Julian/Gregorian date changes

RootsMagic
1

I ran across something today with dates that leads me to believe that maybe I don’t know how to enter this properly.

Today, I was transcribing a will and inventory appraisement. The will is undated, but the inventory appraisement is dated 4 August 1744. Following this is the clerk’s return/recording of the inventory appraisement dated 18 January 1744. This occurred in Amelia County, Virginia (British Colony).

Threw me for a second, until I remembered about Julian/Gregorian calendar date changes. But I did some research to make sure I was remembering correctly.

In the British Colonies in 1744, JANUARY was NOT the 1st month of the year. In fact, the legal year began in Britain and therefore their colonies on 25 March. It was in September 1752 that the calendar was changed in Britain and the British Colonies (New Style Calendar Act 1750). In preparation for this the start of the year to 1 January happened before the official adoption of the Gregorian Calendar (1 Jan 1752) and apparently 1751 was a short year with only 282 days.

I put for the probate (inventory) record date 18 Jan 1744/5. Saved and closed the record. Reopened, and the probate fact shows as follows:

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So on the left side, the probate date shows before the will and death date. On the right side I see that the sort date has 1744, even though I made sure that the sort date had 1744/5 in it - so it didn’t retain that. I then changed the sort year to 1745, and that seems to allow the proper placement of the fact on the left side.

I’ve run into this once before with my grandmother’s birth record from Russia in 1909/1910, but I ended up putting 1910 as her birth year. But maybe that wasn’t correct either. Is that really the correct thing to do - that is do the YYYY/YY in the date field and then the next year in the sort field? Is there a different way to do this that is more correct?

Thanks.

2

Yes that is the correct way to do it IF it does NOT automatically do it for you or if needed, you could change the date to Jan 18 1744 BUT

What I don’t understand is that my database automatically defaults to 1745

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RM 11.5.0.0 64 bit Windows 11

1 Like
3

That is interesting since mine defaulted to 1744. I was hoping that it would default to 1745.

4

I’m pretty sure that the Sort Date for 18 January 1744/5 can only become 18 January 1744
IF
manually changed by a user:

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2 Likes
5

I’ll try again and see what happens

6

So @kbens0n I thought the same thing BUt it defaulted to 1745 when I entered it-- I didn’t change it at all

7

I was confirming your observation and then threw a big IF into my reply that they HAD to have manually changed it in order to get 18 January 1744 in the Sort Date for a 1744/5 date

8

So confusing.

Is the sort date always Gregorian?

9

As far as I know. These double dates represent the old and the new calendar. The ability to enter dates in their various formats and display them as such in output is a convenience, but complicating the sorting of said events with the added complexity of all those variations on a theme seems unnecessary. The new calendar seems most logical for the chronology of the exponential population growth that has ensued and documentation increase in recent centuries.

10

I redid it again, and the date came to 1745. I must have put in a date in the sort date field, but I don’t remember doing so.