I have spent many hours searching the many lines of my family tree, and one of the most frustrating is using birth dates to locate marriage dates and figure out the parents of the previous generation. When digging back into the years before my ancestors came to America, dates were really hard to rely on for accuracy. I found that this history was part of my problem. I decided I would....
Blame it on the Romans
Most
genealogists know that in 1751 our colonial ancestors lost over two months of
their calendar year, but I wonder how many are aware of the long, drawn-out
process that led to that event.
You
can blame it on the Romans. In 45 B.C. Julius Caesar established a 12 month
calendar based on the solar year as determined by the number of days it took
the earth to orbit the sun—365.25 days. That quarter day was a bit awkward so scholars
of that time recommended that three years out of every four have 365 days and
the fourth year have 366 days. That sounds familiar, but wait.
After
centuries, in which many civilizations all over the world followed the Julian
calendar, so named for the emperor, new and more accurate measurements of the
earth’s orbit lead scholars to figure out that the previous calculations were a
bit high. What to do?
Simple.
In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII decided it was time to make adjustments. He simply plucked
10 days out of October that year. October 4th was followed by
October 15th. That’s not all. He made January 1st the
beginning of the year instead of March 25th as it had been
previously. And he decreed that the end of each century that was divisible by
400 would be a leap year. However, not everyone liked the new calendar.
The Roman Catholic countries soon adopted
the new Gregorian calendar, which naturally was named after the pope, but
Protestant England and her colonies, did not. It wasn’t until an Act of the
English Parliament in 1751 that Great
Britain was ready to make the change. You
remember that the Pope cut 10 days out of October. Because 170 years had passed since that time, the
British had accumulated an additional twenty-four hours.
They solved the problem in 1752 by eliminating
11 days from September. September 2nd was followed by September 14th.
Additionally, in order to put the English citizen in sync with the earth’s
position, there had to be another change. The year 1751 began under the Julian
calendar on March 25th and ended on December 31st so that
1752 could begin on January 1st under the Gregorian calendar like
most other countries.
Many Englishmen were furious about the
change and there even were a few riots in the American colonies. Here’s the
rub. Prior to 1752, under the Julian calendar January, February and March, up
until the 24th, were at the end of the year. For example, in the
year 1750, March 24th was New Year’s Eve. Suddenly in 1751, December
31st was New Year’s Eve. That made 1751 only 9 months long. January
was pushed into the following year -- 1752. Consider this. If an important
date, such as a birthday, fell on March 15, 1751 and that date was moved to 1752 … would you
wonder how old that made you?
In addition, not all countries got on the
bandwagon. For example, Sweden didn’t make the change until 1753. Japan held out
until 1872. Greece
and Turkey
lagged even further behind.
What
does this all mean to the genealogist? If you’ve searched for your colonial
ancestor, you are probably familiar with the slash mark (/) used in many birth
dates during the early 1700s. You will often find that if your ancestor was
born in January or February their birth date was moved 10 days ahead in the Gregorian
calendar. But did you know that if a colonist was born between February 29th
and September 1, 1752
they moved their birthday ahead 11 days?
Also, think of all those tombstone dates.
If you’ve searched for some old tombstones made prior to 1752 to verify a death
date, consider that the date may have been under the Julian calendar and not
the Gregorian calendar. Confused? If you think you’re confused, think what it
must have been like for your ancestors. For us, 255 years later, it’s just an interesting
puzzle, but for them it must have caused all kinds of consternation.