How do I enter a date found in source that produces a date cannot be resolved error.

Question

Was trying to fix "Error 133: No Dates - Dates on relatives - Open - Unknown Status" on a newly adopted profile for one of my relations.  Based on the sources from her father's profile, I located the page that gave her birth, it was listed as 29 Feb 1718, but to enter that gave me a error that the date could not be resolved. For now I entered her birth year, and put the date found in the biography with source and a research note, is that sufficient to work around the date error?   A search on the date, states 1718 is not a leap year, is this possibly an old style date that can be entered differently?   Thanks

Answer 1

Nicole: I think what you have done, putting in the year and then explaining the date in the biography, is perfect.  We can't control what we find in sources -- but we can definitely make an explanation in the biography.  I would check the box "about" and hope that anyone would read the bio before altering the date.

* edited to correct wording approximate to about

Answer 2

Perhaps you can find an image of the original hand written document.   There may have been a transcription error. You'll also want to know if it has already been adjusted for the calendar differences I.E. 1718 vs 1719

Answer 3

I think you are into a Julian calendar issue. Feb in the Gregorian would be 1719. Try that.

Comments

1718, or 1719 makes no difference.  There was no 29th February in either of those years.

---

If this was a place that was still on the Julian calendar, no year would have had a leap day.

---

So, when did New Jersey switch?

---

The Province of New Jersey was a British colony, so civil records from 1719 would have used the Julian calendar.

ADDED: But many "birth" records in that part of New Jersey were records of baptisms in Dutch churches, where the Gregorian calendar was typically used. The source cited for this date is an alphabetical compilation of birth records, most likely from multiple sources, so it is not possible to identify the original source. Many entries in the cited source have double-year dates, but this is one of several entries that show a single year for a date in the January 1 to March 24 time period in which the year can be ambiguous.

---

Eyeballing the actual record would be wonderful, but if it's a compilation, then the best that can be done is "best guess" as to the date actually meant.

While I have run across several instances of double-dating, they were not related to the person I was researching at the time, but generational gap "name alike" folk.  I see it as headache city!

---

"If this was a place that was still on the Julian calendar, no year would have had a leap day."

The Julian calendar DOES have leap years.  One every 4 years.

What the Gregorian calendar changed was the part about "unless it is divisible by 100 but not 400"

---

"So, when did New Jersey switch?"

As part of Britain, New Jersey switched from Julian to Gregorian, AND switched the start of the year to Jan 1, in 1752.

---

Here's a decent history of the calendar changes . . . https://www.daytranslations.com/blog/march-25-was-new-year/

Answer 4

This looks like an unresolvable battle between humans and computers.

Apparently there was an error in recording the date. Humans do that sometimes. I've also seen dates like April 31 and September 31 on gravestones and in records, not to mention cases where two children of the same parents were recorded impossibly close together, in order, on the same page.

We humans are capable of recognizing that humans make mistakes, and we would use words to record the information and let the reader ponder over it. But the computer can't deal with that, and is throwing a tantrum (like a 2-year-old stomping their feet and yelling "NO") over the trivial matter of a human who made a small mistake three centuries ago. There ought to be a way for "the system" to override this kind of error, rather than insisting that humans must alter valid (albeit erroneous) data to appease the 2-year-old.

Comments

Ooh I don't like computers throwing tantrums!  So looks like I'll try to hunt down the original handwritten and see if it matches the transcription.  If that's the case, then recording the year in the stats and the most likely erroneous date in the bio with notes sounds like the best option so the computer doesn't throw a tizzy fit.

---

Ellen, leap years are precisely defined in the computers. So it is impossible to enter nonexistent date and a human must decide on how to correct the faulty day.

That makes the day calculations possible and exact. Fuzzy dates are a nightmare for computers like beginning of February 19xx. I did extensive programming to correctly recognize whole month or whole year. If I would have to compensate also for invalid dates It would make the programming impossible. I always get fascinated about the ways humans "solve" a problematic date.

Answer 5

It seems to me the year she was born must have been a leap year. So, 1716?

Comments

The Julian calendar that was in use at the time and place of her birth did not have leap years.

Anyway, isn't it far more likely that the date of birth was off by 1 day (Feb. 28 or March 1) than that it was off by two years.

---

Depending on the handwriting, 1718 could conceivably be 1716, 1713, or anything similar.

---

"The Julian calendar that was in use at the time and place of her birth did not have leap years."

Yes it did. see comment above.

Answer 6

The source indicates to me that the compiler's evidence, whatever it was, indicated the last day of Feb. 1718.  Not knowing anymore than what I see, the mistake is worth a chuckle. Let's mark the date uncertain.

Answer 7

I found an image of a source which clearly has the Feb 29^th 1718 date. Unfortunately, it's a compilation of earlier records grouped by families rather than in chronological order. It's impossible to tell from the ordering of the records what date was intended. My first thought was that the date was actually Feb 29^th 1719/20 but Rachel's sibling (whose name I can't read) was born Dec 15^th 1719 ruling out that possibility.

Behind a paywall:

First name   Rachel
Last name    Martin
Year    1718
Birth date    29 Feb 1718
Institution name    Woodbridge And Piscataway Town
Town    Woodbridge and Piscataway Town
County    Middlesex County
Country    United States
Father's first name(s)    John
Father's last name    Martin
Mother's first name(s)    Mary
Archive    Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Record type    Baptism
Year range    1668-1805
Record set    New Jersey Vital Records
Category    Birth, Marriage, Death & Parish Records
Subcategory    Parish Baptisms
Collections from    Americas, United States

https://www.findmypast.co.uk/transcript?id=US%2FHSP%2F00109944

Comments

I am not clear on it being clearly one digit or another.  Yes, one would normally see that as a '9' but I wonder if you could be interpreted as a '4' or a very strange '0' since the '9' does not seem to be an option.  From the neighboring entries, it is clearly not 1,2,5,7, or 8 leaving 0, 3, 4, 6, and 9.    The other '9' in the entries is a bit different with the rounded part closed rather than open but this could just be a random event.  If there are more entries on the page, perhaps one can find samples of other digits for more clues (assuming the handwriting is all by one person).  Even without additional clues, it is easy to rule out '3' and '6'

---

The numerals are all very clear on the original page (which I can't post in full for copyright reasons) and it's definitely a nine.