Thanks to help from the lovely people in this Ancestry UK The Friendly Facebook Group I have discovered something that had mystified me for some time. When searching birth records for ancestors in the 1700s that people had two baptism dates exactly a year apart. Why the discrepancy?
When heading into the world of genealogy I have found the help of other people interested in family trees so helpful. And so it proved on this occasion.
Their birth dates were not a year apart but 282 days apart! Still confused like I was?
In 1751 Parliament ruled that we should begin to use the Gregorian Calender , introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in October 1582 instead of the Julian Calender. The Julian calendar proposed by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, a reform of the Roman calendar. The Julain calendar ran from Lady Day to Lady Day, i.e. 25 March (my birthday!). The Gregorian calendar that replaced it ran from 1 January and it is the calendar we now use.
To make this change, 1751 lasted just 282 days - from 25th March 1751 to December 31st 1751. However, this change took some time to filter through, especially to the churches of England where the Parish Priest often carried on using the Julian Calendar.
My ancestor, William Hancock, was in 1 May 1756 according to the parish church records and 1 May 1757 according to the state records.
The first date is Julian and the second is Gregorian. So don't be surprised if your ancestor born in the 18th Century has two baptisms exactly a year apart, it was government policy that was to blame!
