Our previous posts on beginning genealogy will prepare you for our case study.
Thought we would look at a real life problem that happened in genealogy for me.
My great grandmother Eleanor Rose Kelly was around until I was 12 years old and visited with her often. After she died, I would hear family members say “she didn’t want anyone to know her age.” After multiple visits to the cemetery, I realized her gravestone did not have the dates engraved and I wondered why? Years later when I began to pursue my love of family history, I started digging into records and came across the confusion about her birth year.
The first record I obtained was her death certificate which I found on Missouri Digital Heritage.
Her birthdate is listed as 1-19-1891. Then the year is crossed through and “1890” is written. This is the first listing I can find giving her full birthdate.
The next record I looked at was the 1900 census (on Ancestry) when Eleanor is living with her mother, father and half siblings. The 1900 census lists birth dates (month and year). Her birth date is listed as January 1888.
So now I have Jan 1888, 1890, 1891 for birth date. Which one is correct?
The next record I found is a Missouri marriage license for June 1905. Eleanor’s father signed the license stating that she was over the age of 18. This does not really give me an exact birth year yet, but another clue.
I am still trying to figure out her correct birth year. I thought the Application for Social Security Account would be one of the best records. It would be completed by Eleanor and inaccurate information could affect her later social security benefits and when she would receive them. I ordered the application, dated December 31, 1937 in Eleanor’s handwriting. Her birth year is listed as January 19, 1889.
So now I have a fourth birth year and it was from her own hand. What a confusing mess!!!
Finally, like a bolt of lightning, I decided to order her baptismal certificate from local Catholic church. Catholics are baptized as babies. I thought this would be accurate. When I got the baptismal certificate, the birth date was January 19, 1888 and baptismal date was February 12, 1888. So after several records and several months of searching, I finally decided to accept the baptismal certificate as the true birth date.
Our family had her gravestone engraved with the accurate birth date.
In our next post, we will look at why (other than vanity) did she lie about her age.
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