Genealogy Chat

To make such a sweeping statement "Most submitted records are in fact assumptions." is inaccurate, and does a great disservice to those who are meticulous in their research and pride themselves in submitting accurate information to the IGI,

For all we know they may well have other documentary evidence - the problem we have is that we don't know which ones they are.

I would however agree that SOME submitted records are pure assumptions, particularly where an estimated birth year has been added to an otherwise accurate marriage date.

I have also found several errors in Extracted records, where numbers in dates have been transposed, so I know these can't always be assumed to be accurate either.

As ever, wherever possible, try and corroborate your information with an alternative independent source.

John

The age on a census is not documented ..... it is what the enumerator was told by someone in the house. They did not have to provide evidence. Most would not have had evidence!!



our ancestors were far less concerned about age than we are.

Plus they were largely illiterate, so age meant nothing to them

Many parents didn't know the ages of their children, and made a guess .... so how can you expect that child to know when it was actually born?


PLUS ............... the census enumerator always asked for age in years. The modern-day transcriber translates that age into year born

BUT depending on when the census was taken vs the birth date .... the year might be as much as 2 years out.


This is why I always rcommend that people search at the very minimum for year +/- 5 years ....... and even go to +/- 10 years in some case.





so the age is not exact on ANY census, let alone the 1851.



PLUS ...... just to make life even more interesting for us ................. the enumerators on the 1841 census were supposed to down rate all ages of peopel over the age of 15 to the nearst 5. Most did, some did not. But that means you have to add up to 5 years to the age of anyone you find on the 1841.



So by all means accept that information on the IGI ..... just so long as it is from an EXTRACTED record. A submitted record has been sent in by someone, usually a church member, and there will be NO documentary evidence to back it up. Most submitted records are in fact assumptions.



sylvia

Depends who filled the form in - there are a lot of reasons the age could be out. Might have been a child in the house who did it and they guessed at Dad/Grandad's age, or perhaps there was a big age gap between the man and his wife and they got a bit creative with the facts to make the gap look smaller. Possibly he wasn't actually sure himself how old he was. (I have relatives who aged inconsistently - my great-grandad was 8 months old in 1861 but by 1901 was only 37, but then he was actually eight years older than his wife.)

One thought - is the IGI record submitted or extracted? (It should say underneath when you click to view it.) If it's submitted and the birth says "about 1804" that probably means the submitter isn't sure at all. If it says "extracted from the local parish register" or something like that, there still might be mistakes between the original and the transcriptions online but at least it should be based on an actual record.

If there was more than one church in the place he was born, it's also possible that only one parish is listed in the IGI and he might have been baptised at the other.

Hi

I am wondering on the level of accuracy of documented age for the 1851 census. I have a head of household who is aged 44 - therefore puts birth year about 1807 +/- 1 year. However I have found a match to birth with IGI of the same name and location of birth for 1804 therefore aged 47.
I cannot find any other name and location as good a match as this,

Thanks in advance

John