Editor's Note: This article is the second in a two-part series. Read Part I.

In Part I of this article, we discussed some of the intricacies of recording and interpreting dates. Today, we will be continuing that discussion, covering the calendar change, the lost days, double-dating, OS and NS (Old Style and New Style), and entries similar to "7ber 7th day."

The Calendar Change
Our calendar is based on nature and the rotation of the earth around the sun. Unfortunately, this event is not an even one. In one year, the earth does not come back to exactly where it was the year before. Calendar changes are man's attempt to get the calendar back in sync with nature's calendar. In 1752, England and America made the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. Several things happened.

Under the old (Julian) calendar, years ran from 25 March (Lady Day) to 24 March. Under the new (Gregorian) calendar, New Year's Day became 1 January, rather than 25 March. For the first time in English history, the year changed on 1 January, and 31 December 1751 was followed by 1 January 1752. Interestingly, this makes 1751 the shortest year in modern history; it ran from 25 March to 31 December!

The Lost Days
By 1752, the Julian calendar and the rotation of the earth around the sun were out of sync by 11 days. A correction was needed. The decree that changed the beginning of the year also ordered that 11 days be dropped from the calendar. This correction was postponed until a doldrum period in September, during which there were no major festivals and the English law court was not in session. 2 September 1752 (Wednesday) was followed by 14 September 1752 (Thursday). Thus, September 1752 was the shortest month in modern history with only 19 days.

Publicity before the change instructed that things depending on elapsed time, such as mortgages and periods of servitude, would be governed by the time period (and therefore were to adjust the completion date). The general interpretation was that this also applied to birthdays. The emphasis was on age, not an immutable birth date. In other words, people who were 50 years and 1 day old on 2 September 1752 (i.e., born 1 September 1702) considered themselves 50 years and 2 days old on 14 September 1752; so they "changed" their birth dates to 12 September 1702, which would have been their birth date if the new calendar had been in effect when they were born.

As you may recall from lessons in school, George Washington was born on 11 February (under the old calendar), but when he was an adult, his birthday was considered to be 22 February (under the new calendar). This is an important reason not to separate the date from the information about the source record. It is perfectly valid for an ancestor to have two birth dates, both of them correct.

The recent rollover from 1999 to 2000 prompted a number of detailed articles in scholarly journals on the calendar change, which you may wish to consult for historical details and information about countries that changed earlier.

Double-Dating
It was no secret that the English were behind the times. By the time England changed its calendar, other countries had already moved New Year's Day to 1 January. Many record keepers began acknowledging this potential confusion (one wonders if they were not also making a statement of their personal preference that the beginning of the year be changed) by double-dating events between 1 January and 24 March, so we see 1689/90 or 1701/2 in records.

If the record contains a slashed date, you don't have a problem. Record it as written. If, however, the day is between 1 January and 24 March and only one year is stated, what should you do? Stop! Examine the entire record carefully. Most records are recorded chronologically. Study the pattern. Which dating system was the recorder using? If the record sequence is 25 December 1712, 27 February 1712, 4 April 1713, we can confidently record the date as 27 February 1712[/3]. Do not record it as 27 February 1712. Why not? If you do that, you have removed it from its context. You won't be able to tell that the records around it provided an unambiguous year.

Records such as deeds and wills don't provide as neat a sequence of dates as baptisms, and sometimes you can't be absolutely sure about the date. If you have an educated guess, use a question mark, giving the date as 1697[/?8] or 173[?3/]4. If you can't tell at all, it will be helpful to you and other researchers if you add [can't tell if 1744/5 or 1745/6]. More than once I have reread a document to insert the correct slash date only to discover that I couldn't tell what it should be; I wish I'd made a note to that effect the first time and used the time to read new microfilm instead.

OS, NS; Old Style, New Style
Some recorders designated dates done under the Julian system (the one beginning on Lady Day) as Old Style and wrote an "OS" after the date; the same is true for those following the Gregorian system, only the abbreviation was "NS."

It is safest to put OS or NS in your records only if it was in the original. I suggest you use the bracketed year as defined above, but many researchers prefer to use OS or NS and omit the bracketed year, which is also correct.

7ber 7th Day
This does not mean "seventh day, seventh month." It means 7 September. This was the record keeper's shorthand, based on the name of the month, not its position. In school I could never understand why September, October, November, and December, clearly meaning seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth, were really the ninth through 12th months. I had to become a genealogist to learn the reason.

Before the calendar change, September was the seventh month. Afterward, it was the ninth month. But "7ber" is always September, regardless of its year.

Dates—not as simple as you thought, huh? Next time we'll look into dating an event when you don't have a record for that event.

Correction to Last Week's Article
Thanks to the sharp eyes of Frank Lyman who caught a typo that the author and three proofreaders missed in Pat Hatcher's article "Recording and Interpreting Dates, Part I" in the August 23 issue. This sentence—"This term is something of a misnomer, as the practice of giving the name, rather than the number of a month, was common and not limited to Quakers"—should, of course, have said, " . . . the practice of giving the number, rather than the name . . . "

Pat

Editor's Note: This error has been corrected in the online version of the Daily News. For those who save hard copies of articles, you may reprint the corrected printer-friendly version.

Patricia Law Hatcher, CG, is a technical writer, instructor, and professional genealogist. She has written, edited, and produced numerous publications and has written articles for The American Genealogist, The Maine Genealogist, the New Hampshire Genealogical Record, The Virginia Genealogist, Ancestry Magazine. She is the author of Producing a Quality Family History (SLC: Ancestry, 1996).