The 1752 Calendar Change, Plus Where Did My Eleven Days Go??

Dates are as critical in genealogy as they are in every-day life. However, it’s not just the dates but actual calendar changes that genealogists need to know about and be aware of in their research. In today’s blog, we’re going to examine two critically important calendar changes that can make all the difference in establishing the accurate dates of ancestral events.

SOME CALENDAR HISTORY

Before 1752, Britain and her Empire followed the Julian calendar, first implemented by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. However this calendar had an inbuilt error of one day every 128 years, due to a miscalculation of the solar year by eleven minutes. This affected the date of Easter, traditionally observed on March 21, as it began to move further away from the spring equinox with each passing year. This was making life difficult in an agricultural economy. Traditionally, the new year was determined by the beginning of the four seasons; the first day of Spring in the Julian calendar was on or about March 25.

To get over this problem, the Gregorian calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in February 1582. This is a solar calendar, based on a 365-day year divided into twelve months. Each month consists of either thirty or thirty-one days with one month, February, consisting of twenty-eight days. A leap year every four years adds an extra day to February, making it twenty-nine days long. The Gregorian calendar is today’s international calendar.

France, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain (all Catholic countries) were the first to adopt the new calendar in 1582. Scotland changed in 1600, and Russia in 1917. On January 1, 1927, Turkey was the last country to officially switch.

Parliament passed the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, formally known as “An Act for Regulating the Commencement of the Year; and for Correcting the Calendar now in Use, 24 George II, c. 23, enacted 1751,” which introduced the Gregorian calendar to the British Empire in 1751 and brought it into line with most of Western Europe. Its introduction was not straightforward; the changeover involved a series of steps:

• December 31, 1750 was followed by January 1, 1750 (under the “Old Style” calendar, December was the 10^th month and January the 11^th)
• March 24, 1750 was followed by March 25, 1751 (March 25 was the first day of the “Old Style” year)
• December 31, 1751 was followed by January 1, 1752 (the switch from March 25 to January 1 as the first day of the year)
• September 2, 1752 was followed by September 14, 1752. As a result, a problem arose regarding aligning the calendar in use in England with that of Europe. Britain was now eleven days out of sync, so it was necessary to correct it by dropping eleven days from the calendar, known as the ‘lost days’. It was decided that Wednesday, September 2, 1752 would be followed by Thursday , September 14, 1752.

This meant that the year 1752 was a short year, lasting just 282 days from March 25 (New Year in the Julian calendar) to December 31. The year 1753 then began on January 1. Connecticut colony illuminated the change in its 1752 Almanac (Fig. 1).

In Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin, writing as Richard Saunders, explained the change in Poor Richard improved being an Almanack and Ephemeris…for the Year of our Lord 1752. South Carolina announced the change in the January 1, 1752 issue of the South Carolina Gazette (Fig. 2).

IMPACT OF THE CALENDAR CHANGE

The change led to many misconceptions and unfounded beliefs about how daily lives would be affected. Rumors of rioting and public insurrection spread. However, many modern historians agree that there was no actual violence over the calendar change.

The changeover to the Gregorian calendar affected festivals, birthdays, and saints’ days. It also changed the dates of wage payments, contracts, and military discharges. It was unpopular with many people, who believed the calendar was taking days away from their lives. Some people rioted in Bristol, and others refused to pay taxes early. Some religious groups, particularly those opposed to the Catholic Church, might have been wary of adopting a calendar change initiated by the Pope.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CALENDAR CHANGE TO GENEALOGISTS

The calendar switch created challenges for historians and genealogists studying colonial records, as dates might be recorded using both the old and new calendar systems. It’s sometimes hard to determine whether information was entered according to the then-current “Old Style” English calendar or the “New Style” calendar we use now.

Under the old system, March 25 was the first day of the new year. September, October, November, and December (seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth month) were often recorded as “7ber,” “8ber,” “9ber,” and “10ber, respectively. The Latin names for these months relate to their position in the Julian calendar, but those names were retained when the Gregorian calendar went into effect.

The correct way to show a date in the ‘overlap’ period of January 1 to March 24 in any year before 1751 is to use the Old Style/New Style, such as 1731/32, which means that February 22, 1731 in the register is what we would now call February 22, 1732. So for genealogists this “double dating” applies to any date between January 1 and March 25 in years preceding 1752.

Although Britain adopted the calendar change in 1752, some immigrant groups to her North American colonies had moved over long before immigrating. Protestant Palatine Germans adopted the new calendar in 1700. Most of the Dutch along the Hudson River in New York and in northern New Jersey had used it since 1583 and continued to do so in America even though Britain hadn’t yet made the change.

Quakers followed the English practice, with one exception. They objected to using those names of days (Sunday to Saturday) and months (January to August) which derived from pagan gods, and substituted numbers. Thus Sunday was for them “First Day.” Until 1752, they had no problem with the months September to December, which were derived from numbers, but for the other months they wrote out “First Month,” “Second Month,” and so on. They sometimes used Roman numerals (i-xii) for these, and sometimes Arabic (1-12). After 1752 all months were referred to by Quakers by their number. September became “Ninth Month” and so on.

Today some researchers find it useful to write down the old style numbers as in the original text, but add the new style names in square brackets, such as:

27 v [July] 1727 or 29 5mo. [July] 1727

Steve Morse has helped genealogists considerably with the 1752 calendar change by creating a tool on his website that converts between the Julian and Gregorian calendars (Fig. 3). It adjusts by the required number of days and also takes the year-number-change day into consideration. Also, genealogical software programs have different ways of dealing with this issue; check to see how the program you choose handles it.

If you want to use genealogical software, it’s generally best practice to enter the date based on the calendar used in the record. However, the first thing to do is research what the genealogy software you want supports, and then decide the best approach based on that.

You can find additional helpful explanations of the 1752 calendar change as well as other calendar changes on many different sites across the web.