Easter Sunday Dates

Today being Easter Sunday, I thought I would try to see whether any one in my database was actually born (or baptized) on Easter Sunday, April 1.

Interesting enough, none of the Jewish ancestors was born on April 1.

Easter fell on April 1st in the following years: 1714, 1725, 1736, 1804, 1866, 1877, 1888, 1923, 1934, 1945, and 1956.⁽¹⁾ These are all Gregorian calendar dates; on the Julian Calendar there were: 1526, 1537, 1538, 1621, 1632, 1711, 1716, 1795, 1806, 1879, 1890, 1901.⁽²⁾ Of course there is overlap, as different countries switched to the Gregorian calendar on different dates.

In the Netherlands the situation was quite complex. The southern part (Limburg, Brabant and Zeeland adopted the Gregorian calendar at the end of 1582 or 1 Jan 1583. Holland proper (the provinces of North and South Holland) also did so on 1 Jan 1583. But the Protestant provinces waited mostly until 1700 or 1701 to do so. And then there was Groningen: it switched in 1583, switched back to Julian in 1594, and finally adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1701.⁽³⁾

With all these dates available, it turns out, that there is only one person baptized on Easter Sunday: Jacobus Portielje, baptized 1 Apr 1714 in Amsterdam, son of Isaac Portielje (dutch link) and Josijntje Wens, and my husband’s 2nd cousin 7x removed. Nobody died on Easter Sunday either.

But I learned something about dates in the Netherlands.

(1) Easter Sunday Dates from 1700
(2) I have a small freeware program, Calisto, that will find dates, and compare calendars
(3) A tale of two calendars, by Yvette Hoytink