I have found a lot of info on many of my ancestors from the website at juch.org, but I cannot understand many of the dates. They appear to be "double dates", but span periods of many years. For example, at http://www.juch.org/fontaine/pafg10.asp the following is given three-quarters down the page...

49 F iv Sarah Fontaine was born in 1744 in Charles City Co., VA. She died in 1745/1838.

From what I understand of double-dates, 1745/1838 is not a valid date (and FTM doesn't like it either).

Can anyone shed some light on what dates like this mean?


Thank you - Roy

It sounds as though the info was put into a software program that spit out a narrative, but that misinterpreted the info. A double date would be 1744/1745-1838. Double dating is the result of the switch from the Julian to Gregorian calendars in the British Empire (which included what would become the USA)in 1752.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar

Thanx. I never would have thought of that. The way that you explained the strange dates on that site makes perfect sense. Also, thanks for the link and explanation of double dates. Very useful to a novice researcher like myself.