One of the strangest things we must remember, is that the calendar year we use today, was not the same calendar used before the date of Sept. 2, 1752.  So what?  Well let's put it this way - the dates in Henry Hazen's book of Billerica which he liberally copied from sources written before 1752, may have some of their dates incorrect according to our modern times.  Take for example that Henry Hazen recorded the birth of our Asa Pollard as Nov. 15, 1734. He probably copied that date from another book by a former Billerica clerk .  In Hazen's book, it does mention that he did use a lot of material from former clerk books for his book.  What it doesn't say is whether he went back and made adjustments due to this new calendar change. 

Now Asa's birth year was before 1752.  When the English changed their calendar in Britain from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar on Sept. 2, 1752, the American colonists here likewise did so too.  (Boy they must've been screwed up when it came to dates during that year!  They had two New Years Days - one on March 25th for March was the first month of the year in the Julian calendar and the 25th was considered to be the first day of the year according to the Julian calendar, and one on January 1rst which is the first month of the year in the Gregorian calendar.)  It is highly unlikely that those dates written in those books by the Billerica town clerks before 1752, were re-written to adjust to the new dates.  They all could be 11 days off because in order to change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, they had to drop 11 days.  Sept 2 came around in 1752 and then the next day was suddenly Sept 14, 1752!  So now when you come to a date before Sept. 2, 1752 written in Julian calendar fashion, you have to add 11 days to the date to change it over to our modern Gregorian calendar.  And if this is true, then Asa Pollard was not born on Nov. 15, but instead he was born on Nov. 26!  So instead of him being a Scorpio, he may have been a Sagittarius!  Can you believe it?!  (I always thought he seemed to be more of a Sagittarius personality myself.)

Now I know you're rolling your eyes up at that suggestion but think of it for a moment.  Everything written before 1752, the dates may all be off according to the calendar we use today.  There is of course,  no proof saying that Henry Hazen did not adjust any of the dates - he may have.  But if I were doing his book, I'd probably just leave the dates as they were and not bother readjusting them.  I'd just copy over what was written by others and leave it at that.  The work of not only copying but readjusting would be tremendous!  And Hazen wrote a HUGE book.

But one way to check to see whether Hazen might have adjusted the dates is to go into a cemetery and look at a tomb stone of one who died before 1752 and see if that death date matches exactly what was in Hazen's book.  If it is exact, then you will know he probably didn't do any adjustments to the dates.  

One other note, when the year 3000 hits, they'll have to adjust the calendar all over again.  We're 26 seconds too fast per year with the calendar we use now and those seconds are adding up to another day.  But I'm not going to worry about that.  I won't be here!  Woo hoo!  I won't have to go through that mess!  (Heh-heh.  Thank God.  It's bad enough having to adjust to Leap Year.)

Below is a little javascript program you can use to find out what day of the week you were born on.  According to this thing, Asa was born on a Sunday (if his birth date used was Nov. 15, 1734).  Try it and see what day of the week you were born on!

-Binny