Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace…
Tuesday's child is full of grace…
Ancient Mayan Calendar |
Whenever I’m writing a capsule biography of an ancestor or a long-ago relative, I like to keep one of the many calendar/calculator tools that are freely available on the web open on my laptop. First of all, I use it to find out the specific day of the week on which a vital event occurred. (I never knew how common Sunday funerals and mid-week weddings used to be until I started checking for “day of the week” information). Then, I use it to calculate the “How old were they when…” questions.
These days, I gravitate to http://www.timeanddate.com/, a free website with some useful tools that genealogists and family historians will enjoy. Here, I can call up a calendar for any year with a few keystrokes by going to the “Calendar for Any Year” section at the top of the page and selecting “choose another year”. I simply enter the year I want to see. For example, one of my great-grandfathers was born on 19 August 1851. By calling up a calendar for that year, I quickly learn that he was born on a Tuesday.
Then, by going to the section the lets me calculate the time duration between two dates I can enter his birthdate and the date of his wedding (6 March 1873) and quickly learn that he was 21 years, 6 months and 16 days old. And, he was married on a Thursday. Another calculator lets me subtract age in years, months and days from a given date (i.e., a specific death date) to generate a birth date.
Timeanddate.com is produced by Steffen Thorsen and his associates in Stavanger, Norway.
While fun, none of this, of course, is earth-shattering; however, it may give us new perspectives on a vexing research problem and even give us new things to ponder. For starters, what factors were taken into consideration when choosing a wedding date in 1873? How easy was it to arrange for a Sunday burial on short notice?
The more you know, the more you want to know even more…
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