Getting to the Roots of Your Family - RootsWeb - Ancestry.com

ABBREVIATIONS
Abbreviations are used often and indicated in many different ways. Some of the
indications of abbreviation are:
• raised letters
• colon, semi-colon, period
• straight line drawn above the word, a line through the ascender of a letter
• a curvy line above the word or at the end of the word
• almost any word starting with the letter “p”
raised letter “th” curl back line on top “pf”
DATES
It is important to remember the following as you deal with dates in the records:
• Before 1752 the calendar year was from March 25 th to March 24 th . In 1752 the
beginning of the year was changed to January 1 st .
• Sometimes you will find dates written as follows: 7 ber or 7 br , 8 ber , 9 ber , 10 ber .
These are abbreviations for the months of the year of September (7ber), October
(8ber), November (9ber), and December (10ber).
• Dates in the records are often written in Roman Numerals: I (1), II (2), V (5), VI
(6), X (10), L (50), C (100), D (500), M (1000).
• A “j” is used to represent the end of a series of numbers. It is a “1” and
sometimes the series of numbers is just a “1”.
• At times the date will be given as a Saint Day such as Michaelmas, rather than a
month and day. A good British research reference book or a “Google” search can
be used to locate the Saint’s Days.
• The year might be given as the year of the reign of a king or queen such as in the
10 th year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
LATIN
Before 1733 many of the records are in Latin.
• It is possible by learning a few basic genealogical terms in Latin to read the
records enough to get the genealogical information from them.