We will be greeting a New Year in a few days. At the time of the settling of the American colonies, the first day of the New Year was March 25th. Therefore, March 24, 1620 was followed by March 25, 1621.

Calendar time was measured by the Julian Calendar. The names of our months reflect the March beginning of the year. September, our ninth month, comes from the Latin word for seven, and it was the seventh month in the Julian Calendar. October, our 10th month, comes from the Latin word for eight, and it was the eighth month.

In the Julian Calendar, the average year was 365 days and 6 hours long, just a shade longer than reality. To straighten out this error, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII ruled that Thursday October 4, 1582 would be followed by Friday October 15, 1582. Further, centennial years would be considered a leap year if they were a multiple of 400. This created an average year of 365.2425 days.

The Gregorian Calendar, with January 1st as the first day of the year, was adopted immediately in the Catholic countries of Italy, Spain, Portugal and Poland, and shortly thereafter in France and Luxembourg. During the next year or two, most Catholic regions of Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and most of the Netherlands made the switch. Hungary followed in 1587. The rest of the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland made the change between 1699 to 1701.

The Gregorian Calendar was adopted in Britain, and in the British colonies, in 1752. March 24, 1751 was followed by March 25, 1752. Eleven days were deleted from the year to correct the calendar creep. Wednesday, September 2, 1752, was followed immediately by Thursday, September 14, 1752. December 31, 1752 was the last day of the year, rather than the usual March 24. The year 1752 was a very short year!

Everyone who was born between January 1st and March 24th now calculated their birth day with a double year. George Washington was born February 11, 1731 as far as his mother was concerned. According to the new calendar, and taking into account the new beginning of the year and the deletion of eleven days, his corrected birthday was February 22, 1732.

A website that has many links about calendars is "Todays Date & Time". There are religious calendars, historical calendars, ethnic calendars, a real millennium count down, and "This Day in History" sites.

To find out what happened on a particular day in history, you can go “American Memory” on the Library of Congress’ website. The site allows you to search for events on other days, too. Many of the events have links to other websites. Some even have audio recordings of music that was performed on that date.

© 2002-2006

Connie Lenzen, CG^SM

CG, Certified Genealogist is a service mark of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used under license by board certified genealogists after periodic evaluation, and the board name is registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office.