Don't believe everything you see !

[thomsj1]

After almost six months doing family research I reckon I'm just starting to get the hang of this game. All you need is the detective skills of Poirot, the tracking skills of a bloodhound and the stubborness of a mule. Add to that mix perhaps the patience of a saint and the luck of the Irish and maybe, just maybe you'll find that elusive ancestor !

Take my Gt Gt Grannie for example - according to her death certificate and gravestone inscription she died in 1945 aged 75. Armed with this information I went straight to the 1901 census and searched for her name with an age of 30 (plus or minus 2) and bingo - there she was, aged 29.
I thought to myself 'This is a piece of cake'. Big mistake ! After that initial success I couldn't find her anywhere. The 1881 census turned up a blank and there was no sign of a birth certificate around 1872 either. I went back to her death certificate and armed with her parents' names I began looking for their marriage certificate. I started at 1872 and went back all the way to 1855 - nothing. Onto the OPR records next and working from 1854 backwards the first match I got was in 1847. Using that as my baseline I started a search for a birth certificate all the way back up from 1847 to 1872 - nothing.

The GROS searches were costing a fortune in credits so I booked a day at the Glasgow Genealogy Centre. After about two mind numbing hours looking at census records I finally made a breakthrough in the 1861 census. I found a family that matched up - the parents names were right and so was the husband's occupation. Not only did I find my Gt Gt Grannie but three other siblings I'd never head of before. But her age was strange - she was listed as six and a half years old. I'd been through hundreds of census records and had never seen a fraction against a child's age. Then it dawned on me. The 1861 census was taken on 8th April and a child aged six would have been born in 1855 with a legal requirement on the parents to register the birth. But a child of six and a half would have been born in 1854 and not subject to the requirement. Was her father making that point by giving her age as six and a half ?

OK so it now looked like she was born in 1854 and not 1872. That would make her over 90 when she died in 1945 - could the records be so far out ? Now that I had other family members to cross check with I was able to find her on the 1881 census - where she gave her age as 19. In 1891 she was supposedly 26 and I already knew she said she was 29 in 1901. I'm no mathematician but these figures are way out and suggests that all through her life she was just a wee bit coy about giving her real age !

I started off this story by listing the attributes needed to do family research and I'll add one more. You need a healthy dose of scepticism - just because you see something recorded on a document it doesn't mean it's correct. Try to get corroboration from a second source. The people completing the documents were just ordinary folk doing a job and sometimes they made mistakes. And sometimes they came across a serial white lie teller like my Gt Gt Grannie !

Cheers

Jim

[LesleyB]

Hi Jim

You need a healthy dose of scepticism - just because you see something recorded on a document it doesn't mean it's correct.Try to get corroboration from a second source. The people completing the documents were just ordinary folk doing a job and sometimes they made mistakes. And sometimes they came across a serial white lie teller like my Gt Gt Grannie !

Glad you found her at last. The point you make is very valid - as you have discovered!!

Best wishes
Lesley

[SarahND]

Hi Jim,
Sounds like my great granny! I still don't know what year she was born, since the court house in her county burned in 1850 destroying all the records. The 1850 census has her as 7, 1860 as 17, 1870 as 24, 1880 as 38, 1900 as 50, 1910 as 64 , 1920 as 75, 1930 as 86. She got younger for awhile, then was gradually getting back to the correct age when she died in 1930. I generally tend to trust the earlier censuses more, since there is less of a reason to give the wrong age for a child
All the best,
Sarah

[Russell]

Hi Jim

Sometimes you look at a document in disbelief "That can't be right "

And it isn't, but you don't finally know until you have checked , if possible, two corroborative sources.

I don't think the Registrars and Census enumerators got it wrong all that often but what they wrote was what they were told, or thought they were told. Regional accents could account for some of the entries being peculiar. Illiteracy meant that the entry could not be confirmed as correct by the person giving the information. Diaries and calendars were for the wealthy, who had leisure time and social events to fill that time. Months and years would mean little to the average ag. lab or factory worker.
Even now there are events in my past that I could not put a firm date to.

Then we come to the inveterate liars who shaved a few years off each time so their age matched that of their husband.
And this was before Peter Pan had been written)
When Stautory Registration was first introduced I think it took a year or two before some people got the message thast they could be fined for non-compliance with Birth registration so there was some confabulation and creative accounting done to avoid penalties.

On the positive side though. Just think how skilled you have become in searching OPR and Statutory records.
Future searches should be a dawdle

Russell

[Montrose Budie]

.....snipped........When Stautory Registration was first introduced I think it took a year or two before some people got the message thast they could be fined for non-compliance with Birth registration so there was some confabulation and creative accounting done to avoid penalties.

.....snipped.............

Russell

There are known instances of the baptism taking place before the birth

David

[thomsj1]

Hi All

Thanks for your comments.

When I first came to the conclusion that the records were not necessarily 100% accurate I have to admit I was a bit surprised. But as I began to understand how easily these discrepancies could occur I'm now surprised that so much of the information is accurate.

As for ladies and their ages - I'd better not say any more

Russell, the next time I hit a dead end I will remember your comment about searching 'being a dawdle' How I wish it was [-o<

And baptism before birth ? That's the best one I've heard yet.

Cheers

Jim

[DavidWW]

Hi All

....snipped..............

And baptism before birth ? That's the best one I've heard yet.

Cheers

Jim

You've had the kid baptised, but have completely forgotten about the civil registration, - after 30 days, there was a 30/- penalty (I'd need to double check the period and the amount, - those figures are from memory); so what do you do but nip along to the registrar and register the birth, but tell a wee porky in terms ensuring the recorded date of birth is within the 30 day period , and if that meant the wee wain appeared to have been baptised before birth, then so be it .

David