indexed this page of baptisms as occurring in December. The use of the 'inst' suggests the baptism month should be November, which prompted me to look at the month written at the top of the page. I can see why the indexer thought it was Dec but I think it might be Nov (it looks like the script has perhaps been corrected by overwriting). This would also be consistent with the next page being clearly Dec, with baptisms starting at the 4th Dec. I can't see the reference images but you'll be able to check before and after images to check the date sequence is consistent and compare the lettering, and perhaps confirm my theory!
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I had looked only at the birth dates Pam asked about.
I'm glad Ruth looked at other information as well and I agree with her comments above about the baptismal dates.
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Thank you! And yes Ruth, you are right. The month at the top left is in fact November.
It all makes sense now.
I should have checked that first!
On we go then.... thanks
Pam
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