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For each birth, it reads something like this example:
Mary Wright (Daughter of James Wright & Mary his wife) was born y? 3rd day of the 6th month 1708
So, when accounting for Quaker dates, Mary Wright was born August 3, 1708 (Gregorian Calendar), but what does the y? stand for before the day of the month?
More specifically, there used to be a letter named 'thorn' in Old and Middle English, pronounced with a 'th' sound. Over time thorn was drawn more and more like the letter 'y' (though it retained its 'th' sound), and eventually printers started using 'y' in its place to save on letter plates. Thorn had all but disappeared by the 1700s, but earlier texts including the King James Bible used 'y' with a superscripted 'e' as a short form of 'the', so it's likely the highly religious Quakers copied it.
For more information, see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)#Middle_and_Early_Modern_English
I don't think it says just "y", I think it is "ye" with the "e" superscripted.
In other words
Mary Wright (Daughter of James Wright & Mary his wife) was born y? 3rd day of the 6th month 1708
becomes:
Mary Wright (Daughter of James Wright & Mary his wife) was born ye 3rd day of the 6th month 1708
The recorder seems to have used "the" and "ye" interchangeably even within entries.
This is just an aside but I wonder whether this page captures the period when people schooled in using "ye" were trying to become more modern by using "the" but still had occasional lapses.
