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Archiver > TMG > 2000-03 > 0951902753


From: "Hugh Wilding" <>
Subject: Re: TMG-L: verifying a date 1665/66 or 1666/67
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 09:25:53 -0000


Norb Bankert wrote:


> According to the Calendar zone (thanks Bev) and Elizabeth Sat. 19 Jan
falls
> on Saturday in 1667 in the Julian calendar. Everyone is telling me that
> this is 1666/67 and that's what I want to hear but if it's '67 julian,
> wouldn't that be '68 Gregorian? In other words 1667/68 (which doesn't
work
> at all for my data).

The year issue is not one to do with whether the calendar is Julian or
Gregorian - in both systems the year starts on 1 January. In Britain
between the late middle ages and 1752, the *official* (government) start of
the year was 25 March but the *popular* start remained 1 January. Therefore
31 December 1666 was followed by 1 January 1666 *official* or 1 January 1667
*popular* and it would not be until the end of March that the year fell into
line again. Because of the obvious scope for confusion etc, it was quite
common practice during that time to show both years - as you have observed.
At a later time, someone called the *official* year _Old Style_ (OS) and the
*popular* year _New Style_ (NS) and the convention is to show the years as
OS/NS. If you are researching original documents such as registers then the
style being used should be apparent - look at a year end before 1752 - but
if you are using transcripts you must remember to be cautious.

> Lee:
> In trying to convert to Julian I do believe (I could be wrong) that 10
days
> were added to the date. By the time New England converted in 1752 enough
> time had gone by that they had lost another day. So, if I'm correct, it
> wasn't untill 1752 that the 11'th day was added.

Well now, you have just stumbled on the "how" of Pope Gregory's tinkering
with Julius Caesar's original <g>. In the Julian calendar, all years
divisible by 4 are leap years but the Gregorian system excludes century
years unless divisible by 400. So 1700 was a leap year in the Julian
Calendar but not in the Gregorian Calendar hence the *extra* day. No wonder
Lee was complaining about brain strain. <g> There is a good tutorial by
Mike Spathky on both subjects at http://www.genfair.com/dates.htm

John Kent's free program Calisto is available as a self extracting exe file
(324 kb) with your web browser from the following ftp site
ftp.essex.ac.uk/pub/biology/calendar It enables viewing of parallel dates
in common calendars, has a useful
search facility (what years had a July 4th on a Friday) and much else.

Hugh Wilding
Berkshire, England
<>


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