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From:
Subject: Correct dates
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 23:55:43 EDT

Why is this date 10 days off the date I have?

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The Pilgrims in the 1600s used the Julian Calendar. Ever since 1752, we
(the American Colonies) have used the Gregorian Calendar. The reason we
switched to the Gregorian calendar was because the Julian calendar slightly
miscalculated the exact length of a year by eleven minutes and fourteen seconds.
During the 1500s and 1600s, the calendar was off by ten days. Hence, when we
look back in time with our Gregorian calendar, we find that the Pilgrim's
calendar was ten days behind. So what was September 6 by the Pilgrim's calendar is
September 16 by our calendar.
By 1752 the calendar had become 11 days off. So the British Parliament, to
fix the problem, declared the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, and renamed
September 3, 1752 to September 14, 1752 to fix the eleven-day disparity.
The Parliament also declared that New Years would fall on January 1, instead
of March 25. This "New Years" discrepancy is the reason why some dates have
been _double-dated_ (http://members.aol.com/calebj/double_date.html) and
look like March 5, 1621/2. This means it was 1621 to them because their New
Years had not yet occurred, but it is 1622 to us because our New Years falls on
January 1, not March 25.
This web page has left the dates in the Julian calendar unless otherwise
noted. To get the equivalent date for our modern Gregorian calendar, you need
to add ten days.
The reason for double-dating: According to the Julian Calendar (which was
used by the Pilgrims), the New Year started on March 25, not January 1. It
also declared that a year was 365 days, 6 hours long. However, in 730 AD, the
Venerable Bede, a monk, discovered that this calendar was off by 11 minutes
and 14 seconds. Nothing was done about it, however, and over the next 850 years
the calendar kept getting further and further off until it was nearly ten
days off in the year 1582. Pope Gregory XII declared in 1582 a new calendar
would be used, named the Gregorian calendar, which would fix the problem.
However, much like the metric system and the United States today, people were
resistant to logical change. The new calendar was adopted immediately by
France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Luxembourg, and within a few years by
Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. But it wasn't until nearly 200
years later that the calendar was adopted by the British government (and thus
the American colonies).
The British Parliament decreed that September 3, 1752 should be renamed
September 14, 1752, which would fix the eleven day discrepancy; and further, they
ruled that January 1 would be the beginning of the new year--it would no
longer be March 25. The Russian Orthodox Church, and several mid-east countries
are still using the Julian calendar even today. The Julian calendar is nearly
half a month off now.
To make matters worse, while dates in the 1700s are 11 days off, dates in the
1600s are just 10 days off. So, when the researcher goes looking at
records written in the 1600's, they will find the dates are by the Julian calendar,
not our present-day Gregorian calendar. To note this, many times the date
is written 1 March 1692 (O.S.) which stands for "old style", or 11 March 1693
(N.S.) which stands for "new style". Other sources, such as this web page,
will simply write that same date as 1 March 1692/3, to indicate it was 1692 to
them, but 1693 by our present-day calendar. Of course, this does not take
into account the ten days the calendar was off, so the date is also sometimes
written like 2 March 1692 / 12 March 1693

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