Hello Cousins, I awoke this morning about 4am from a rather restless sleep and decided to check the mail ;-) Everyday I have to juggle *many* emails so if I don't answer a question or inquiry you've sent please be patient with me. This morning I found 644 emails in my box! Sometimes I'll just open the ones that come from our RAGAN-ROOTS group to see if there's anything I need to jump on and let everything else go. So again please have patience. And if you've sent something via private mail awhile back and I haven't answered sent it again. After about a month I think the AOL software will delete old emails. So you'll need to understand that your private mail just could sort of 'get lost in the shuffle'. I subscribe to a lot of different genealogy lists, most in the digest mode, and I'll just scan the index to see if there's anything that looks like to would be interesting to me or you. If not I just "keep on truckin' ". ;-) One of my lists this morning (JACKSON-D) had an interesting article about the Gregorian calendar. In case you didn't know, the known world used to operate on the Julian calander (for Julius Ceasar) then it was switched to the Gregorian Calendar (for Pope Gregory). I've discussed this with a few of you in the past so I thought I'd send this to the list. Here it is: ========================= I thought this was very intresting and thought it could answer some of the questions with the more than one year dates. Sheryl READ THE ENTIRE TUTORIAL ON THE GREGORIAN CALENDAR http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/dates.html Written for genealogist and historians {EXCERPT] The first day of the year used to begin on 25 March in conjunction with the Feast of the Annunciation. It was not until the dates given below that the beginning of the year was changed to 1 January. 1522 Venice 1544 Germany 1556 Spain, Portugal, Roman Catholic Netherlands 1559 Prussia Denmark, Sweden 1564 France 1579 Lorraine 1583 Protestant Netherlands 1600 Scotland 1725 Russia 1721 Tuscany In your family history researches, if you come across a year written as 1840-45 you rightly interpret that as meaning "in the period from 1840 to 1845," the years being understood to be inclusive. If you see a date written as 2nd March 1735/6 you might think it means the year is uncertain even though the date is known. Wrong! This way of writing a date has a special meaning which all historians need to know about. This article explains how this apparent vagueness is actually a means of specifying a date with precision and without ambiguity, and why we need, not only to understand the notation used, but also to use it ourselves if we are to avoid being misunderstood. In England the Gregorian calendar was not adopted until 1752, and the start of year date was changed to 1st January by the same Act of Parliament. The day following 31st December 1751 was decreed to be 1st January 1752 and 2nd September 1752 was followed by 14th September. As England had taken the year 1700 to be a leap year, the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars now amounted to eleven days. The changes were to apply to all the Dominions of the British Crown, including of course the North American colonies, and will be the ones most of interest to family historians reading this article. Note that, whatever notation is used, it only has meaning in the period 1st January to 24th March each year (and of course for England and its colonies only before 1752). From 25th March to 31st December the year number is the same in both Styles so no special indication is necessary ======================== If you're fortunate enough to be able to track your family back that far you should find this article helpful. Michael W. RAGAN ================ RAGAN-ROOTS List Owner ================ Don't hesitate to give advice. It passes the time and nobody will follow it anyway. ================