18 Ann Kussmaul, “Time and Space, Hoofs and Grain: The Seasonality of Marriage in England,” JIH 15 (1985), 775-79.

19 R. V. Wells discovered this bimodal pattern in the season of marriage among Quakers of Rahway, Plainfield and Chesterfield, New Jersey:

Image

Month

Index of Marriages

Index of Conceptions

January

81.7

96.9

February

89.1

89.0

March

106.0

88.4

April

89.0

117.5

May

155.0

114.9

June

82.3

102.3

July

41.2

105.7

August

40.6

93.9

September

90.8

77.2

October

147.0

99.2

November

194.9

111.7

December

82.3

103.3

Total

1199.9

1200.0

 

(n = 447)

(n = 1,542)

Source: R. V. Wells, “A Demographic Analysis of Some Middle Colony Quaker Families of the Eighteenth Century” (thesis, Princeton, 1969), 66, 99.