The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H.W. Brands

Calendar-keeping was complicated in Franklin’s era by the confusion that attended the changeover from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian. Catholic Europe had accepted Pope Gregory XIII’s reform in the late sixteenth century, but Protestant Europe, including England, remained behind the times—literally, by about eleven days. The question of when the year started also occasioned confusion: in March, according to the old style, or January, by the new? A person happening upon an antique newspaper bearing such date as “January 6, 1705” needed to know whether this was old style or new, since the difference amounted to nearly a whole year. (Thus Franklin, born January 6, 1705, by the old calendar, was born January 17, 1706, by the new.) Conscientious date-writers solved the problem by the device of “January 6, 1705/6.” Not till 1752 would the British government formally decree the changeover within the British empire.