It is indeed Lady Day today, known as the Feast of the Annunciation, which before 1752, used to mark the start of the new year.
Traditionally Lady Day was an essential time in the farming calender, potentially affecting the greater majority of our ancestors. It was, and indeed often still is, the pivotal time when farm contracts and rents would be renewed, (and sometimes raised). Falling as it did between the seasons for ploughing and for harvesting it was a good time to do business.
For genealogists this could be highly significant as it would often be around this time that farming families would move from one holding to another; larger scale farmers and members of the gentry for example, would often take their retainers and employees with them.
This movement, along with the practice of double dating, is important to consider when researching family history during this time period.
Prior to 1752, the Julian calendar was still being used. The ecclesiastical year began on Lady Day, the 25th March, and ended on the 24th March following. In 1752, two changes were made in the English calendar. The first was a move from the Julian to the more accurate Gregorian system that had been introduced in Catholic registers in Europe by Pope Gregory XIII in March 1582. A difference of eleven days had accumulated between the two systems, so the change necessitated England ‘losing’ that number of days. This apparent loss caused considerable anxiety and rioting ensued in some parts of the country. The day following the 2nd September 1752 was renumbered the 14th September.
The change of greater importance to genealogists was that the commencement of that year was brought forward from the 25th March to the preceding 1st January. This meant that January, February and most of March changed from being the last months of the Old Year to the first months of the New. As the new system had already been put into use by some people in advance of its official introduction, care has to be taken when transcribing documents of the pre-1752 period dated between the 1st January and the 24th March. Such events should be recorded using a ‘double dating’ system. For example, a baptism, marriage or burial recorded in a register on the 3rd March 1580 should be noted as the 3rd March 1580/1. This will eliminate those mystifying entries which seem to record the baptism of a child several months after its burial!
