Actually, it was predicted a lot further in advance than that. The Canon der Finsternisse [1] published in 1887 shows the predicted track of the upcoming 2017 eclipse [2]. I think I read once that the author, Theodor Ritter von Oppolzer, only calculated the start, middle, and end points of each eclipse, which is why the track in [2] is a bit off.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_of_Eclipses

[2] http://eclipse-maps.com/Eclipse-Maps/History/History_files/C...