Dating Induced Headaches for the Family Historian: Julian, Gregorian, and Quaker Calendars

Calendar image from Pixabay.com

Did you know that January 1 wasn’t always the first day of the year?

Did you know that Europe and Great Britain and their colonies used different calendars for several centuries?

Did you know that while the Quakers followed the English calendar tradition, they had their own way of expressing dates, since they did not approve of the commonly used names of the months and days in the calendar?

Do you have any idea of how hard this can make the job of the family historian in figuring out whether the person they are researching is their ancestor? For instance, if I knew the death date of the man I was researching was 12 months before the birth of a particular child, I would normally feel safe in the concluding he was not the potential father of that child; however, if it was before 1752 in England or its colonies it might not be impossible at all. For example, if the man died on March 24, 1650 and the child was born March 25, 1651, that isn’t twelve months apart; that child was born one day after the man died! In another example, trying to determine the probable birthdate of my ancestor, based on a gravestone that lists his death date and his age at death, “87 years, nine months, and six days” will differ depending on whether the given ancestor is from Germany or from England, and I have to remember to apply the differences to be as accurate as I can be. In fact, I may have to re-look at all my earlier German-born ancestors when I get back to that part of the family tree in my research plan because I did not know this when I was researching them. I learned it when trying to figure out the Quaker dating system for the branch of my tree I’ll be writing about next, which is rooted in England, Ireland and the British colonies. But before I try to explain the Quaker dating system, I have to go into a little history first.

Julius Ceasar bust in the Museum of Antiquities, Turin Italy [Public domain]
via Wikimedia Commons,
photo by Ángel M. Felicísimo from Mérida, España, CC by 2.0 

In ancient times, each major culture or civilization at its own calendar, each with their own problems. I’m not going into them as it is really complex and they are not really relevant to this discussion. However, in 46 BC, in an attempt to fix problems with the calendars already in use then, Julius Caesar ordered the Roman Empire to follow a calendar consisting of 12 months based on a solar year because he wanted a calendar that better reflected the planting and harvesting seasons of the largely agricultural economy in the Empire at that time. The calendar was used by all of the Empire, which eventually consisted of England and most of Europe. This Julian calendar was pretty much like the calendar we have today with a 12-month year equaling 365 days, the days having 24 sixty-minute hours each (with each minute being 60 seconds long) and divided into seven-day weeks. An extra day was added every fourth year. While the Julian calendar originally began the year on January 1, after the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, the calendar was gradually aligned with to coincide with important Christian festivals. By the ninth century, parts of Europe began observing the first day of the year on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation (a celebration of the day that the angel Gabriel informed Mary that she would become the mother of the Messiah); the last day of the year was March 24. This new alignment spread throughout Europe and the British Isles over the next couple centuries with England adopting it in the 12^th century.

Cover of Pope Gregory's Papal Bull, in the Public Domain

However, there was also a problem with the Julian calendar, in that it was about 11 minutes too long, which doesn’t sound like much but this slight inaccuracy added one day every 128 years. By the middle of the 16^th century, the Julian calendar was about 10 days ahead of the natural events it was originally based on, including equinoxes, and some church holidays, like Easter, were not occurring in the proper seasons. In October 1582, Pope Gregory issued a papal bull (declaration) implementing a correction of the Julian calendar in which 10 days were dropped from October that year and the method of calculating leap years was changed in such a way as to prevent calendar drift. Additionally, January 1 was made the first day of the new year. The Gregorian calendar is the calendar we use today.

The change to the Gregorian calendar was adopted immediately by Catholic countries. But Protestant countries (including England and its colonies), which did not recognize the authority of the Pope continued using the Julian calendar. Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France, Portugal, Luxembourg, Poland, and Lithuania adopted Pope Gregory’s new calendar that year. Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, and Prussia followed suit within fifty years. But England had split from the Catholic Church only 50 years before Pope Gregory’s declaration and was determined not to bow to the Catholic rule; England held out for almost two centuries.  (Some countries held out longer than England: Russia adopted it in 1918 and Greece adopted in 1922.)

Lunario Novo, Secondo la Nuova Riforma della Correttione del l'Anno Riformato da N.S. Gregorio XIII, printed in Rome by Vincenzo Accolti in 1582, one of the first printed editions of the new calendar. Public Domain

So between 1582 and 1752, there were two calendars in use in Europe and Great Britain, and their respective colonies. Moreover, because the Gregorian calendar was used in significant portions of Europe, those people in Great Britain and its colonies who were aware of the difference in calendars took to dating their documents with both dates between January 1 (the new New Year’s Day) and March 25 (the old New Year’s Day) to avoid misinterpretation, in a system known as “double dating”. The dates were usually indicated as February 14, 1650/1 or February 14, 1650-51. The first few times I saw dates like that on documents, before I was aware of this issue, I thought that the recordkeepers weren’t sure what year the thing had occurred and were giving approximate dates, not that they were being careful to clarify exactly when something occurred under two different legal calendar systems. As you might imagine, this caused difficulty for people who had business with other countries, and they put pressure on the English government to change to the Gregorian calendar.

Finally, Philip Stanhope, the Earl of Chesterfield, on 25 February 1750/1, introduced into the House of Lords an “Act for Regulating the Commencement of the Year and for Correcting the Calendars Now in Use”. The bill passed through Parliament and was signed by George II in May 1851. By this time, the calendar drift had grown to 11 days, and the bill provided that Wednesday, September 2, 1752, was to be followed by Thursday, September 14, 1752, and for New Year’s Day to move from March 25 to January 1 as was already the case in Scotland. In England and Wales, the legal year 1751 was a short year of 282 days, running from March 25 to December 31. 1752 began on January 1. Because 11 days were eliminated from September, the year 1752 was also a short year (355 days). (If anyone ever tries to tell you that something occurred on September 10, 1752, now you know that they are trying to con you as that date did not exist!}

Page for September, in a 1752 Almanac 

In telling family history stories, it becomes necessary to know when the country I’m looking at converted to the Gregorian calendar and whether I must convert dates between the Julian calendar and the Gregorian calendar to figure out the ages of ancestors or just to make a story clear. If you are related to me or have worked with me, you know my math skills are not optimal. Fortunately, I don’t have to do that. I am eternally grateful to Stephen P Morse of San Francisco who has put a One-Step Julian to Gregorian Conversion Calculator on the Internet. The same page also has a section where you can enter a specific country from a drop-down list and be given the date they changed from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. (I have used his other webpages for years; he’s got a lot of very helpful one-step calculators and search tools. To explore them, click on the “my other webpages” button at the top of the calendar conversion page I linked above.)

One warning for family historians researching in early North America before I turn to the Quaker calendar. We need to be aware that certain groups in the early colonies of North America had already adopted the Gregorian Calendar before 1752, even in British controlled territory, and were using it in their civic and church records. The Dutch settlers along the Hudson River in New York and northern New Jersey were already using the Gregorian Calendar when they first came to America in the 1620s since most of Holland had been using the Gregorian calendar since 1583, and after 1660, when the English took over the Dutch colonies, the Dutch people were allowed to stay and keep their way of life. Civil and church recorders of the Dutch towns continued the use of the Gregorian Calendar, even though the British governed their settlements and had not adopted the Gregorian Calendar yet. In addition, Palatine German settlements, and some German Lutherans also used the Gregorian calendar as it had been in use in their home countries before they moved to the North American continent. Also, any French, Spanish, or Portuguese colony or settlement would have been using the Gregorian calendar from approximately 1582.

Epistle sent by the London Yearly Meeting for Sufferings in 1751

Now to the Quakers! Quaker dates can be confusing because the Quakers use numbers in their dating system and not month names, and because there was no official day on which every Quaker switched to the Gregorian calendar. The Quakers used a numbering system because they objected to the names of the months and the names of the days of the week in the English calendar because they were based on pagan gods. For them, Sunday was First Day, Monday was Second Day, Tuesday was Third Day, Wednesday was Fourth Day, Thursday was Fifth Day, Friday was Sixth Day, and Saturday was Seventh Day. Until 1752 they had no problem with September through December as month names, because those names were derived from numbers, but after 1752 all months were referred to by Quakers by their number.  They sometimes used Roman numerals for this (i -xii) and sometimes used Arabic numerals (1-12).

In recording dates, in early meeting records the Quakers usually wrote the dates in year, month, day order, or 1687, 9th mo. [or ix], 28th day. After they made the change to the Gregorian calendar, they generally recorded dates in day, month, year order, or 28, 9th mo. [or ix], 1780.

Since the Quakers use a numbering system for their dates, I had to know which calendar they were using in order to know to which month they were actually referring, which sometimes meant reading quite a bit of the document in order to try to figure out from other dated events which calendar was in use.  Pre-1752, First Month was March, Second Month was April, Third Month was May, Fourth Month was June, Fifth Month was July, Sixth Month was August, Seventh Month was September, Eighth Month was October, Ninth Month was November, Tenth Month was December, Eleventh Month was January, and Twelfth Month was February. Starting in 1752, First Month refers to January, Second Month refers to February, Third Month refers to March, and so on. Fortunately, Rebecca Borden has done a handy chart for converting Quaker months to English months before and after 1752 (Julian & Gregorian calendars) and put it both on her own blog and as a post for the ancestry.com blog: Quaker Calendars and Dates: In Just Two Days, Tomorrow Will Be Yesterday. I printed it off and have used it so much in researching this branch of my tree!

In the course of writing my upcoming blog posts, where it is relevant, I will use the converted dates and put the dates as they are written in the original record in brackets immediately afterward, in an effort to make sure the story is clear and to reflect the original record.

Thanks for hanging in with me throughout this explanation. I hope you found it as interesting as I have (but not as frustrating).

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http://libguides.ctstatelibrary.org/hg/colonialresearch/calendar ; https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/51370/why-our-calendars-skipped-11-days-1752 ; https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Give-us-our-eleven-days/ ; https://www.history.com/news/6-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-gregorian-calendar ; http://www.genealogyintime.com/GenealogyResources/Articles/understanding_julian_calendars_and_gregorian_calendars_in_genealogy_page1.html  ; https://www.historytoday.com/archive/gregorian-calendar-adopted-england  ; http://corsairsandcaptivesblog.com/dates-and-dating-julian-and-gregorian-calendars/ ; https://www.genealogyblog.com/?p=18500 ; https://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2016/01/19/a-date-is-a-date-is-a-date-is-a-date/ ; https://www.swarthmore.edu/friends-historical-library/quaker-calendar ;  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar

It's Alive!

Hi!  

As you may have noticed, I took an unplanned year-long break from blogging this year.  During my blogging absence, I dealt with some physical and mental health things, some stressful career (day job) stuff, and some stressful church board and committee stuff, and helped organize my parent’s 60^th wedding anniversary party. Now, at the close of the year, I see that taking a year off blogging (however unintended) helped a lot. The 60th anniversary party weekend has been had and was a success. I’m in therapy for the mental health things and although it’s not remotely easy, it’s helping. Additionally, while the physical health things are painful, tiring, and chronic, my doctors and I are looking into possible different treatments and diets, and, the treatment of the mental health things may eventually help the physical health things too. The more proactive treatment of my mental and physical health is also helping with the work stress, too. And, as of January 14, I will be off of the church board and the church finance committee for the first time in four years, which I hope will give me more energy. 

Although I haven’t been blogging, I’ve still been researching my family tree. I’ve been exploring branches on my Mom’s paternal side which has led into an area of history I’d never really studied or read about before, other than a few paragraphs on the formation of Pennsylvania (which my ancestors don’t stay in). So, I’ve been doing a lot of reading trying to learn it well enough to explain it and our family’s place in it, and I got stuck in an attack of perfectionism and anxiety regarding getting it right when writing it up which contributed to no actual writing getting done. Then recently, I saw a quote from Dr. Jenn Hardy that broke the freeze, “It doesn’t have to be perfect for it to be finished.” I’m trying to learn to embrace the concept of “good enough” and just write. So, I will be blogging again next year.  However, I’m not going to make any resolutions on how many posts per week or per month as I don’t want to put any deadline pressure on myself this year. 

I’ve reviewed the branches I’ve been researching and I think I’ll be writing posts on eight or nine of people in these branches before moving on to do further research on Mom’s maternal side. But, unlike most family history stories this one doesn’t want to be told going back a generation at a time. It wants to be told from the top down to join the parts I’ve already written (it makes the social history parts easier to write).  Accordingly, I had to get back to a person who felt like a beginning, and I’m now there. I’ll be starting in January with my 9^th great-grandfather, George Harlan, who emigrated to this continent about one hundred years before the U.S. Constitution was ratified. It's outlined, but not written yet, so it will likely go up after next weekend. 

But first I’m going to do a post (hopefully to go up on New Year’s Day) explaining some important (and interesting!) things about the change in the calendar before and after 1752, and in particular in the Quaker calendar, because it will help to understand this as we go through the next several posts and, rather than having to explain it each time it’s relevant, this way I’ll explain it once and just link to this post in later posts, where you can read it again if you need to.

May your 2020 be a better year than your 2019 was!

Remembering the Women Who Voted First (November 2, 1920)

Sample Ballot for November 2, 1920
printed in the Youngstown  Ohio Vindicator on November 1, 1920
Click to make bigger

I knew that white women first got the right to vote, across the U.S.A., in 1920. But then, maybe because of the genealogy, I got to wondering what that meant in my family. Who were the first women in my family who could vote?

So I checked (click on their names to be taken to their life story posts).

In Lapeer and Sanilac counties, Michigan, Election Day 1920 dawned cold and clear, but with the threat of the first snowstorm of the year. According to local newspapers, in the morning hours to noon, women showed up to vote in double the numbers of the men.

On my Dad’s side, three generations of women were alive and eligible to vote for the first time.  I was astonished to realize that my grandma was one of them. The others died before I was born and I didn’t know them.

On Election Day, November 2, 1920, the first election in which women could legally vote nationwide:

My grandma, Anna Bennett Henn was 22 (1898-1977). She lived at home with her parents in Maple Valley, Michigan.

My great-grandma, Anna Gregor Bennett was 62 (1858-1928). She lived in Maple Valley, Michigan with her husband and four of their seven children: William (31), Anna (22), Margaret (20) and Thomas (14).

My great-grandma, Myrtie Wilcox Henn was 40 (1879-1953). She had eight children and lived in Burnside, Michigan with her husband.

My 2nd-great-grandma, Mary Jane Currier Wilcox was 77 (1843-1937). She lived in Brown City, Michigan, with her husband and her 17-year-old grandson.

My 2nd-great-grandma, Elizabeth O’Brien Henn was 67 (1853-1927). She was a widow and lived in Burnside, Michigan, with her son Floyd's family. 

Stamp Commemorating the 19th Amendment

In Hancock County, Ohio, Election Day 1920 was cold and very rainy. Despite this, women were lined up outside the polls in many cities in Ohio at the start of the day for the opportunity to vote for the first time. According to Ohio newspaper accounts, women were asked to vote between 9:00 AM and 4:00 PM in many localities (some limited them to 9:00 AM to noon) so as to not tie up the polls when the men were getting off work and coming to vote. In Ohio, the total number of women voters outnumbered the total of men voters in many precincts on that day.

On my Mom’s side, only two generations of women were alive to witness the first time women were allowed to vote.

On Election Day, November 2, 1920:

My great-grandma, Fanny Hartman Hart Erwin was 48 (1872-1954). She was working as a live-in housekeeper for a man and his father in Pleasant, Ohio. Her two youngest daughters, one of whom was my grandmother, lived in the household with her and were listed as boarders on the census.  My grandmother, Mabel Erwin Snyder, was 10 on Election Day, which was too young to vote but she witnessed history being made. 

My great-grandma, Pearl Pauline Bailey Snyder was 29 (1891-1978). She lived with her husband and five children in Findlay, Ohio.

Warren Harding (Pres.) and Calvin Coolidge (VP) won that presidential election.

It’s hard to believe that I knew two women who saw that day. I have honored the memory of those women who fought for my right to vote by voting in every election since I first became eligible to vote.

This Tuesday, November 6, 2018, go 

Odds and Ends

Snails - from Pixabay.com

I know I promised another ancestor profile post in September. However, I've been away from home for the last three weekends, and haven't had time to finish writing it up yet (thus, the snails). That post will go up in October.

I've been contacted by three potential distant relatives for Dad's side and one for Mom's side in September, and one very nice person who just wants to help me. Two would like to jointly explore how we are related, (they seem to be one on Dad's side and one on Mom's of my family). One had been conducting research pursuant to a DNA project he was working on, including some families that he was unable to conclusively connect to his family of primary interest, and in the course of that research, he tells me that he uncovered some interesting information on one of my direct family lines (Dad's side) and wants to offer it to me rather than just deleting it because he couldn't prove a match to his people - oh boy! And the fourth, my 3rd cousin 1x removed, on Dad's side found my blog after Googling names found on the back of photos in her grandmother's photograph album, and sent me both digital copies of the photos and the originals! So my next post tonight will the photos she shared with me of my grandfather Henn at one year old (very cute) and of his siblings.

A Slight Detour

I've not been posting because recently I was contacted by three (separate) adoptees looking for their birth families with whom I share (or Dad shares) varying amounts of DNA. I've spent a good portion of the last few months trying to help them figure out where they might fit in my tree. For one person I had to extend a couple branches on my Dad's side of the family tree several generations further up than I'd gotten to figure out the shared ancestor.  I helped to the best I could, but am leaving the research down the tree that isn't on my direct line to them (or whoever they hire) to do it.

In the course of all that research, I came across two very interesting people on Dad's side who I'd like to share with you before I flip back to continuing to work on Mom's side of the family. Well, I found more than two people interesting, but I'm committed to working on Mom's side at least until I get stuck again. These two, however, just insisted on having their stories told now, instead of months later. One will go up this week after I find some illustrative pictures to add, and the other will go up after I do a bit more research and write the post, so perhaps next month as I've company coming soon. I hope you'll tune in to enjoy these fascinating people,

Writer's Block

Image from Pixabay.com

I have not written anything recently because I don’t know what to write. I’ve been having real problems with my genealogy research this summer. I previously explained my problems with the research into Mariah Williams Bailey Huber in a post in April. Then I moved on to my mother’s Schneider roots. There are a lot of Snyder’s/Schneider’s in her family, as at the level of my second great-grandparents John Snyder/Schneider married Katherine Snyder/Schneider (as far as I can tell at this point, two different Schneider family lines joining). I have an old hand-drawn family tree of names & relationships, which has proven to be about 85% accurate, which goes to my third great-grandparents level in the Snyder families; it stops where I am stuck. It is at the point of my second great-grands and third great-grands that the Schneider’s emigrated from the Germanic states (pre-Germany) to the USA. I have been having a great deal of difficulty trying to find anything on their emigration and on their life before reaching the United States. It doesn’t help that Schneider is a fairly common name. I am finding records, but I can’t tell if they belong to my people.

It’s gotten to the point where I have determined that I either need to pay a German genealogist to look into this or take some courses in German genealogy and perhaps learn German. I priced hiring German genealogists and determined that that is not on the current budgetary horizon. (It’s not that I think that they are overpriced. Apparently, it is standard to buy a chunk of hours’ worth of work [20, 40, 120] for a set price, and while that price was initially a bit breathtaking, once I divided it by the number of hours I realized it’s really quite reasonable for the expertise needed and work involved. It’s just not something I can consider until possibly spring, or later.) And, I don’t have the time to take webinars or classes in German genealogy, and German, for at least three years.

However, I have found it psychologically difficult to move on without writing without writing a blog post on them. Apparently, my mind and gut have been convinced over the years of doing the research and writing this blog, that when I have completed what I’m able to do on a given ancestor at that point in time, I write a blog post before moving on to whichever line I choose to explore next. The blog posts I normally do on ancestors situate them in the historical context in which they lived and involve a decent amount of contextual research to do so (in my head I call them “ancestor profiles”). The problem is, I don’t know enough about the Schneider’s to do that – hence the writer’s block. But I have to do something so I can get my head to move on (I’m tired of nights of only 4 hours of sleep in which I find nothing helpful). So I have decided to write a few posts that I will deem “status reports,” writing about what I do know about the ancestor and/or family I’m stuck on, and, where there are differing indications that I’ve seen in other’s trees explain why I have not accepted those points (… yet). I’m hoping that those sort of posts will serve two purposes: (1) allow me to let go and move on to research another line, and, (2) perhaps attract the attention of a “cousin” I may not have met yet who has more information than I have, or different family stories that might point to more clues, who is willing to help me get further back on these lines. 

Interviewed by Geneabloggers.com!

Geneabloggers.com

I was interviewed last year for publication on Geneabloggers' "May I Introduce You To..." series sometime this year. That time has arrived! Many thanks to Michelle Ganus Taggart of The Southern Sleuth blog who interviewed me for Geneabloggers.com,

If you're interested the interview, it is linked here: 

May I Introduce To You . . . Jo Henn

By The Numbers

Happy New Year, Everyone!

This year I am not going to do New Year’s resolutions or intentions on the blog. Of all the intentions I set out in a post last January, I completed one: my photography 365 Project. In doing that project, I found that I had very little time for genealogy, and now I am craving more time spent on it. Consequently, I’m hoping to be able to write up more ancestor profiles, and other tidbits, this year, too. I’ll be working on the ancestor lines at the points where I got stuck the last time through, so we’ll see where that takes me. Hopefully, I’ll make more headway this time as more records have been digitized.

Just after Christmas, I received a manila envelope from one of Mom’s cousins, R. (F.) M. Containing a folder of genealogy material, letters, and pictures, from her mom’s side of the family – which is the side we share. I’ve been having so much fun going through it, and trying to see where the information fits into my tree!

One of my brothers recently asked me how many direct line ancestors I had found. I had to tell him I didn’t know without turning on the computer and counting. Ancestrydotcom counts how many people I have in my tree, but since I do a lot of collateral research that doesn’t actually help me determine how many people have I have found in the direct line. [Aside: I don’t understand how people who only research their direct line ever find their direct line people; most of the jumps in generations I’ve been able to make have come from research I’ve done on brothers and sisters of my direct line ancestor.] But now I can answer him here!

Yesterday, I saw a post on the blog Twisted Twigs on Gnarled Branches on tallying up your family tree, in which she explained an easy way how to do that if you use ancestrydotcom. So, this morning I tallied my direct line ancestors, and this post is for you M! I chose to include only those ancestors I am certain of. On some of my lines I’ve got some possibilities that I’m exploring, but until I am more certain, I decided not to include them in this tally – maybe in 12 months I can do a year-end tally and if they made the cut, my percentages will go up.

MATERNAL SIDE

(This is using Mom as a starting point, and thus the “parents” listed are my grandparents; so each one of these numbered levels would be one level greater, or higher, from me and my brothers.)

Generation	Actual Number	Number Found	percentage
Parents	2	2	100%
Grandparents	4	4	100%
Great-grandparents	8	8	100%
2nd great grandparents	16	16	100%
3rd great-grandparents	32	12	37.5%
4th great-grandparents	64	8	12.5%
5th great-grandparents	128	0	0%
6th  great-grandparents	256	0	0%
7th great-grandparents	512	0	0%
Total	1022	50	4.89%

PATERNAL SIDE

(This is using Dad as a starting point, and thus the “parents” listed are my grandparents; so each one of these numbered levels would be one level greater, or higher, from me and my brothers.)

Generation	Actual Number	Number Found	percentage
Parents	2	2	100%
Grandparents	4	4	100%
Great-grandparents	8	8	100%
2nd great grandparents	16	16	100%
3rd great-grandparents	32	17	53.13%
4th great-grandparents	64	5	7.81%
5th great-grandparents	128	0	0%
6th  great-grandparents	256	0	0%
7th great-grandparents	512	0	0%
Total	1022	50	5.08%

Obviously, I’ve still got a lot of work to do, but I’ve only been doing it for about four years, off and on. Looks like I've got lots more years of fun to come!

P. S. For those of you curious as to how many people overall are in my Ancestrydotcom tree, here are my tree stats: 2374 people, 7776 records, 569 photos (only a small proportion of the photos are of people, unfortunately).