Advice Please

[Tonya]

Hello,

Please can you help to advise me.

Is it possible to have birth years with a 10 year difference. I have a person in once census with birth year abt 1842 but in another census with the same mother and brother a birth year of 1832. am I going mad?

regards

Tonya

[Alexander.]

Anything's possible. Human errors happen. It was just as easy to make a mistake then as it is now.

You should be able to easily sort out which is the error looking at other censuses, birth or baptism records. If you post specific details I'm sure we can solve it.

Alexander

[Mavals]

My great grandfather is shown as 33 on his marriage certificate but he was actually 23. Cant decide if he was trying to pass himself off as older or the registrar mis heard.

[maryj171]

My G/Grandfather came over from Ireland and it most probably his accent that caused him to be recorder as born1830 when it should have been 1813 it took ages to find him because of that. Mind you he was also on one census as MRS McCann's Father - Lawrence McCann his own name was McKeown (or any of the 9 variations of spelling it)

[heatherjulie]

I think that in one of the censuses, ages were rounded to the nearest 5 years.

Heather

[gortonboy]

i had a  similar situation,,turns out one child had died,so they named the new child with the same name..

[Mavals]

i had a  similar situation,,turns out one child had died,so they named the new child with the same name..

That was an extremely common occurrence and can be the cause of much confusion 

[andrewalston]

I have one family where at one census son Joseph is 18 and working, and the next census has him aged 8 and a scholar. William goes from 10 to 30 in the same period.

It turns out that the second Joseph was the illegitimate son of one of the daughters of the household. His uncle Joseph had married and was living a few miles away.

The first William was the illegitimate son of another daughter. He had moved out by the second census, and his uncle William had returned from working elsewhere.

It only became clear when I looked at the parish registers.

[danuslave]

I think that in one of the censuses, ages were rounded to the nearest 5 years.

Heather

1841 - ages over 15 were supposed to be rounded down to the nearest 5 years

Luckily for us, it didn't always happen   

Linda