Julian to Gregorian calendar

[AngelFish]

Hi All

I'm not exactly a beginner to family history, but I am to this problem - I hope I have posted this in the correct place.

A person has a baptism date of 02 Feb 1742/43 (as taken from freereg), the date at the time was 2nd Feb 1742 because their new year hadn't started yet, using our current calendar the date would be 2nd Feb 1743.

I'm using a family tree on a well known family history website that begins with A... If I enter the date 02 Feb 1742/43, I get a warning and then no year shows up when I view my timeline.

What year should I be putting on my web tree please, and does anyone know if it will transfer correctly across to Family Tree Maker 3?

  Thanks

[emmygee]

G'day AngelFish,

By "a well known family history website that begins with A..." do you mean Ancestry.com?

I have also been trying to get my head around old style / new style dates. Don't forget that in 1752 eleven days were "lost", so the 2nd of September (OS) was followed by the 14th of September to bring the two calendars into step, therefore accounting for leap days. Bearing this in mind, does 2nd Feb 1742 (OS) actually equate to 2nd Feb 1743 (NS)? Or was it 2 or 3 days later?

As for Family Tree Maker 3, I have no idea, I don't use it.

Cheers.

[Guy Etchells]

I would suggest you use a good family tree program rather than one that does not recognise a correct date format, there are plenty to choose from.

I for example use Brothers keeper but other will suggest other programs.
Never compromise accurate recording to comply with a poor program.
Cheers
Guy

[KGarrad]

G'day AngelFish,

By "a well known family history website that begins with A..." do you mean Ancestry.com?

I have also been trying to get my head around old style / new style dates. Don't forget that in 1752 eleven days were "lost", so the 2nd of September (OS) was followed by the 14th of September to bring the two calendars into step, therefore accounting for leap days. Bearing this in mind, does 2nd Feb 1742 (OS) actually equate to 2nd Feb 1743 (NS)? Or was it 2 or 3 days later?

As for Family Tree Maker 3, I have no idea, I don't use it.

Cheers.

Only applies to England and Wales!

Other countries changed over in 1582, and Scotland partially changed in 1600.

[emmygee]

"Only applies to England and Wales!

Other countries changed over in 1582, and Scotland partially changed in 1600"

I know, the OP stated a date in 1742, which is after 1582 and 1600, so who else was using old style / new style in 1742?

[KGarrad]

United Kindom (and colonies), Canada and United States all changed in 1752 (not 1742!)

Prussia changed in 1610, most of Europe in 1583 or 1583.
Japan 1872/3
Bulgaria 1916
Estonia and Russia 1918
Greece 1923
Turkey 1926/7

A more complete list can be found here:
http://www.searchforancestors.com/utility/gregorian.html

[emmygee]

"United Kindom (and colonies), Canada and United States all changed in 1752 (not 1742!)"

Yes, they did change in 1752, but the op said 1742, which is before Great Britain changed its calendar, so they were still using the old style.

This is getting a little bit silly and does not help the op with his question. Perhaps a new topic about old style / new style calendars would be more appropriate.

[AngelFish]

Thank you all for the replies.

Emmygee is correct I am looking for a simple answer please, I thought I'd asked the question in a simple way (it is the beginners board after all) but perhaps I didn't. I should have stated I am talking about a record for England.

I am going to use the dates as they were recorded at the time... so 1742, and trust that is correct. I am going to have to keep a good look out for events that happened around 1752 and after and double check them. Where events occurred after 1752 but were recorded using the old method, I will calculate the year that should have been recorded. I will change the year but not the day and month. If my thinking is incorrect I welcome easy to understand explanations.

Guy, thanks for your suggestion but I want to continue to use Family Tree Maker for now.

Angelfish

[smudwhisk]

I think its really down to preference. . I used to always enter the split year dates when I used FTM but when I migrated over to Family Historian, although the dates all displayed correctly, I struggled to work out how to enter new ones in this format and took the decision to use the "modern" calendar and adjust the years on existing entries. But that was personal choice.

Its worth noting that not all records from England followed the Julian calendar to 1752 anyway. I have Huguenot ancestors and the records of the Threadneedle Street French Church in Soho followed the Gregorian Calendar as they had done in France.

I chose to use the Gregorian calendar for dates that would have used the Julian calendar simply to ensure continuity of dates. Personally I feel if you use 1742 for 1742/3, it places the event prior to others later in 1742 when in fact it was after those events. But that's just my personal view