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Archiver > NY-IRISH > 2007-07 > 1184791862


From: Patricia <>
Subject: Re: [NY-IRISH] Ancestors and their Ages
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:51:02 -0700 (PDT)
In-Reply-To: <680416.68963.qm@web60915.mail.yahoo.com>


Hi All,
I wasn't too surprised to find that my GrGf's birth year went from 1810-1817 among the 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, and 1900 US Census. But to my utter amazement, his headsstone reads 1807-1905. So much for "written in stone!" Go figure....
Patricia Daly

Mary Regan <> wrote:
Clare Higgins wrote:
> ...
> Once I used to think that the inconsistencies meant
> I was looking at records
> for different Morris Higginses. But too many other
> things matched up, so I
> think this means I was looking at the right guy.

Clare:
It's like a great puzzle, isn't it? I think many
people didn't know exactly how old they were, census
takers sometimes asked the neighbors for their best
guesses in order to fill in something on the form when
they couldn't find residents or sisn't want to take
the time to track them down, and there's always the
possibility that for one reason or another our
ancestors weren't sticking to "the whole truth and
nothing but the truth." ;-)

My great-great grandmother's brother Michael
Flanagan's date of birth works out to 1840 on every
census I've found, but I found his baptismal record,
which shows he was born and baptized in 1838.

My great-great grandmother herself is in the 1850,
1860, 1870, 1880, 1900 and 1910 censuses, and the
numbers in the 1910 census make her 10 years older
than she was in all the others and record that she
arrived here 10 years earlier than she did. If the
only record we had was the 1910 census, we'd probably
believe the erroneous "information."

One of my great-grandmothers was born in 1855,
according to her baptismal record, and the 1870 and
1880 censuses concur. However, after she married my
great-grandfather (who was born in 1857) all records
indicate that she was born in 1857. Perhaps she shaved
two years off her age for her husband's benefit?

When my grandmother went back to Europe to get her
nephew and bring him here, his age was recorded on the
Ellis Island record as 11 years, although my mother
insists he would have been two years older. We wonder
whether there might have been a difference in the fare
-- a break for children under 12? -- because we
wouldn't put it past Grandma to have fudged his age to
save money. Who knew that almost 100 years later
anyone with a computer would be able to see what she
had said?

A great big puzzle...

Mary Regan


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