This interesting discussion about dates and calendars also serves as a
good reminder about how much we might be willing to trust different
kinds of sources. As Elizabeth Shown Mills commented on Tuesday, it is
of greatest importance to know where a date came from. Sources that
might be regarded as "official," such as church baptismal records or
documents generated in courts, will almost certainly be in the old style
dates. By the 18th century it was not uncommon for clerks to employ the
style 1732/3, but they did not always, and so I frequently turn forward
or backward through a record book to ascertain whether the clerks or
recorders changed the year between December and January or between March
and April.
 
Dates as recorded later could be just about anything, and I have found
instances in which people attempted to correct for the eleven or twelve
days and made matters even more complex. And I have also seen instances
in which writers working with evidence from January, February, and the
first weeks of March logically assumed that the dates were old style and
silently "corrected" them to new style, only to be subsequently
incorrected again by another writer. I am aware of at least one set of
early secondary sources that advanced a death date three years by three
incorrect adjustments to the date.
 
Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
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Please visit the Library of Virginia's Web site at
http://www.lva.virginia.gov

 


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