Genealogy Chat

Full age was indeed supposed to mean over 21, however this really means nothing as many people were not sure of their exact age or they simply lied about it.

Be careful of ages given on early census returns; the enumerators were told to round down ages, i.e. if the given age was 23 it was rounded down to 20, 47 was rounded down to 45.

Julie is quite right as well, many census transcriptions are completely misread, this does not help at all, although I have found that if you are carefull you can usually read them correctly yourself.

Hmm, I guess it just goes to show that genealogy is not an exact science.

Ive never completely trusted the census info - I have found in my own searches that the age can be out by some considerable time - and one should never rely on the transcriptions as they are very often misread completely!

I suppose that without a time machine (or a very very old relative with a bloody good memory) - we cant be 100% sure of any of our findings really.

I tell you what kinda frustrates me though - we can find out names, dates, places of bmd, even occupations - we can work out living conditions and what life was like from general history knowledge - but we cannot see their FACES.... I would so dearly love to know what my ancestors actually looked like, wouldnt you?

ah - right - there was me thinking that would at least give me a starting point to work from in trying to get the year of birth - but of course you are right and they certainly could have lied!

Pants..... back to square one then - nowhere!!

Thanks every one, always good to have another perspective when possible!

J x

If someone is said to be 'of full age' on their marriage cert, would I be right in thinking they are over 21 at the time of the ceremony? (As opposed to 18....)

Julie