9 Jan 2026
I’ve been dealing with a mild crisis of confidence in the Chambers family tree over the past couple of days. I’m in the process of writing the history of the Chambers line and reached Joseph Chambers and Mary Hill. I unpicked the very confusing state of the records a year or so back (see diary entries for 18 Sep 2024 and 24 May 2025) and was quite satisfied that Joseph married Mary Hill shortly after the death of his first wife, Mary Edwards in 1713. I’ve always been a little uncomfortable with this interpretation since Joseph would have been around 64 at the time of this marriage and I have no date of death. I also know nothing about Mary Hill, except that she would have been of an age to bear four children between 1714 and 1720.
The crisis of confidence was caused by looking again at the dates of the events of Joseph’s first wife’s burial and his subsequent marriage:
- Mary Edwards was buried on 9 Jan 1713 in Fressingfield.
- Joseph married Mary Hill on 24 Aug 1713 in Woodton, Norfolk.
I suddenly realised that pre-1752 the new year began on 25 March which makes the January date ambiguous. In the legal and clerical calendar January 1713 would occur after August 1713. If this was the case then it would blow up the current interpretation of events making it impossible for the Joseph married to Mary Edwards to have married Mary Hill.
It all comes down to what actual day the text “9 Jan 1713” represents and where it came from. This burial entry comes from the Suffolk Burial Index prepared by the Suffolk Family History Society. Their policy is to write dates as they are written in the register and leave any interpretation up to the researcher. However, this policy can’t be taken literally as it was common for registers to write the year at the start of a new section and then only the month and day against each entry. Thus it would be possible, and quite common, for the sequence of entries to run Nov/Dec/Jan/Feb within one year.
The Suffolk Burial Index doesn’t contain any indication of the order of entries, but the Suffolk Baptism Index does. Each entry has a number XX/YY which indicates the page and sequence on the page.
The Suffolk Family History Society published a list of corrections for their indexes in March 2025 which luckily included a large swathe of baptism entries for Fressingfield in 1713 in entry order.
Here’s the entries in order for the crucial part of 1712/1713:
- 10/12 - 28 Sep 1712 John CORNABY
- 11/1 - 21 Nov 1712 Samuel HALL
- 11/2 - 5 Dec 1712 Sarah TALLANT
- 11/3 - 14 Dec 1712 Ann BORRETT
- 11/4 - 31 Dec 1712 Elizabeth MILLS
- 11/5 - 20 Feb 1713 William COOPER
- 11/6 - 20 Feb 1713 Ann LOWDE
- 11/7 - 8 Mar 1713 John ALEGOOD
- 11/8 - 13 Mar 1713 John CARTER
- 11/9 - 12 Apr 1713 Mary HAMBLIN
It’s obvious here that the minister was changing the year in January. 1 January was widely recognised as the natural or civil New Year long before 1752.
I checked another parish, Dennington, and saw the same convention being used at that time. So I’m satisfied that the burial of Mary Edwards occurred on 9 Jan 1713 before the marriage to Mary Hill on 24 Aug 1713. Crisis averted.
In dual dated form, 9 Jan 1713 would be written as 9 Jan 1712/3.
