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Jan Murphy

01:15

@DaveBlackston so how did you search for John White in the Barbour collection? Inquiring minds want to know. ;-)

I say this as someone who spent a weekend on Ancestry.co.uk and discovered that my husband's great-grandfather's hometown is apparently not in the list of "Ancestry places" there. Wonder what implications that has for finding records about that town.

DaveBlackston

@JanMurphy : Nothing sneaky. Pomfret is one of the cataloged towns so I looked through that volume a bit. I also searched for "John White" and White born in Pomfret in the Barbour collection specifically.

Jan Murphy

You looked through the bound volumes at NYPL?

DaveBlackston

And that sounds like ancestry might be the wrong resource for that town. ;-)

Jan Murphy

Or you searched online, and if so, where?

DaveBlackston

No -- they're all scanned so I did page through the Pomfret volume.

I searched ancestry.com -- I've not yet gotten comfortable with the other resources out there.

Jan Murphy

01:19

Ah! did you see the note at the Conn State Library about the subtle differences between the card file and the bound volumes?

DaveBlackston

FWIW, I did have more luck finding WHite references in Ohio. I did that by searching for his father-in-law. ;-)

Jan Murphy

You checked the date bounds on the Pomfret data, I hope?

DaveBlackston

I did -- I am still digesting the links.

Jan Murphy

@DaveBlackston Good!

DaveBlackston

Oh there were births before and after, though I admittedly did not check for 1758 itself.

White married into an influential family that has all sorts of references.

Jan Murphy

01:21

Don't forget that pages of bound volumes can be skipped in scanning.

DaveBlackston

There were unlikely to be any skipped Whites -- they are lised alphabetically and I noticed no gaps.

Jan Murphy

Just running through the checklist.

DaveBlackston

Also, there was definitely only one John.

Jan Murphy

BTW the rabbit home Quicktip has references to PA resources in it.

DaveBlackston

I checked all the J's.

I noticed that. Part of the digestion. :)

Jan Murphy

01:23

What about the towns nearest Pomfret?

DaveBlackston

Let me verify something...

Jan Murphy

Did the family move to Pomfret when he was an infant and so the story is he was "from Pomfret?"

If scans of the actual registers were available, I would look for people with close-by birthdates and read the registers. The other possibility is that the birth year is typoed somewhere.

DaveBlackston

Well, there are no John Whites born in the Barbour between 1753 and 1760.

Wanna hear my wild thwory?

(I'm full of 'em.)

Jan Murphy

Fire away.

DaveBlackston

My theory is that he lied about his age so he could join the Continental army for the Revolution.

Jan Murphy

01:26

Possible! Very possible!

I have a similar hinky birth year for a Civil War veteran

DaveBlackston

The birthdays (October 20 and October 21) are very similar.

Jan Murphy

I thought about the Julian/Gregorian calendar change, too, but you're a couple of years out from that.

DaveBlackston

nod Good thought.

Jan Murphy

Gregorian calendar

The Gregorian calendar, also called the Western calendar and the Christian calendar, is internationally the most widely used civil calendar. It is named for Pope Gregory XIII, who introduced it in 1582. The calendar was a refinement in 1582 to the Julian calendar amounting to a 0.002% correction in the length of the year. The motivation for the reform was to bring the date for the celebration of Easter to the time of the year in which the First Council of Nicaea had agreed upon in 325. Because the celebration of Easter was tied to the spring equinox, the Roman Catholic Church considered this steady...

DaveBlackston

I remember a detective story I read as a kid that depended on something occurring during one of the skipped dates. I felt a bit cheated. I didn't think a kid should be expected to know that.

Jan Murphy

01:28

"England, Ireland and the British colonies changed the start of the year to 1 January in 1752 (so 1751 was a short year with only 282 days) though the tax year has stayed as 25 March to this day (being 6 April in the new calendar). Later that year in September the Gregorian calendar was introduced throughout Britain and the British colonies (see the section Adoption). These two reforms were implemented by the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750.[21]"

@DaveBlackston Oh, that doesn't abide by the fair play rule at all.

DaveBlackston

Harrumph.

;-)

Jan Murphy

One of the articles I read said that people often retrofitted their birthday to the NS date but again, your date is too modern for that kind of retcon.

DaveBlackston

Yes, and that retrofitting would still be less than a year, right?

Jan Murphy

It would put the birthday n days different.

DaveBlackston

Yes. This was a 4 year (+/- one day) difference.

Jan Murphy

01:32

I forget which article talked about George Washington rendering his birthday in NS so that it became the 22nd.

Another possibility is a 5/6 transcription error.

When a headstone is made.

I don't mean this case necessarily, just in general.

DaveBlackston

Here's a q for you. The DAR has his bday as 1758. How accurate are their records of Revolutionary War veterans? Is that suitable for a q on SE?

Jan Murphy

Shakespeare and Cervantes seemingly died on exactly the same date (23 April 1616), but Cervantes predeceased Shakespeare by ten days in real time (as Spain used the Gregorian calendar, but Britain used the Julian calendar). This coincidence encouraged UNESCO to make 23 April the World Book and Copyright Day.

(Quoted from Wikipedia)

DaveBlackston

Heh. That's a nice secondary effect.

Jan Murphy

@DaveBlackston Why not ask a question about how the DAR lineage books are created? I warn you though, I don't know the answer, so you may hear the sound of crickets chirping for a while. Try the Ancestry Learning Center use Google to search for information on the process.

You could do the research and answer your own question. It's not only allowed here, it's encouraged.

DaveBlackston

That's a good idea. I will do that in the near future. (And it'd be nice to get a real answer under my belt.)

I've got to run, but thanks for chatting! (The kids need to go to sleep.)

Jan Murphy

01:38

You have to plunge in somewhere. And if someone has a better answer, they'll upvote you.

Thanks for chatting! Sorry to disrupt your schedule, I was just dropping a Q in for you to answer later.

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