30 days have September, April, June and
November… most people learned that little saying as kids
to keep straight the months of the calendar that have 30 days from
those
that have 31. But it wasn't always that easy to keep track of
the days, there was a time when telling the date was very confusing
business.
This posting will help explain why we sometimes see stones
in colonial cemeteries with double dates. The first time I saw a
stone with two years of death listed, I thought maybe the family had
the stone carved much later and couldn't remember the actual date…
then I saw it again and again and knew there had to be a reason for
it.
Keeping a calendar has, at times, been pretty
complicated. Different cultures have used different ways to mark the
passing of years. Had we continued to use the Roman calendar
we may have just rung in the new year 2765 a.u.c. The Romans
used ab urbe condita "from the founding of the city" –
Rome – as their basis for dating.
Some cultures used lunar calendars while others,
like the Mayans, used their own very unique form of calendar. In fact
the Mayan calendar has fueled many end of times conspiracies. Since
the Mayan calendar ends on 12-21-2012, people wonder if it was
meant to be a prophecy of sorts.
One thing is true, for centuries the date was
subjective to the country you were in at any given time.
The
importance of everyone being on the same page became evident as
people began traveling around the world. A standard of date keeping
became a priority. One of the first very popular calendars was the
Julian calendar. This calendar was adopted by Julius Caesar in the
year we know as 45 B.C. The Julian calendar consisted of eleven
months of 30 or 31 days and a 28-day February (extended to 29 days
every fourth year) The calendar was actually quite accurate. It was
only 11.5 minutes off the true lunar cycles. But, only just a slight
difference in minutes, after significant time, would end up being a
difference of days. The problem eventually snowballed. The solstice
was off by days. The solution to this problem would come to be found
with, of all places – the Vatican…
Pope Gregory XIII was the pontiff in Rome from 1572
to 1585. He would go down in history being known for the man
who commissioned the Gregorian calendar, with the help of a Jesuit
priest/astronomer Christopher Clavius, who is credited as the chief
architect. To this day, the Gregorian calendar is the
international standard for date keeping around
the
world. The new calendar more closely aligned with the lunar calendar,
fixing the flaw in the Julian calendar, which saw the year as 365
days and 6 hours. The new calendar counted the year as 365 days, 5
hours, and 49 minutes in length.
Now the tricky part… to get the rest of the world
to sign onto the new calendar. As you can see from this chart,
this change not very well received in some countries. There was much
resistance to changing. Not to mention yet another complication
that would ultimately lead to the reason that we see double dated grave stones here
in America.
As the chart shows, England was fairly late
adopting the Gregorian calendar. It didn't recognize the new method
for date telling until 1752. This created a huge problem since other
countries had adopted the new calendar centuries earlier. What this
meant was that even when they made the switchover, they would still be
off the rest of the world's current date by days unless they did something
that would shock the people living under British rule.
Here's a fun question you can ask any
history buff you know.
"What happened on the date September 2,
1752?"
The
answer: Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The sun never rose, no
garden was tended, no ships sailed. In fact, you will never see a
gravestone dated with that date. Officially, the date never existed.
Neither did the 3'rd or the 4'th. In total 12 days were erased from
time in order for London to be on the same day as say, Paris was.
The people were stunned. It is said that some thought this was a
trick for landlords to get the rent sooner, while others actually
thought the King had robbed days off their very life.
But that wasn't the only adjustment made.
The
Calendar Act of 1750 passed by the British Parliament, also put into
effect the changing of the day the New Year would begin. If
all this new calendar stuff wasn't confusing enough, Lady Day –
March 24'th would no longer mark the changing of the calendar year.
The new official start to the year would fall on January 1'st.
With all the reluctance to the adoption of the
Gregorian calendar and then the changing of the starting month of the
new year, this is why we see double dated grave stones. Immigrants
coming here may have still used the Julian calendar or may or may not
have celebrated the new year on Jan. 1'st. Russia didn't switch to
the Gregorian calendar till the 20'th century. Switzerland began
using Jan. 1'st as the mark of the new year in 1579, while they
didn't switch calendars until 1760. The stones we see with double
dates usually belong to people who died in either Jan, Feb or March.
Since some still believed the new year began in March, while others
had signed on to the Jan switch, many put both years on stones for
good measure.
Not everyone was comfortable with these changes.
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| Thomas Jefferson's hand written gravestone details |
In fact evidence of this can be seen on the gravestone of
one of our countries Founding Father's.
Thomas Jefferson took the time to
plan out his gravestone in his will. He chose the type of stone as
well as the inscription that he preferred. On the dating of his stone
you will see his date of birth listed as:
Born Apr. 2, 1743 O.S.
The O.S. at the end of his birth date refers to "Old
Style" calendar dating, another wards a reference to the Julian
calendar and March 24'th new year. If you see a N.S. listed by a
historical date, this would then refer to "New Style"
dating – the Gregorian calendar and Jan. 1- new years.
So you think this is all ancient history? Not quite,
in fact we are still making adjustments even in the modern age.
On December 30,
2011 the Island known as American Samoa had a historic four day work
week, instead of five. They "lost " their Friday so as to
align their date with Australia.
Hope you enjoyed this post and Happy 2012 (N.S.) Everyone! Make this one a
year to remember.
