Cityark

[Minska]

I have been researching my family tree through the cityark website, created by Medway council in Kent.

And i have one question,  a couple of baptisms are listed as 'was baptised on the 2nd day of September 1703
                                                4

What does this year bit mean - is it 1703 or 1704?

Roz

ps, there is a line between the 3 and 4 in the text

[*sara*]

hi i am quite new to family research but i think that before 1752 the year did not start on jan 1st but on march 25th, so 2nd sept 1703/04  means the year beginning on 25 march 1703 and ending on 24 march 1704 ( by our new dating system).

i would clafify this if i were  you but i am fairly sure it has something to do with this.

good luck
sara

[RJ_Paton]

sara's explanation covers it well - the calendar we use today is the Gregorian calendar - England changed over to this in 1752 although many other countries adopted it in the 16th century. (amongst other changes were the loss of 10 days off a month- which caused riots and the change of new year from March/April to 1st January)

[trish251]

From my understanding, it is unusual for a September date to have a double year quoted. It is really only the dates from Jan1 to March 24 that could be known by 2 different years. Whether the year started on Jan 1 or March 25, September 2 1703 would NOT be the same as September 2 1704; whereas Jan 31 1703 could be stated as Jan 31 1704 using current dating.

If you have a copy of FTM - the help on dates explains the presentation and the changeover period very well.

Trish

[M.R. Dien]

It is unusual for a September date to be categorised in this way but not impossible a full explanation of the way we have changed our dating systems and how it affected the notation can be found at
http://www.genfair.com/dates.htm