A Date is a Date is a Date - Ancestry Magazine March 2007

Ancestry Magazine published this piece in their March 2007 issue. You can see it on their site at:
http://learn.ancestry.com/LearnMore/Article.aspx?id=12644

A DATE IS A DATE IS A DATE

By Esther Yu Sumner 01 March 2007

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What, you say, that can’t be right. Ancestors’ birthdays don’t just change, do they?

They might, if you’re looking at the wrong calendar.

Most of us are familiar with a single calendar—the Gregorian calendar, the one we use today. But, depending on the country, not all that long ago, your loved ones might have been living with the Julian calendar.

Setting a Date
Just like our current Gregorian calendar, the Julian calendar was based on the vernal (spring) equinox. But the Julian calendar listed March as the first month of the year. Leap years were employed to help keep months aligned with the seasons, but one leap year every four years wasn’t sufficiently accurate.

The Gregorian calendar, on the other hand, ensured that dates would be more accurately aligned with seasons. The Gregorian calendar also fine-tuned the leap year idea by removing three leap years out of every 400 years and by switching the first day of the year to 1 January rather than 25 March.

Confusing? Well the good thing is that calendar changes probably won’t affect you today—unless you’re a family historian. That’s when all of those date discrepancies and shifting numbers add up to a lot of confusion.

Consider this. An individual country may have adopted the Gregorian calendar any time between 1582 and the early 1900s. During the year the calendar was adopted, the country would have dropped 10 or 11 days from the year. But just like not every country adopted the Gregorian calendar at the same time, neither did any single country’s residents. And how those 10 or 11 days were dropped was completely up to the country making the change.

Take, for example, the calendar change that occurred on 4 October 1582, when Spain, Portugal, and Italy skipped 10 days, and each bumped their calendars to 15 October 1582. While 12 October 1582 did not technically exist in those countries, finding a document with that date while researching isn’t necessarily inaccurate—it could just mean that document was created by someone who waited a month or so to adopt the change.

So an ancestor’s birth date reading 5 October 1582 in one record and 16 October 1582 in another record may not signal a recording error. And double dates, recorded with slashes such as 15 March 1700/01, aren’t old-school typos—they’re used to show both Julian and Gregorian calendars.

Muddling Through
One of the greatest challenges a family historian finds when facing date changes is knowing—and understanding—when each ancestor’s country changed to the Gregorian calendar. The British colonies, including North America, didn’t move to the Gregorian calendar until 31 December 1751, which was then followed by 1 January 1752 (the Julian calendar would have read 1 January 1751—the year would have changed in March). The 11 days of inaccuracy from the Julian calendar were accounted for by omitting 2–14 September 1752. Alaska, which belonged to Russia when North American colonies made their switch, didn’t change to the Gregorian calendar until 1867.

Canada switched to the Gregorian calendar on 2 September 1752 and skipped immediately to 14 September 1752. France made the switch on 9 December 1582. The Catholic regions of Germany made the switch in various months of 1583 while most Protestant regions made the switch between 1615 and 1668. China never used the Julian calendar but started using the Gregorian calendar in 1912.

Adding Confusion
Quaker dates can be especially confusing since Quakers typically dated by number and because there was no official day on which every Quaker switched calendars.

“Before 1752, Quakers were using both calendars at the same time,” says family historian William Dollarhide. Using a number system, you may come across a date like 2/10/1720—on the Julian calendar, that date would be 10 April 1720; Gregorian, it would be 10 February 1720.

“I have come across a case where the only way I could tell if they were using a Julian or Gregorian calendar was to look through every other date in the record book to find some other numbers and see if those were Gregorian or Julian,” says Dollarhide. “It was a revealing experience to understand that for Quakers in particular you have to really watch the dates.”

Quaker dates may not be the only problematic ones you come across. But you can still get through calendar changes without too many problems, especially if you keep a couple of things in mind—how and when the country you’re looking at addressed calendar changes; and that a date, while perplexing, is still just a date.

Country		End Julian Calendar	Begin Gregorian Calendar
Albania		Dec 1912	Dec 1912
Austria
	Tyrol	Oct 5, 1583	Oct 16, 1583
	Carinthia, Styria	Dec 14, 1583	Dec 25, 1583
Belgium
	Spanish Provinces	Dec 21, 1582	Jan 1, 1583
	Liège	Feb 10, 1583	Feb 21, 1583
Bohemia (Czech Republic)		Jan 6, 1584	Jan 17, 1584
Bulgaria		Nov 1, 1915	Nov 14, 1915
China			Jan 1, 1912
Canada		Sep 2, 1752	Sep 14, 1752
Denmark		Feb 18, 1700	Mar 1, 1700
	Færø Islands	Nov 16, 1700	Nov 28, 1700
Egypt		1875	1875
Estonia		Feb 1, 1819	Feb 15, 1819
Finland		Feb 17, 1753	Mar 1, 1753
France		Dec 9, 1582	Dec 20, 1582
	Alcase	1648	1648
	Strasbourg	Feb 5, 1682	Feb 16, 1682
Germany, Catholic Regions
	Augsburg	Feb 13, 1583	Feb 24, 1583
	Baden	Nov 16, 1583	Nov 27, 1583
	Bavaria	Oct 5, 1583	Nov 16, 1583
	Cologne	Nov 3, 1583	Nov 14, 1583
	Jülich	Nov 2, 1583	Nov 13, 1583
	Mainz	Nov 11, 1583	Nov 22, 1583
	Münster, Strasbourg	Nov 16, 1583	Nov 27, 1583
	Trier	Oct 4, 1583	Oct 15, 1583
	Würzburg	Nov 4, 1583	Nov 15, 1583
Germany, Protestant Regions
	Hildesheim	Mar 15, 1631	Mar 26, 1631
	Kurland	1617	1617
	Minden	Feb 1, 1668	Feb 12, 1668
	Neuburg	Dec 13, 1615	Dec 24, 1615
	Osnabrück	1624	1624
	Paderborn	Jun 16, 1585	Jul 27, 1585
	Prussia Aug 22, 1610 Sep 2, 1610
	Westphalia Jul 1, 1584 Jul 12, 1584
Germany, All Others		Feb 18, 1700	Mar 1, 1700
Great Britain & American colonies		Sep 2, 1752	Sep 14, 1752
Greece		Sep 14, 1916	Sep 28, 1916
Holy Roman Empire		Jan 6, 1584	Jan 17, 1584
Hungary		Oct 21, 1587	Nov 1, 1587
	Transylvania	Dec 14, 1590	Dec 25, 1590
Iceland		Nov 16, 1700	Nov 28, 1700
Italy		Oct 4, 1582	Oct 15, 1582
Japan		1873	1873
Latvia		Feb 1, 1918	Feb 15, 1819
Lithuania		Feb 1, 1918	Feb 15, 1819
Moravia (Czech Republic)		Jan 6, 1584	Jan 17, 1584
The Netherlands
	Holland, N. Brabant	Dec 21, 1582	Jan  1, 1583
	Gelderland, Zutphen	Jun 30, 1700	Jul 7, 1700
	Utrecht, Overijssel	Nov 30, 1700	Dec 12, 1700
	Friesland, Groningen	Dec 31, 1700	Jan 12, 1701
	Drente	Apr 30, 1701	May 12, 1701
Norway		Feb 18, 1700	Mar 1, 1700
Poland		Oct 4, 1582	Oct 15, 1582
	Silesia	Jan 12, 1584	Jan 23, 1584
Portugal		Oct 4, 1582	Oct 15, 1582
Romania		Mar 31, 1919	Apr 14, 1919
	Transylvania	Dec 14, 1590	Dec 25, 1590
Russia		Jan 31, 1918	Feb 14, 1918
Spain		Oct 4, 1582	Oct 15, 1582
	American Colonies	1584	1584
Sweden		Feb 17, 1753	Mar 1, 1753
Switzerland
	Lucern, Uri, Schwyz,	Jan 11, 1584	Jan 22, 1584
	Zug, Freiburg, Solothurn, Wallis	Feb 28, 1655	Mar 11, 1655
	Zürich, Bern, Basel	Dec 31, 1700	Jan 12, 1701
	Schaffhouse, Geneva, Thurgovia, Appenzell, Glarus, St. Gallen	1724	1724
Turkey		1927	1927
United States
	British Colonies	Sep 2, 1752	Sep 14, 1752
	Alaska	Oct 5, 1867	Oct 18, 1867
Yugoslavia		Mar 4, 1919	Mar 18, 1919

Calendar courtesy of Karl Hagen www.polysyllabic.com