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Accuracy of information on a headstone?

Virginia

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This is probably a dumb question but how accurate is the information on a headstone? One ancestor I'm researching is buried in the St. E. Church, Yardley cemetery & his headstone says: "T.B. died (date)1807 aged 75 years". I did the math & T.B. according to the headstone was born in 1732. I searched for 1730, 1731 1732 & 1733 (just in case the person was born late in 1732 but baptized in early 1733) with absolutely NO luck. Same for his wife who died in 1810 aged 60 - no sign of a "Sarah" marrying anyone named T.B. from1760 to 1800. I'm assuming that the parish records for their BMD are lost or not transcribed or aren't available for some other reason but it DID cross my mind that the headstone info just might not be accurate. Silly thought I know but ...... ?????
 
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I don't think that, at that time, ages given were always very accurate. Even in more recent times, unless a birth certificate was checked, there is always the possibility that someone had not been very accurate in telling people their age
 
Agree Mike. My own Gran born in 1891 always said "it was guesswork". So I don't think exact ages were very important. Also what was recorded on either a census or grave was only as accurate as the information given.
 
Given that a search by Virginia is back in the early part of the 18th.century it may well be worth reminding researchers of this:
Great Britain was now in line with the rest of Europe.
I wonder what calendar our North American colonies used, particularly when, parts of what is now the USA were controlled by Spain and France? Presumably those areas under British control were aligned with Britain?
 
There is a marriage of a Thomas Bowen to Sarah Gardner in 1764 on 5 March at St Martins.
View attachment 141667
Yes, I know about that marriage however on the Marriage Allegation & Bond it says Thomas's age was 28 in 1764 & Sarah's was 22 which puts the birth dates at about 1736 & 1742. HIS baptismal year is within reason but that 8 year age gap on the Marriage Allegation is quite leap from 8 years to 18 from the 1732 & 1750 on the tombstones. I know that people back then were a bit more fluid in their age "guesstimates" but 10 years out is what bothers me!! I know I'm being nit-picky here but I DO like to be as accurate as possible!! My great-uncle Harry did amazing Bowen family research by snail mail & it's sort of a "thing" with me to make sure I do as accurate a job as he since I have the benefit of the Internet!!
 

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Given that a search by Virginia is back in the early part of the 18th.century it may well be worth reminding researchers of this:
Great Britain was now in line with the rest of Europe.
I wonder what calendar our North American colonies used, particularly when, parts of what is now the USA were controlled by Spain and France? Presumably those areas under British control were aligned with Britain?
Many, many thanks for that link Radiorails!! That possibility had been at the back of my mind after spending a couple of days searching for Thomas Bowen 1732 to no avail so I'll have to sit down with some paper & a calculator & see how much the dates I've got change using that information! I just can't imagine living in that era & all of a sudden lose a large chunk of days at the snap of a finger!!
 
Tell me about
Agree Mike. My own Gran born in 1891 always said "it was guesswork". So I don't think exact ages were very important. Also what was recorded on either a census or grave was only as accurate as the information given.
Tell me about the inaccuracy of census data b/c I came across a real doozy with my great-grandmother, Mary Emma Williams who married Howard Prime Bowen in England & then moved to Canada. I have photos of what we KNOW was the Bowen family plot in Mount Royal Cemetery, Montreal, Quebec where her death date was "1904". I even remember being taken to "visit" her & my grandfather showing me the forget-me-nots he had planted decades before proliferating over the entire plot. I remember sitting there tracing her death date even!! Pretty cut & dried one would think however in the 1911 census (Montreal) there she is, supposedly alive & well & the requisite 10 years older!! Since my g-gf married in 1912 & was listed as "widower" on the marriage licence (Toronto) one can only wonder WHEN Mary Emma Williams Bowen had died between 1904 & 1911. The problem? Neither the Canadian Archives, the Unitarian/Methodist/Prebyterian/United Church records NOR the Quebec Archives has ANY record of her death. None. Even the administration at the Mount Royal Cemetery have NO record of her actually being buried there!! One of the chaps at the Quebec archives was so intrigued that he did an extensive search for me of the years 1900 to 1912 & came up empty about when she died! And my Bowens-the-Olympic-gold-medal-HOARDERS who kept every blessed scrap of paper they deemed valuable to pass down the generations, don't have ANYTHING about her death. I mean they kept the receipts for buying the various burial plots, kept and itemized list of costs to do the carving on the stone, didn't flip out when a "strange woman" was found buried in the Hamilton Bowen family burial plot from letters I have BUT didn't keep Mary Emma's death certificate! So yes, census data can be ridiculously inaccurate (possibly!)
 
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Many, many thanks for that link Radiorails!! That possibility had been at the back of my mind after spending a couple of days searching for Thomas Bowen 1732 to no avail so I'll have to sit down with some paper & a calculator & see how much the dates I've got change using that information! I just can't imagine living in that era & all of a sudden lose a large chunk of days at the snap of a finger!!
Another thought that just occurred to me! Since "my" Thomas Bowen was born from 1732 to 1736 can I then assume that the year-dates given on the Marriage Allegation for Thomas & Sarah would be accurate since the Julian calendar was still in use at that date? It would only be AFTER 1752 that things may get messy? Because then I'm back to my original problem which is the discrepancy with the death dates & age-at-death on the tombstones versus the original parish registers which I've really & truly combed through & NOT found another Thomas Bowen & Sarah in Birmingham, Warwickshire before 1734? I even checked the parish registers from St. Phillip's in Birmingham which has records within the time period in question. Aargh-h-h-h..... I do love puzzles but sometimes it drives me nuts with all these strange records popping up (or not) - like an 18 year age difference on the tombstones and a possible 8 year age difference on the Marriage Allegation & Bond.
 
Agree Mike. My own Gran born in 1891 always said "it was guesswork". So I don't think exact ages were very important. Also what was recorded on either a census or grave was only as accurate as the information given.
OK, and yet another dumb question! IF the ancestors stayed in the same parish from birth to death (which mine did) couldn't the curate or rector just go back in the parish BMD registers & check when the person was baptized? That seems to me to be a very logical thing to do but don't know what sort of "logic" or "common sense" prevailed back then or if the church personnel just trusted people on dates etc? Did people even get some sort of "birth certificate" when they were baptized?? I mean, in a small village / town one would have to make sure "somehow" that people weren't interbreeding wouldn't they? Or did the curate just hie out to the cemetery & check headstones? And if one's ancestor DID have the roving gene wouldn't they still have to somehow prove what parish they were from & when they were born if they had strayed far, far from their birth parish, met a fetching woman & wanted to marry her?
 
I think that now (never mind about "back then") the church authorities, AND the registration authorities , accept what the reporting person says. I know of one recent (early 2000s) case where a middle Christian name which was incorrect was written on a death certificate due to the wrong information given at the registry
 
Thank you for that great example!! One would think that such errors wouldn't happen nowadays but it sounds like unfortunately getting names/dates incorrect was & still is fairly common!! The only thing I base some dates on (such as my great-grandmother's) is that I have the piece of paper my grandfather (her son) used to sketch out how he wanted the names/dates carved on the headstone in the Bowen family plot!! And my father-in-law, several days before he died, actually went to the Memorial Headstone Company in his town & showed them what he wanted carved on the headstone - down to his to-the-day of death date!! He did this on Sept. 8 & died on Sept. 12!! Must have had a premonition.

Guess what I'll do is put the Thomas & Sarah information I have from family notes & what's online, put it in the family tree with a caveat that a future generation take a good look at the information with whatever genealogical resources are available in the future. Best I can do but I sure would have liked to get the family tree back into the early 1700s!! In my mother's tree I was actually able to get it back to 1696 I think it was ONLY b/c the original parish records have been put online. Genealogy becomes quite addictive doesn't it & with a OCD personality like mine I always want to keep digging!
 
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