Ancestors Who Lied About Their Age

Sometimes I think my ancestors had psychic powers. I feel like they knew that someday I would be searching for them in the records they created, and that it would be fun for them to throw me a curve ball-- or ten. Perhaps they thought it would be a good “character building exercise.” To them, let me just say, “I am not amused.”

I’ve been doing a little work on my Tobin family line and of the three family members for whom I have a good collection of census and other records, each of them routinely gave ages that conflicted with those in other records. For three of the five family members, birth years vary with a span of anywhere between seven and ten years. Interestingly, the mom of the family seems to age more than ten years with every census, while her sons, Peter and George, seem to age less with each enumeration.

So how do we reconcile these differences when we are trying to prove that the individual we found is one and the same as the person we’ve located in other records? And how do we determine how old the individuals really were? Here are some things I have found helpful:

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U. S. Naturalization Record Indexes, 1794–1995

Many of us feel a special connection to the immigrants in our family tree—those who, for whatever reason, left their native land to start over in America. Their decision to come to the United States involved great sacrifice and courage. It often represented a desire for more adventure, more land, more opportunity, or more freedom. And more than that—it affected the course of our own lives in a dramatic way...

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