The Calendar

I have often searched for information in the digital collections of French archives. Recently I've been researching in the time period of the late 1700s and early 1800s. My French reading skills are in great shape, but I needed to dust off an old "cheat sheet" to decipher some information. That is because of the confusing historical hiccup known as the French Republican Calendar.

After the French Revolution in 1789, the country enacted a number of changes intended to move society away from religion and toward science. One such measure was to retool even the calendar. The Gregorian calendar that had been used (and that most of the world uses today) was associated with Christianity and therefore had to go. So beginning September 22, 1792, the French calendar started anew.

The first day of the new calendar was the 1st day of Vendémiaire in the year I. Each month had 30 days (3 "weeks" of 10 days each) with the extra days of the earth's 365-day orbit lumped at the end of the year. Years were noted by Roman numerals (though are sometimes represented in the Arabic numerals we use.) The months were named poetically according to their season, starting with September:

Vendémiaire: means “vintage”

Brumaire: means “mist”

Frimaire: means “frost”

Nivôse: means “snow”

Pluviôse: means “rain”

Ventôse: means “wind”

Germinal: means “seedtime”

Floréal: " means “blossom”

Prairial: means “meadow”

Messidor: means “harvest”

Thermidor: means “heat”

Fructidor: means “fruits"

This weird system affected many other areas under French rule and lasted about 12 years, until Napoleon became Emperor. But records from this time period still retain the Republican dates. There are tools online that convert the dates back and forth. I generally just need to know how much further in the record book I need to go to find what I'm looking for, so recognizing the months is the most helpful for me. The example below is an entry on the 23rd of Floreal in the year II--which translates to May 12, 1794.

There are a couple of other calendar items that are useful to remember in Western or European-heritage genealogy:

• The Quakers used ordinal numbers for the days of the week and the month. Sunday was First Day, Monday was Second Day, and so on. The months could be written First Month or i month; Second Month or ii month; etc.

• Before 1752, the first day of the year was March 25, not January 1. The Julian Calendar gave way to the the Gregorian calendar that year. This is why you may see years written as 1748/9. As the day fell between January 1 and March 25, that's a way to clarify where to place it chronologically.

• Americans use a different date shorthand than many other countries. The date April 10, 1899, would be abbreviated as 4/10/1899 in the U.S. but 10/4/1899 in Europe.

• In some areas, births were recorded either with a religious entity like a church, or recorded civilly with a town or city. Instead of the actual birth date, religious records may include the date of a rite, like baptism. Civil records may include the date when it was recorded rather than, or in addition to, the date of birth.

All the major religions have their own calendar. The year 2022 of the Common Era is most universally known and comes from Christianity. However, this year is 5783 of the Jewish calendar; year 1444 on the Islamic calendar; 2565 on the Buddhist calendar; and 2079 on the Hindu calendar.