Comments on: Lie To Me

By: msualumni

msualumni — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 19:18:08 +0000

Thank Andrea! I’m still trying to sort out more of my “lying” records;)

Robyn

By: Andrea Kelleher

Andrea Kelleher — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 02:22:31 +0000

Excellent Post! I can totally relate to this. Like you said, you have to look at multiple sources to get a proper sense of what was accurate your ancestor.

By: Mariann Regan

Mariann Regan — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 00:30:47 +0000

Oh, I could not agree more! My mother’s death certificate gave her “improved” birth year, not her real one, which I learned only from talking with my cousin and finding the 1920 census when she was 5 years old. She wanted to be a year younger, so she just declared a new birth year. And her real birth year came just before vital records started in SC.

I don’t even take census ages (and inferred birth years) seriously any more! They wobble all over the place, from one census to the next. People change the surname spelling, in my family, all through the 1800s and early 1900s. On my own birth certificate, my father’s middle name has a new creative spelling. My father’s co-workers at the Veterans’ Administration had a saying, “Good enough for government work.” That’s what we’ve got with so many of these records . . . we take them with a grain of salt and negotiate a likely “truth” among all of them.

By the way, I don’t have a wordpress blog, I just joined wordpress to make a comment on your blog. My blog, in case you want to know, is http://mariannregan.authorsxpress.com. My name is Mariann.

Thank you for this so-true blog. So clearly illustrated!

By: claimingkin

claimingkin — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 00:42:11 +0000

LOL! I could not agree with you more and I must say that I feel and share your sentiments exactly when dealing with census records. But as one of your previous post states, it is so important for us access the original documents and thoroughly analyze them line by line and make note of the inconsistencies that we find. I have a similar situation going on right now. So I’ve stopped the presses and have ordered copies of other records so that I can make more accurate decision about my findings. Great post!