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Maryland Centennial Legislatures
of 1700, 1800, and 1900 by Dr. Edward C. Papenfuse, State Archivist |
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till January 1, 1801, unless it can be made out that 99
are 100... It is a silly, childish discussion, and only
exposes the want of brains of those who maintain a
contrary opinion to that we have stated�
The Times 26 December 1799 [source: http://www.rog.nmm.ac.uk/leaflets/new_mill.html] To complicate matters further, officially Marylanders, and much of the rest of the English speaking world, did not recognize January 1 as the beginning of a new year until 1752, one hundred and thirty years after the granting of Maryland's charter when an Act of Parliament required the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar. Until then, from 1634 until 1753, what is now our Maryland Day, March 25, marked the official beginning of the new year. Obviously historically we have the right to celebrate new year's twice if we care to do so, but also, as Frank Porter explains in the February 22, 1999 issue of The Archivists' Bulldog, anyone consulting Maryland records prior to 1752, needs to be very careful about interpreting the year of any documents dated between January 1 and March 25. A newspaper dated January 13, 1700, for example, was really published in January 1701.
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Whether or not we began the 21st Century or really
entered the third millennium as of January 1, 2000 will
always be a matter of scholarly debate. Such
distinguished keepers of the time as the
U.S. Naval Observatory
and the
Royal Observatory Greenwich
remind us that mathematically neither really begins
until January 1, 2001, and newspapers in 1800 and
1900 were of the same opinion with regard to the advent of
their respective centuries. In 1900 the Baltimore Sun (Monday, December 31, 1900) pointed out that
Emperor William of Germany and the editor of a Chicago
newspaper, "alone, of all the inhabitants of the world,
began the twentieth century on January 1, 1900. The
rest of us have been content to let the nineteenth century
live 100 years."
Two hundred years ago last December, as the year 1800 approached, the London Times sputtered and pontificated: We have uniformly rejected all letters and declined all discussion upon the question of when the present century ends, as it is one of the most absurd that can engage the public attention, and we are astonished to find it has been the subject of so much dispute, since it appears plain. The present century will not terminate till |
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