Cannot store a date earlier that 1901 in a date CCK field.

Drupal 5.7
installed date-5.x-1.8
CCK

I need to store dates going back to 1820 but do not seem to be able to store them earlier that 1901. Whenever I enter a date prior to 1901, the data is not save to the MySQL database

I have heard that PHP4 presented issues with regard to date calculations. I was running PH4 but now PHP5. Database was created on PHP4.

Any tips or ideas?