Calendar Confusion Can Cause Headaches

Tomorrow begins a new year and people around the world will simply start the calendar year of 1996 with little thought. It wasn’t always that easy. Today’s column will discuss how different calendars have influenced genealogy over the years.

In September 1752, England and her colonies switched from the “old style” Julian calendar to the “new style” Gregorian calendar.

The Julian calendar, introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C., had been adding a 29th day to February every four years, with no exception. Compared with the true astronomical year of 365.2422 days, that was three days too many every 400 years. The result was that the calendar was slowly getting out of step with the natural seasons.

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII corrected the error by dropping three leap years every four centuries, making the new Gregorian calendar accurate to about one day in 3,000 years. But Gregory also decided - unwisely, in retrospect - to remove, at one stoke, every erroneous Feb. 29th that had occurred since 200 A.D.

He did this by deleting 10 days from October 1582. In countries that followed the papal decree, there were only 21 days in October that year.

This is where the first and worst source of confusion happens.

Not all of Europe followed the pope in those days. Protestant countries saw no reason to shake up their calendar just because the Pope decreed it. And so, by the end of 1582, and for years afterward, Catholic countries had dates that were 10 days ahead of those in Protestant countries.

June 11 in England was June 21 in France and Spain. And the difference carried over to America, between the English colonies on the one hand and those of France and Spain on the other.

The difference increased to 11 days in 1700 because that was another erroneous Julian leap year.

England finally made the switch in 1752, the last major Protestant country to do so. And, of course, the English colonies switched at the same time.

The only important holdouts were the Greek and Russian Orthodox areas of Eastern Europe. Every other country used the same calendar again, just as they had been before 1582.

Dates between 1582 and 1752 cause genealogists most of the headaches, as different countries switched at different times.

A second difference in the calendars was that, until 1752, the English began their year on March 25th. January, February and most of March belonged to the old year, not the new.

That was tradition dating back even before Julius Caesar, to the very early calendars that began the year on or about the vernal equinox.

March was called the first month, April the second month, and so on to February, which was the 12th month. The reason February is a strange month, even now, is that it was originally the last month of the year.

A date like Feb. 20, 1711, when it appears in an original document of the time, was two months after Dec. 20, 1711, and two months before April 20, 1712. The same data might be written Feb 20, 1711/1712, but not always. It might also be written as 20 12th month 1711, or 20 12th month 1711/1712. They are all the same date, exactly 100 years before Feb. 20, 1812. And that particular February had 29 days, because that’s how leap years were done in the “old style.”

A modern writer, referring to an old-style date like that, might put it down in one of three ways: 1711, 1712, or 1711/1712. It’s up to the writer to inform the reader how he is handling the dates, but not all do.

Thus enters confusion of a far worse degree than the first kind: not just a question of 10 or 11 days, but a question of a whole year. It’s not uncommon to find errors of two months arising from the difference between the old and new ways of counting months.

All of this, of course, applies only to the years before 1752. From that date onward, the English and American calendars have been as they are now.

For the genealogy researcher, knowing the days of the week can sometimes help checking doubtful dates and spotting errors. Baptisms, for example, were usually done on Sundays in most churches.

James Savage, a leading New England genealogist in the mid-1800s, always checked the day of the week on baptisms. If it was a Puritan church and the day was not Sunday, he knew there was something wrong with the date. Not all churches followed the Sunday rule that rigidly, but if there are two possible interpretations of a baptismal date, and one is a Sunday, that’s usually the correct date.

As an example of how this affects genealogy, consider that Abraham Gourden and Sarah Hodder were married in Boston on 12 May 1698, by the well-known minister, Cotton Mather. The Gourden’s first child, Elizabeth, was born 27 Feb 1698. As every genealogist should know, but may forget, there was no cause for embarrassment in the Gourden and Hodder families. Baby Elizabeth was born precisely 9 months after the wedding. The two dates are in the Julian calendar, or Old Style. In the Gregorian Calendar, or New Style, the February date would be 1699.

If you would like to study more about this confusing topic, read Leo H. Garman’s article, Genealogists and the Gregorian Calendar, in the April 1898 issue of Nexus, the New England Historic Genealogical Society’s newsletter. Also, look under Calendars and Calendar History in any genealogy textbook or in most encyclopedias.

Today’s trivia

“Milling Around: A Guide to Old Mills Open to the Public” is a new brochure from the society for the Preservation of Old Mills, listing the location and telephone number of more than 100 mills in America, Canada and the United Kingdom. It includes grist mills, windmills and even a sugar mill. For a copy send a self-addressed, stamped enveloped to SPOOM, Attn: Fred Beals, 1431 Folkstone Ct., Mishasaka IN 46544.

The Jan. 6 noon luncheon meeting of the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society will be at Cavanaugh’s Inn at the Park, 303 W. North River Drive. Dani Lee McGowan will present a multi-media narration of oral histories of “Women of the West, from Native American Women to the ‘Soiled Doves.”’ Cost is $12; send your check to EWGS, PO Box 1826, Spokane 99210. All interested genealogists are invited. Your check may also include $20 for the society’s 1996 dues.

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Donna Potter Phillips The Spokesman-Review