- John is entered (if we trust the printed record) as 22 Jan. 1657
[i ,e. t 1657 /8], which Savage [Gen . Diet .] renders of course as 1658. But Paige in his History of Cambridge (1877), while agreeing as to other stated dates of the children, gives the birth of John as 22 Jan , 1651/2, which implies that he read the entry as 1651 rather than as 1657. This enabled him to follow the careful Mitchell as to the order of birth of the first four children , and a study of Mitchell's entries shows that he was in the habit of listing the children by age, regardless of sex. In view of this, and con¬
sidering how easy it is in reading some of the old scripts to mistake a ?V hooked at the top for a *7
\ the editor has decided to follow Paige and Mitchell rather than Savage and the more recently printed vital records. This conclusion, indeed, is virtually proved by the 1653 will of Mrs. Shepard's brother, Thomas Greenhill, which named ? her two children John and Rebeckah Shepherd," showing that John was born before 1653.
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