G2G: Genealogy Lession

Question

Just wanted to mention something I found amusing:

I was looking at photos of gravestones on FindAGrave, and found ones for my Great-Grandmother Emma Anderson (Anderson-58638), and her sister Clara (Anderson-62823).  Clara's gravestone says she was born in 1857, and Emma's says 1859.  What makes this particularly amusing:  Emma and Clara were twins. (They were actually born in 1858, so I guess the stones are correct, on average!)

No deep meaning here, just a genealogy lesson:  don't believe everything you read, even if it's carved in stone.

Comments

Itt sounds like an averaging issue: Some people average up when decimals aren't involved and others average down. For example when I say my age I average down but hopefully, after I die, my husband will average the year up so it looks like I lasted a bit longer...  ;-)

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Some cultures start at age 1 (you start your first year of life). In English based cultures people don't become 1 until their first birthday. But given in this case that they were twins, that should not be an issue.

Answer 1

The info on grave markers comes from family members, guess neither family knew their relative as well as they thought.  Now, the incorrect info will be passed down forever due to those dates "carved in stone."

Please make notes and add sources to show the correct dates on their profiles.  Only that way will the real info be known...

Comments

had to deal with similar issues in Find a Grave, and when I pull the docs, I send a copy to the person who is managing the grave, and let them know about the grave stone error(s) that way they usually will always be willing to correct the writeup in the bio so that when ppl go in they are aware of the error on the marker/stone.

Answer 2

Remember, they didn't all ways keep track of DOB,, or even place, as we do today., sometimes date was written in a Family Bible, years after the event, so even that could be off..

Comments

That's especially true for former slaves and some other illiterate people. Or sometimes people just lie about their age. I found one woman who consistently aged about 8 years per census (taken every ten years).

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I've got one of those. Presumably no one cares about that sort of thing anymore.

Answer 3

And just because it's on the death certificate AND engraved on the stone it might not be correct! There were articles in several different papers about Frank's death on 8 Jan 1895. Both his gravestone and his death record say 1894. The very nice lady at the local historical society said "oh they had just started keeping records then, many of them are wrong".

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Toepelt-4

Comments

Sorry, my bad, answered in the wrong place

Answer 4

I thought of something else, because I was a sign painter, not a tombstone carver.  The 7 and the 9 could look alike because of poor handwriting.  I must have lettered at least 50 USDOT numbers on trucks incorrectly because I couldn't read the trucker's handwriting! 7 and 9 were problematic! (when we used paint, that was a big issue to correct and some truckers got fined because the number was wrong; guess who got the blame!)  

Answer 5

I'd say Rick Morley is right: headstones, and also obituaries, are ordered and written by family members who may be hazy on the details. (I remember, a long time ago, arguing with my sisters about when our mother was born. And I think it turned out they were right.)

Another possibility: the obituary for one of my mother's cousins says she was born in 1923, but when I found her birth certificate it said 1918. So I looked at her other records. She had entered 1923 on her marriage license, and that's the date on every record after that. I'm guessing she just decided to subtract 5 years from her age!

Answer 6

Varying dates are a problem, even more of a problem are the family relationships invented and entered by Find a Grave managers.

A headstone says William Pooley 1844-1924 and his wife Mary E 1840-1921 -no maiden name.

The current manager has Mary as the daughter of an Andrew Dodds, she was a daughter of an Andrew Dodds, but not the one listed on the profile.

It never seems to occur to some people that there might be more than one person with the same name in the same general area, and that all children with a parent with the same name are not siblings.

I have contacted the manager who will not consider an error, and has also invented an additional 4 lines on the headstone.