I have done a lot of genealogy and I don’t remember ever reading this, no wonder I had so many problems determining whether I was talking about one person or two. Shows I’m not as good a researcher as I thought. :)
I was trying to find the file I had on this, dusty old archival stuff, and have now got the search program looking for it. I mean, really, that’s what it’s for, right? ;’) And the original hard drive was something like 1.4 GB, the current one is 500, so, vast difference in the number of files.
Ah, here we go... http://www.genfair.com/dates.htm but it’s a dead link. Probably archived on the Wayback Machine. Later link was http://www.cree.ie/genuki/dates.htm but that’s gone too. https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.genfair.com/dates.htm
OLD STYLE AND NEW STYLE DATES AND THE CHANGE TO THE GREGORIAN CALENDAR
A summary for genealogists
by Mike Spathaky
[snip]
Our modern practice of starting each New Year on 1st January, has indeed a long pedigree. The Roman civil year started on 1st January and its use continued until the seventh century AD. The Christian Church generally wished to move towards using one of its major festivals as the start of the year, and Christmas Day was used from the time of Bede (AD 672 or 673-735) until the twelfth century.
The Feast of the Annunciation, 25th March, started to be used in the ninth century in parts of southern Europe, but only became widespread in Europe from the eleventh century and in England from the late twelfth. It then held sway until the sixteenth century. 1st January then started to be used as the start of the year, starting in Venice in 1522. Dates when this change was made in some other countries are:
1544 Germany
1556 Spain, Portugal, Roman Catholic Netherlands
1559 Prussia Denmark, Sweden
1564 France
1579 Lorraine
1583 Protestant Netherlands
1600 Scotland
1725 Russia
1721 Tuscany
1752 England and colonies
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[snip]
Unfortunately the sixteenth century was a time of severe religious division right across Europe. States still obedient to the Papacy adopted the Gregorian calendar at once, that is in October 1582. These were Spain, Portugal and Italy, with France following in December of that year, and Prussia, the Catholic States of Germany, Switzerland, Holland and Flanders on 1st January 1583. Poland went Gregorian in 1586 and Hungary in 1587. In the year 1700 the German and Netherland Protestant States and Denmark adopted the Gregorian calendar. Sweden wavered, keeping the Gregorian non-leap year of 1700 but reverting back in 1712 by having two leap days that year. The Swedes finally settled for the Gregorian calendar in 1753 omitting the eleven days from 18th to the end of February of that year.
In Britain the Gregorian calendar was not adopted until 1752, and the start of year date was changed to 1st January by the same Act of Parliament. The day following 31st December 1751 was decreed to be 1st January 1752 and 2nd September 1752 was followed by 14th September. As England had taken the year 1700 to be a leap year, the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars now amounted to eleven days. The changes were to apply to all the Dominions of the British Crown, including of course the North American colonies, and will be the ones most of interest to family historians reading this article.
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and
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This quotation from ‘Cradled in Sweden’, by Carl-Erik Johansson, throws more light on the confusion caused by different systems operating in different countries:
“....In November 1699 an agreement was reached to switch over from the old to the new calendar by gradually taking away the eleven days that separated them. By taking away only a day a year, time would be gained for further discussion, as the decision for reform was far from unanimous.
“A beginning was made by leaving out the leap day in 1700. But the reform was not carried any further.
“By January 1711 King Charles XII declared the return to the old way. He stated that the Swedish almanac did not follow that of any other country since the leap day in 1700 was left out. Many mistakes have been made due to this. He also decreed that the month of February should have 30 days in 1712. Sweden was back to the Julian calendar after twelve years of unique dating.
“Not until 1753 was Sweden ready for the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. The problem was solved by letting February 17 be followed by March 1. The reform, however, was not joyfully accepted by all as many held that they had been robbed of 11 days of life!”
(Thanks to Bill Johnson for this gem from The Master Genealogist Mailing List.)
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Jewish calendar ‘fo from 2006:
Happy 5767- but how did we reach that number?
by Stephen Rosenberg
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Happy-5767-but-how-did-we-reach-that-number