Were any of your ancestors born on Leap Day? This might be more difficult to figure out than you may think. There are some quirks associated with February 29 that genealogists will not face when searching for information about an ancestor who was not born on Leap Day.
Leap Year only happens once every four years. February 29 is called Leap Day. This day has been added to the calendar as a corrective measure. We say that the Earth orbits the Sun one time every 365 days. However, in reality, it doesn’t quite match up exactly. To keep the calendar correct, an extra day is added to the calendar every four years.
People who were born on February 29 are called a “leaper” or a “leapling”. Most people can be assured that their birthday will appear on the calendar once a year. This is not the case for “leapers”.
Instead, they typically end up celebrating the anniversary of their birthdays on February 28 or March 1 every year. “Leapers” will be celebrating their first birthday, according to the calendar, when they are chronologically four years of age. They will turn eight on their second birthday, and so on. When “leapers” are chronologically eighty years of age, they get to celebrate their twentieth birthday.
This quirk of the calendar can lead to some problems for genealogists who are looking for information about ancestors who were born on February 29. Across the internet, there are search engines that will allow you to enter a birthday. Not all of them will let you choose February 29. You are going to have to select either February 28, or March 1, instead. This could cause some confusion.
Can’t find a birth certificate for your ancestor? Maybe it was because they were born on Leap Day. There is an online Leap Year Calculator that you can use to figure out what years had a twenty-ninth day in February.
Some parents will make an attempt to ensure that their baby is not born on February 29. In the past, there have been situations where people wrote that the child was born on March 1, or on February 28, instead. If this happened with your ancestor, then he or she may be unaware of their actual birthday. Today, women can choose to have a c-section shortly before February 29, in order to make certain that their baby is not born on Leap Day.
Image by Matt Preston on Flickr