Family Historian User Group

The Events Data Entry Assistant enables dates dd/mm/yyyy to be entered and then there is a slash / followed by two more boxes one large, t'other smaller which is followed by B.C.
What are the boxes after the slash for and what does B.C. mean in this context?
I've not found a reference in the manual to this.

ID:2551

I found this tucked away in the Help:

'With the Gregorian calendar only you can optionally specify a year modifier - a 2-digit value in the second year field, following the ‘/’ character. Where a date is shown in this format (e.g. 1639/40), the year after the slash indicates the year as we think of it now (1640 in this case), and the year before the slash is the year as it would have been recorded at the time (1639 in this case). This way of writing dates is called double dating.

The year modifier, if supplied, should always be 2 digits, and one greater than the 2 digits before the slash character, or 00 if the last 2 digits before the slash character are 99 (e.g. 15 April 1699/00). For English and American dates, year modifiers are only applicable to years prior to 1752, and even then are only used for dates between 1 January and 24 March (see Historical Note below). The date 23rd November 1712 in England, for example, is not ambiguous, and therefore should not have a year modifier, whereas 23rd January 1712 is ambiguous. Is it 23 Jan 1711/12 or 23 Jan 1712/13?

With Gregorian calendars only, you can also specify B.C. dates by checking the B.C. checkbox.'

I guess the B.C. stands for what it normally does, i.e., Before Christ. I think you'd be doing very well if you got your family history back this far! But I think it's if you use FH to plot other things/events/families/etc.

Hope this helps!

You may also find the knowledge base wiki article Using the Julian and Gregorian Calendars useful.

Most helpful, Adrian. Thanks. And to Nick as well.