As many people by now will be aware, public interest in family history has increased greatly over the past decade. Genealogy can be a discipline with an almost forensic dimension to it, yet unravelling the complexities of one’s family tree is not an exact science or an easy task. It can lead up many blind alleys or to dead ends. Apart from contingencies such as absent, incomplete – or illegible – parish records there is one very significant pitfall, which the beginner just setting out is unlikely to be aware of.
There is something peculiarly unique about the year 1751 – it was only nine months and seven days long. Strange as it seems, New Years Day has not always been on January 1st. In fact from 1190 to 1752 the New Year began not on January 1st but on March the 25th! From 1190 to 1752 England was using the Julian Calendar devised by Julius Caesar, which was set to run from March 25th (Lady Day) to the last day of the year, the following March 24th. In this calendar the tropical year is approximately 365.25 days, making an error of 1 day in 128 years.
Under an edict issued by the Council of Trent Pope Gregory XIII addressed this error by reforming the Julian Calendar so that the tropical year equalled 365+ 97/400 days or 365.2425 days. The new system named after him also meant that it took 3,300 years for the tropical year to shift a day with respect to the Gregorian Calendar. However, in 1752 Lord Chesterfield passed a bill in Parliament enacting the change over to Pope Gregory’s calendar, which ever since would logically set the first day of each year at January 1st. Since 1752 had to begin on this day, 1751 ended on December 31st – not the following March 24th!
What then are the implications of this change for genealogical or title research? It means that any date from the 1st of January to the 25th of March before 1751 has to have another year added to it. For example, the 11th of January, 9th of February or 23rd of March 1780 would actually be in 1751 for today’s purposes under Gregorian system. Before 1752 the progression of any year’s months commenced in March, so the 29th of April in 1709 would actually be June 29th 1709, not April 29th.
Again, if a document gives a date in any year prior to 1752 written as the ninth day of the tenth month 1736, the month should be reckoned as starting in March, so in this example the month is not (today’s) October, but the December of that time when the document was written. At this point it may be pertinent to remind ourselves that the name “December” (meaning the tenth month) is a hangover from the time when it was just that under the more attenuated Julian Calendar.
Now suppose that a family member or genealogical researcher wants to find the date of baptism, marriages or burial of a Dorset ancestor in a parish register (though this would apply to anywhere else in the country). From what as gone before there is clearly no need for any conversion calculation if the date in question is after 1752 as both past and present are Gregorian and are therefore “in sync”. However, any date before Lord Chesterfield’s parliamentary act of that year which adopted the Gregorian Calendar will not be “in sync” with the present. If a parish register entry for the right person sought indicates that he or she was born on, for example, February the 5th 1649, then to conform to the Gregorian Calendar one year must be added, making the revised date February the 5th 1650.
On the continent and some other countries the further back in time one could go before conversion from the old to the new calendars becomes necessary would be that much greater, since beyond these shores use of the Julian Calendar was abandoned during the latter 16th century. Since family documents dating from before this period are likely to be rare or non-existent the Julian-Gregorian anomaly is a problem mostly confined to British genealogical research.
Since 1752 a number of improvements in the methods and efficiency of record keeping and conservation have inevitably been made. In 1801 the ten-yearly population census was begun in England and Wales, though until 1841 names were not collected, and that year’s census results were unreliable or, because they were only recorded in pencil, often illegible. For the 1851 census another seven pieces of information were required, and further improvements followed in 1891. In 1837 civil registration began in England and Wales, although it did not become a legal requirement until 1874. Since 1538 the Church of England had compiled parish registers, though few of the earliest of these records have survived. However, these records are very uncomprehensive, as they only record church responsibilities, i.e. the baptisms (not births), marriages, and burials (not deaths) of parish natives. Before 1538 there was no official system for recording the events in people’s lives.
It can be seen then that conversion from a written date to the Gregorian date will be necessary for parish records before 1752, but would not concern any national census dates.
