Does anybody really care? Welp, if you're getting a little long in the tooth, you'll remember this song by Chicago. It came to mind just now when I was doing some studying on the Quaker Calender in the years predating the American Revolution. A bunch of neat factoids popped out, I thought I'd share.

My family has Quaker roots on both sides. In fact, my mother was raised in a Quaker household. So, that means to make sense of some of my genealogical research, I had to brush up on old dates.

Before the U.S. made that break from England, we were all (Great Britain and it's colonies) using the Julian calender. Tomorrow would not have been a new year. The new year started on Lady's Day......the 25th of March. So, you went from 24 March, 1770 right to 25 March, 1771. Confusing? LOL.

The Chesterfield act became effective for the year starting 25 March, 1771 and that year ended on 31st December. So, that particular year was less than ten months long. By that time, the Julian calendar was twelve days behind the Gregorian calendar because of leap years, so in 1752 we went to bed on 2nd September, and got up the next morning on the 14th September. Even more confusing?

Well, getting back to the Quakers, we/they would not use the names of any days or months derived from Pagan Gods or Goddesses, so that meant all the months before September through December were called by their number. IE instead of January, one would call it 1st month.

So, getting to the point.......September is 7th month based on the Latin root for Seven. October is 8th month, based on the Latin root for eight. Only it isn't anymore. October is not the 8th month anymore, it's the tenth month. I guess it just hit me and a light bulb went off how/why the last four months got named what they got named. Word nerd.