On 3/19/15 7:20 PM, RootsMagic via wrote: > OK, I see what is happening... you are entering November, which wouldn't be > ambiguous. This is from RM's help... > > Double dates were used after the Gregorian Calendar was introduced in 1583 > to replace the Julian Calendar, because of inaccuracies in the Julian > Calendar leap year calculations. The Julian Calendar used March 25 as the > start of the new year and March 24 as the last day of the year. The > Gregorian calendar moved the start of the year to January 1. The Gregorian > calendar wasn't adopted by the British empire (including its colonies, the > US and Canada) until 1752 and other countries as later as 1923. In the > intervening years, dates between Jan. 1 and Mar. 24 were written as 15 Feb > 1675/6 to indicate the year was 1675 on the Julian (or Old Style) calendar, > but was 1676 on the Gregorian (or New Style) calendar. RootsMagic displays > the year with one digit after the / for most years, except it shows 2 > digits for a decade, i.e. 1679/80, or 4 digits for a century, i.e. > 1699/1700. > > Double dates entered with years before 1583/4 are treated as unrecognized > dates, while double dates entered for 25 Mar to 31 Dec after 1583 are also > treated as unrecognized dates. > While Double Dates were only used (at least primarily) after 1583 in contemporaneous documents, they are quite useful to describe events long before then. While the March 25th date for the turn of the year was common just prior to the Gregorian Calendar being developed, the actual start varied of time depending on place, and at times purpose. I have heard of instances of the year change being anywhere from Christmas to Easter (and numerous changeover dates in between). For instance, how much time passed between Feb 1st and May 1st of the "same year" (or even which is first) can be a difficult question. This means that it would be useful to quote dates using both the year as it was known at the time, as well as the year as we would recognize it given a Jan 1st year change (assuming you can be clear as to what year it refers to). I have seen cases where a researcher has determined a date, decided that it would be confusing to the readers (and muddled the work to add explanations) that February of year X was actually after November of year X, so adjusted the February date to the "Modern" standard of year X+1. A second researcher, building on the first researchers work makes the assumption that the date is "raw" and also figures it would be confusing, also adds one to the year, and we end up with an error. If the first researcher had "double dated" the event, it would be clear that it had been adjusted. -- Richard Damon