Original Date / Other Date

Dates appearing in the Original Date field are generally the latest day of action on a given document.  For example, while a petition may have been written on a given date (e.g., 1753/02/01), legislative action on the document may not have occurred until several days later (e.g., 1753/02/09), or may have continued for several months after the petition’s initial creation (e.g., 1753/08/25).  In cases where action on the document took place over an extended period of time, the final date of action will appear in the Original Date field, while the date of initial creation will appear in the Other Date field.    Please note that some documents contain only the year of creation, in which case only that information has been recorded in the Original Date field (e.g., 1753/00/00).

Many documents in this collection are undated.  In these cases probable or possible dates have been assigned, having been determined from the series of related documents appearing in the volume. In any case where a bracketed date appears in the Other Date field, the date appearing in the Original Date field is either an approximation or was obtained outside the document.