Old legal and record term 1500s-1752
What does Old Style and New Style mean in old parish registers?
Old Style and New Style label dates before and after the 1752 calendar reform, when Britain and its colonies dropped eleven days and moved New Year from 25 March to 1 January. Double dates like 11 February 1731/2 cover the January-to-March gap between the two year counts. Record them exactly as written. You will meet it in parish registers and letters, mostly 1500s-1752.
Where it appears: parish registers, letters.
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Related terms
Browse the full genealogy records glossary for more occupations, causes of death, and legal terms.
FAQs
Where will I see Old Style and New Style in the records?+
Mostly in parish registers and letters, 1500s-1752. Clerks abbreviated freely and spelling wandered, so expect variant wordings around it.
Do these old terms still matter for family history?+
Yes, a single word can settle a relationship. Relict names a widow, et ux hides an unnamed wife, natural son points at a parent. The words are dry, but what they encode about a family is not.
Where do these definitions come from?+
They are drawn from period dictionaries, government archive glossaries, and standard genealogy references, cross-checked against each other; provenance is documented with the dataset. Inside AncestorIQ, Deep Research reads the record itself and explains terms like this in context, against your ancestor's own document.
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