Washington’s Birthday Shifts

When George Washington was born, the British Empire was still using the Julian Calendar and refusing to abide by the more accurate, but papist, Gregorian Calendar. His birth was recorded as coming on 11 Feb 1731/2. The format of that “Old Style” date acknowledged how for most of continental Europe and their colonies the new year had started on 1 January instead of at the spring equinox. The Gregorian date was eleven days later in the month.

Britain and its colonies finally adopted the Gregorian Calendar in 1752. But it’s not clear when Washington himself started to consider his birthday as now pegged to 22 February. His diaries don’t mention anniversary celebrations or ruminations on either date.

In publishing an edition of Gen. Washington’s wartime expense accounts, John C. Fitzpatrick speculated that the first public celebration of the commander’s birthday occurred at Valley Forge on 22 Feb 1778. However, his only evidence was how on that date the general’s office paid the musicians from Col. Thomas Procter’s artillery regiment 15s. And that payment could mean a lot of things.

As I quoted yesterday, gentlemen in Milton, Massachusetts, celebrated Washington’s birthday on 11 Feb 1779. I’ve seen reports but not sources for a celebration in Winchester, Virginia, the same day. On 12 Feb 1781 (the eleventh being a Sunday), the French general Rochambeau declared a holiday for his troops in honor of the American commander-in-chief. Throughout the 1780s, in fact, the public celebrations of Washington’s birthday were pegged to the 11th.

On 14 Feb 1790 Washington’s secretary Tobias Lear wrote to Clement Biddle, U.S. Marshal for Pennsylvania:

In reply to your wish to know the Presidents birthday it will be sufficient to observe that it is on the 11th of February Old Style; but the almanack makers have generally set it down opposite to the 11th day of February of the present Style; how far that may go towards establishing it on that day I dont know; but I could never consider it any otherways than as stealing so many days from his valuable life as is the difference between the old and the new Style.

In 1790 the new Society of St. Tammany in New York voted to celebrate Washington’s birthday on 22 February, and in the decade that followed other celebrations shifted to that date. As late as 1799, however, Alexandria, Virginia, still observed Washington’s birthday on 11 February even though earlier that month he wrote to Jonathan Trumbull about “my birthday (the 22d. instant [i.e., of this month]).”

TOMORROW: The meaning of Washington’s birthday.