Birth Dates- Calanders

Marvin,
I try to use the date on the historical document, or the date that the ancestor would have used. I have a lot of Quaker ancestors. They kept using a different calendar beyond the early 1800's. For example, they will write 5th Month, which we think is May, but in their calendar was August. Since I can't put in 5th Month, I use August.

As far as mismatched dates, if a date is off by 3 months, I don't freak out about it. I assume it is due to calendar conventions. If possible I will look for source and use that. Otherwise, if I'm primary manager or curator, my date gets used.

Hi Maria:

Actually, the Quaker Calendar reflected the English Calendar, which changed in 1752. Pre-1752 dates required that you add two months to the date - 2mo becomes April, 4mo become June, etc. After 1752, when the English calendar shifted to January-December ("Give us our 11 days..."), 2mo became February and 4mo became April.

You'll probably want to go back and revise where you put 5mo as August... it's actually July, if it's pre-1752 (or it's May if it's post-1752).

Actually, I forgot one detail... March 25 was New Years Day. If you have a date that was March 24, 1721... be very careful, you could be dealing with 1721/22, in which case you'd want to put it down as March 24, 1722 in the profile.

I've been playing around with the whole Julian to Gregorian conversion awhile. Fun stuff. In the 1600s, add 10 days to a Julian date to get the Gregorian date. In the 1700s add 11 days. In the 1800s add 12 days. In the 1900s, add 13 days. I don't think anyone used the Julian calendar after 1918.

Wait until you get a load of the Japanese calendar, or the Hebrew calendar, or the Arabic calendar.

BTW, excellent online calendar conversions are at:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/calendar/
http://www.funaba.org/en/

And for Easter bunnies everywhere and everywhen:
http://www.phys.uu.nl/~vgent/easter/easter_text2a.htm

Private User@ben
Thanks for the link. Now I know of a couple more calenders, but no convertion for one I did know about,
But only two of you made a comment, and as you see, you disagree. And as you see, maria you conterdicted yourself. You said use the date as it appeared in the Historical Documents, then you said you converted Quaker dates. (No problem they refused to use the Gregorian calander because it had pagan gods names with it)
Here could be problem in converting dates. If someone in 1740 wrote a date in a historical document (using 1/5/1740. Just pecause he's in PA does not mean he's using a Quaker date. And just because he's a Quaker dosn't mean that he didn't use the American calender (was it perpared for an English court?)
I agree that you should use the date as it appeared in the historical record.
I wonder if Geni could put a calender converter in the software so you could put in the actual date in the profile (let that then be the actual date) and what calender it came from if not Gregorian and then automaticly convert it to the Gregorian calender if needed, I would have to be put in in such a way as to not interfer with normal usage.
(maybe I'm overthinking this, but if you want 88% accuate info, I think it's needed)

I ment 99%

Perhaps I wasn't clear, Marvin. I would like to put "5th month" but I can't.

And, Ben, I have documents between an English ancestor and his US Quaker cousin from the 1830's. That's how I came up with the 3 month difference. One dates his letter 5th month and the other responds I received your letter of August.

Marvin, I'd be happy with 88%. It would still be a huge improvement.

I'm sure 3 mths is correct as I recall the Gregorian Calander was corrected at one time (and no I don't have the ref in front of me) so that Dec 25th fell on Christ's date of conception instead of his date of birh. (hence a 9 mth dif that makes it look like a 3 mths and one year dif) The date of conception conceept was a Hebrew concept that was not accepted by all Christians and would not have been accepted by the Quakers.
As for being able to put the 5th mth, that's what I ment, a built in converter so you could (so the profile would show born on XXXX {quaker KKKK}, or
for a Japanise Monarch.. born on born on HHHH {japanise GGGG} or Julius Ceasar born on JJJJ {Julian LLLL}.

The program could make these convertions and keep historical accuracy without geting in the way of normal data input.

Hi Marvin and Maria:

Several references to dating pre-1752 Quaker dates:

http://ftp.rootsweb.ancestry.com/pub/roots-l/genealog/genealog.quak...

http://www.swarthmore.edu/x7968.xml

http://www.ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=3358

http://saktishree.blogspot.com/2007/07/no-one-born-in-between-13th-...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_(New_Style)_Act_1750

And there are probably several more supporting the plus 2 case out there, but this is a quick and dirty list from a Google search (Keywords: 1752 Quaker calendar).

Maria, not sure what to say about the 1830s case you presented, except maybe the author had the dates confused? Hard to say. But by 1830, the new calendar numbering had for nearly 80 years been in use.

Marvin, when the calendar shifted, New Years Day went from March 25 to January 1 and not December 25, thus the two month shift in numbering.

As to Quakers and the use of Gregorian calendar because of it being Pagan, that appears to be a mix-up of information. They refuse to use the common month-names because it is supposedly Pagan. They did switch calendars from Julian to Gregorian along with everyone else as a result of the Chesterfeld Act.

As to North American dating, in the British colonies, they used English dating. Thus all the documents with double dating (1750/51, etc.) when between January 1 and March 24.

Note: It seemed to me that the English were unique in using March 25 as New Years Day, at least in the period from 1630 to 1752. Other Julian Calendar nations in this time period used January 1 as New Years Day. That makes it easier for dealing with Russian calendar conversions, etc. For English, if you went strictly on their system, all your dates from January 1 to March 24 would be a year off when entering into the computer. Better to just convert the English to non-English Julian with a note saying it's O.S. (Old Style) rather than N.S. (New Style).

As an aside, in my timelines, I have been trying to convert everything to Gregorian while keeping the original calendar dates as a second reference. In doing that, I've found that a good hint about which calendar was being used was the day of the week, where available. The calendar converters I sent before were a godsend in that regard.

Here i Found among other things, a list of when other countries changed thier calanders

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar

I was going to pass that one along to... you beat me to the punch, Marvin. :)