Family History Database Considerations

by Vic Berecz – August 2003 – Updated September 2018 Purpose and Overview The purpose of this short paper is to rationalize the positions we have taken regarding dates provided in the Berecz-Luhrs Master Database of family history. It is generally our assumption that dates given in the database are from the and that the each year begins on January 1st. This is because virtually all dates in this database were recorded in places/times when the Gregorian calendar was in use with January 1st as the beginning of the year. Two potential problems with this approach have surfaced to date. The German Problem creates a somewhat significant issue, but the Hungarian Problem becomes essentially a non-issue. These problems are discussed below, and our approach to them is documented. Other problems may surface in the future (for example if we are able to trace Irish ancestral lines back to before 1752), but we will deal with these if and when we encounter them. The was created by Julius Caesar in 45 BC and has a every four years. Over the centuries a small error accumulated, until by the 1500s an error of 10 days started to have an effect on everyday life. Such important decisions, as when to plant crops, were being impeded. As a result, a revision to the calendar was necessary. The Gregorian calendar is the calendar in common civil use today throughout the world. It was proposed by Aloysius Lilius, a physician from , and was mandated by the Council of Trent (1545- 1563) to correct the errors of the Julian calendar. Pope Gregory XIII promulgated the papal bull on 24 February 1582 making the Gregorian calendar the official calendar of the Roman Catholic Church. Beginning the year on January 1st has been the accepted practice in most countries since at least 1600. Great Britain and its dominions (including the U.S. and Ireland) used March 25th as the first day of the year until 1752, when they adopted the Gregorian calendar as well as a January 1st New Year. The normal approach to this is to designate January 1st to March 25th dates before this change by “OS” which stands for “Old Style.” We have not encountered this problem yet in our database. Adoption of the Gregorian Calendar by Countries of Interest Adoption of the Gregorian calendar involved skipping 10 or more days (depending upon the precise time the change was made). This was accomplished by simply decreeing that a given day – say October 21 – was followed by a normally non-contiguous day – say November 1 as was the case in Hungary in 1587. Roman Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendar early, meaning that Hungarian and Spanish dates are not an issue for us since all extant records use Gregorian dates. [Note: both these countries were under the control of the Roman Catholic Habsburg family.] Some countries did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until relatively recently; fortunately, we don’t have to deal with any of those. Listed here are the countries in which the great bulk of people in our database resided. Note that what is now the U.S. and Ireland adopted the Gregorian calendar with Great Britain – to which they were a dependency at the time in question. Spain: 4 Oct 1582 was followed by 15 Oct 1582 Hungary: 21 Oct 1587 was followed by 1 Nov 1587 Germany: Different states adopted on different dates, with many local variations: Roman Catholic states: on various dates in 1583-1585. Prussia: 22 Aug 1610 was followed by 2 Sep 1610. Other Protestant states: 18 Feb 1700 was followed by 1 Mar 1700. Great Britain and Dominions: 2 Sep 1752 was followed by 14 Sep 1752. : Sweden is a real anomaly in the calendar conversion process. 1 Family History Database Calendar Considerations

They decided to make a gradual change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. By dropping every leap year from 1700 through 1740 the eleven superfluous days would be omitted, and from 1 Mar 1740 they would be in sync with the Gregorian calendar. (But, in the meantime they would be in sync with nobody.) That was the plan. So 1700 (which should have been a leap year in the Julian calendar) was not a leap year in Sweden. However, for political reasons the Swedish Parliament chose to make 1704 and 1708 leap years. Sweden was therefore out of synchronization with both the Julian and the Gregorian worlds. As a result, they decided to go back to the Julian calendar. In order to do this, they inserted an extra day in 1712, making that year a double leap year. So in 1712, February had 30 days in Sweden! Later, in 1753, Sweden changed to the Gregorian calendar by dropping 11 days, as was done in Great Britain the previous year. You ask, Why is Sweden a country of interest to us? The Swedish king ruled several parts of northern Germany in accordance with the terms of the Peace of Westphalia that ended the 30 Years War in 1648. The areas in northwestern Germany ruled by Sweden were the Duchy of Bremen and Verden and a few adjacent parts of the County of Hoya. These are the areas where most of Joan’s ancestors lived. The Great Nordic War was fought from 1700-1721 with , Poland, Russia allied to suppress Sweden’s dominant position in northern and eastern Europe. In 1705, the Duchies of Calenberg and Lüneberg combined to form the Electorate of Hannover. The rulers of German states who were designated Electors of the Holy Roman Empire were a very powerful and important group. In 1714, the Elector of Hannover also became king of Sweden’s ally, Great Britain. He is known to us as King George I. A treaty between Sweden and Hannover that was ratified on November 1, 1719 made Sweden’s northwest German territories a part of Hannover, presumably in exchange for Britain’s help in bringing the Great Nordic War to an end. For more on why all this matters to our family history see the German Problem below. Calculation of Day of the Week The following algorithm will compute the day of the week for the Julian or Gregorian . All divisions are integer divisions in which the remainders are discarded. Note that there are only 14 possible calendars for any given year. So, we can use recent calendars to view historical calendars.

Calculation of the Date of Easter and other dates based upon it have been a problem throughout the history of Christianity – the 11th century schism between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy was, to an extent, based on differences relating to the . This calculation is derived from an old Hebrew and so the dates of Easter do not repeat regularly. Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the first after the vernal . For this calculation, the vernal equinox is considered to be March 21. But, in fact, the astronomical vernal equinox may vary by 1 or 2 days from March 21. A simplified algorithm for computing the date of Easter is provided below, but it is not very simple. Again, all

2 Family History Database Calendar Considerations divisions are integer divisions, with remainders discarded. Note that in this algorithm, “I” is the number of days from March 21 to the Paschal full moon.

The biggest problems with the calculation of the date of Easter, as noted above, involve not the algorithm, but the differences between the western churches and the eastern (Orthodox) churches. This, fortunately, it is not an issue for this database, since no eastern Orthodox records have been used here so far. But, there is one minor glitch that does affect us. Historically, some countries have used the real (astronomical) vernal equinox instead of the official one (March 21) when calculating Easter. This was the case in the German Protestant states (including Hannover), which used the astronomical data to establish the date of Easter in the years 1700-1776. Therefore, German dates computed relative to the date of Easter in the early 1700’s are always suspect. Several such dates exist in our database – see the German Problem below.

The German Problem Most of Joan’s ancestors came from a part of Germany that was controlled by Sweden until 1719. After that date, the residents of this region found themselves in Hannover until its incorporation into the Prussian-led German Reich in the 1860s. To date, we have found only a small number of recorded German dates that precede 1700. These are mostly from the church records of Wilstedt and Daverden that were recorded in the normal day--year manner. An example is the baptism of Peter Schnakenberg of Vorwerk on 02 Feb 1693 – he is one of Jake’s 7th-great-grandfathers. Though these dates obviously use the Julian calendar, they present no problem in this database and are recorded as found in the records.

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Note: during the Napoleanic Wars, France occupied Hannover for a few years. I am told that some German records exist using the French Republican Calendar. But, so far I have not found such records for our family. But, recently we found ancestors of our daughter-in-law who lived in France and the French colony of Sainte-Dominique, now Haiti. So, it also became necessary to address this issue … see French Republican Calendar below. Likewise, for the period 1700-1719 any of the German dates that we find recorded may be using the Gregorian calendar, or the Swedish calendar – which was one-day off from the Julian calendar from March 1, 1700 until February 30, 1712 – and corresponded with the Julian calendar from then until after the Swedish presence in Germany had ended. There are a substantial number of recorded dates for this period. As with the Julian dates above, using the recorded day-month-year dates of the church registers represents no real problem as long as we understand the issues relating to their origin. What is a problem though, are church records that give “dates” based on the “church calendar” rather than the normal day-month-year form. For instance, “they were married on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday” is a problem because the date of Trinity Sunday is based on the date of Easter. [This was the actual “date” given for the marriage of Cosmus Mysegades and Anna Freers – “Donnerst. n. Tr. 1705” -- they are Jake’s 8th-great-grandparents.] Thus far, we have encountered only one church that used the “church calendar” for dating. It is the church at Vilsen, in the County of Hoya a few miles southwest of Verden. The church in that town is the basis of much of the Mysegades family tree. These church records, which began in 1703, use the “church calendar” for dating baptisms, marriages, and deaths until 1723. Since it is so rare, I believe this form of dating was simply the personal preference of a Pastor who was perhaps avoiding the use of the Swedish calendar. So what’s the problem? Simply stated, for the first 20 years of Vilsen records, we can’t be sure whether to use the Swedish calendar or the Gregorian calendar to convert the “church” dates to Gregorian dates – though the answer is likely the Gregorian calendar. But, even if we make this assumption, the issue of whether Easter was computed using the “official” date of the vernal equinox or it’s “astronomical” date still precludes conversion of most of those dates, since – like Trinity Sunday – most such dates are based on the date of Easter. As a result, we have made the following decision on the handling of dates from the Mysegades family tree … and other analogous north German “church calendar” dates should we find them: (1) only the year is recorded in the date field for the event; (2) the “church calendar” date that was in the church register is recorded in a note concerning the event; (3) no attempt at conversion to the Gregorian calendar day- month is made. The Hungarian Problem First, here’s a peripheral point regarding the naming of in Hungary – frequently in Latin-language church registers, the months September, October, November, and December were abbreviated respectively: 7-bris, 8-bris, 9-bris, and 10-bris. Note that these abbreviations are based on the Latin meaning of the month names, not the month-number in the modern year. So be careful, when you see “9-bris” … it is all too easy to write down September rather than November, which of course is correct. The Hungarian problem referred to above relates to the old forms of month names found in some early church records. The German names listed were used primarily in the area of historic Hungary that makes up the state of Burgenland in present-day Austria. The Magyar names may be found almost anywhere, but are more likely to occur in Roman Catholic records. The normal month names used in Latin, German, and Hungarian-language records are very similar to the English names of the months and therefore present no problem to us. But, in certain Hungarian (Magyar) or German-language records alternative names, relating to seasonal events or to the church calendar, were used for the months. These present minimal problems because there is a direct one-to-one correspondence between these names and the normal designation for months. Therefore, where these old 4 Family History Database Calendar Considerations month names were found in records, they were simply changed to the modern English month name for inclusion in this database. Old German and Magyar Names for Months used in Hungary. Notes: In Hungarian (Magyar) “hava” is an old Turkish-derived word for “month” and the names of months are not normally capitalized. In the table below, the modern names of the months in German and Magyar are given, and then some of the old names that may be found in 18th century church registers.

January – German: Januar or Jänner -- Eismonat (icy month) Magyar: január -- boldogasszony hava (month of the Blessed Lady -- Mary) February – German: Februar -- Regenmonat (rainy month) Magyar: február -- böjt elsö hava (first month of Lent) or télutó hava (end of winter month) March – German: März -- Windmonat (windy month) Magyar: március -- böjt második hava (second month of Lent) April – German: April -- Ostermonat (Easter month) Magyar: április -- szentgyörgy hava (month of Saint George) May – German: Mai -- Weidemonat (turn out to pasture month) Magyar: május -- pünkösd hava (month of Pentecost) June – German: Juni -- Brachet (old poetic form for June) or Wiesemonat (meadow month) Magyar: junius -- szentiván hava (month of Saint John the Baptist) July – German: Juli -- Heuert (haymaking) or Heumonat (month of hay) Magyar: julius -- szentjákob hava (month of Saint James) August – German: August -- Ernting (old poetic form for August) or Hitzmonat (hot month) Magyar: augusztus -- kisasszony hava (month of the Virgin -- Mary) September – German: September -- Scheiding (obsolete form of September) or Fruchmonat (fruit month) Magyar: szeptember -- szentmihály hava (month of Saint Michael) October – German: Oktober -- Gilbhard (obsolete form of October) or Weinmonat (wine month) Magyar: október -- mindszent hava (All Saint’s month) November – German: November -- Reifmonat (frosty month) or Nebelmonat (foggy month) Magyar: november – öszutó (late autumn) or szentandrás hava (month of Saint Andrew) December – German: Dezember -- Julmonat (Yule month) or Christmonat (month of Christ) Magyar: december -- karácsony hava (Christmas month)

The astrological signs of the zodiac in Magyar were also sometimes used in the distant past as the names of the months. While I have never found these in church registers … and don’t expect to … they are provided here for the record. January = vizöntö hava Aquarius February = halak hava Pisces March = kos hava Aries April = bika hava Taurus May = ikrek hava Gemini June = rák hava Cancer July = oroszlán hava Leo August = szüz hava Virgo September = mérleg hava Libra October = bököly hava Scorpio November = nyilas hava Sagittarius December = bak hava Capricorn

5 Family History Database Calendar Considerations The French Republican Calendar The French Republican Calendar (calendrier républicain français), also commonly called the French Revolutionary Calendar, was created and implemented during the French Revolution and early Napoleonic era, and used by the French government for about 12 years from late 1793 through 1805. The revolutionary system was designed in part to remove all religious and royalist influences from the calendar, and was part of a larger attempt at decimalization in France, including the introduction of the metric system. It was used in government records in France and other areas under French rule, including Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Malta and … as well as in the French colonies. Of particular interest in this database is its use in the colony of Sainte Dominique (today’s Haiti). France and its domains reverted to the Gregorian calendar on 01 January 1806. The Republican calendar year began the day the autumnal equinox occurred in Paris, and had twelve months of 30 days each, which were given new names based on nature, principally having to do with the prevailing weather in and around Paris. Each month was divided into three weeks of ten days each. Five extra days – six in leap years – were national holidays at the end of every year. For conversion from the French Republican Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar, I suggest one of the conversion utilities available on-line. The 12 months are:

 Autumn: o Vendémiaire (from French vendange, "grape harvest"), starting 22, 23, or 24 September o (from French brume, "mist"), starting 22, 23, or 24 October o (From French frimas, "frost"), starting 21, 22, or 23 November  Winter: o Nivôse (from Latin nivosus, "snowy"), starting 21, 22, or 23 December o Pluviôse (from French pluvieux, "rainy"), starting 20, 21, or 22 January o Ventôse (from French venteux, "windy"), starting 19, 20, or 21 February  Spring: o (from French germination), starting 20 or 21 March o Floréal (from French fleur, "flower"), starting 20 or 21 April o (from French prairie, "meadow"), starting 20 or 21 May  Summer: o (from Latin messis, "harvest"), starting 19 or 20 June o (or Fervidor) (from Greek thermon, "summer heat"), starting 19 or 20 July o Fructidor (from Latin fructus, "fruit"), starting 18 or 19 August

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