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Susan .............

Just a note re ages ...............

A person's year of birth will almost always vary by at least 1 year and sometimes 2 years on different censuses.

It depends on when a census was taken vs the date that a person was born.

Everyone had to give their age at midnight on the day of the census, and the people who transcribed the records for ancestry, FMP, etc, had to convert the age into birth year.

IF someone's birthday was before the date of the census, the birth year would be correct, but if their birthday was after the census date, then the birth year would be 1 year out.

Add to this, the fact that many people int he 19th century, really were not sure when they were born (birthdays were not important for many people), and even more errors creep in.


Then we won't mention the ones who lied about their age ............ usually because they were much younger or older than their spouse!


If you get further back, and are looking at the 1841 census, there is a further wrinkle ............. enumerators were told to mark the age of anyone over the age of 15 down to the nearest 5. Most did that, some (just to make it difficult for us) did not.

So when searching for someone 15 or older on the 1841, you have to put their age as (for example) 20 +/- 5

On all other censuses, it is advisable to put 20 +/-2



In short, never take the age/birth year in a census as gospel truth!

(sorry Susan, should be below!, have corrected!)

http://www.lancashirebmd.org.uk/

Chris :)