Secrets & Lies: Things we found while looking up relatives.

[CBHagman]

Among my genealogical souvenirs are various death certificates where the informant has obviously peeled about 15 years off the age of the deceased. It's happened at least three times, always with people whose real ages could be confirmed or estimated using marriage, Census, and other records.

Then there are the myths and legends, as well as the scandals your ancestors didn't want you to know.

Tell your stories.

[NOLALady]

1. I've found inaccuracies in death certificates, also.

I assumed the informant didn't really know the exact age of the deceased. My GrandFather did not know the year my GrandMother was born. She was one of those people blessed with superb skin. I once overheard her share her secret (the year of her birth) with a friend. The friend refused to believe her and thought she was being silly as my Grandmother was known for her sense of humor.

[Bitwit1234]

2. If you do a lot of research

you will see the inaccuraties in age. Most people really didn't know the year they were born. It is that simple. If there parents could not read and write as in most of the 1800's you will see this in the recording in the census. If a person records their age at 35 and they were in the previous census at 30 etc. you have to do the math.

[CBHagman]

3. Oh, there's outright lying in my family.

I don't know the rationale for it, but it's amazing to behold. Case in point: my great aunt died in 1966, old and full of days. I scored a copy of her death certificate and other materials, one of which listed her age as 66 -- younger than her niece, my grandmother, would have been if she were alive. There's even a supplementary form (for Social Security, if I recall correctly, that clarifies that Auntie was not in her 80s but her 60s.

Yeah, right.

Before you say that sometimes aunts are born after nieces, I would observe that said aunt was duly listed in the 1900 census (and not as an infant) and mentioned by name in her father's obituary of the same year.

[NOLALady]

4. I've seen the lying first hand also.

A favorite family story is about one of my Aunts who almost died because she lied to the Doctor about her age. Of course she got the wrong medicine!

Sometimes the Census takers didn't bother to talk to the people in the house. My Stepmother told me the Census takers sometimes talked to kids. She was very young and they'd ask this little kid about information on families in the neighborhood. Think about the accuracy of that information.

[fudge stripe cookays]

5. Yep...

I have at least one of those.

I know her year of birth in her obituary is incorrect. Everyone in the family knew she added 2 years to her birth so she could get married at 16 up in Alberta in 1929. Her story was featured in a book on Alberta weddings, and how marrying a guy who was the chauffeur to a provincial senator and cattle lord had its perqs. Her family didn't have a penny to its name.

Thank goodness someone up there told me what was up, or I would have been pulling out my hair assuming she and her one sister (she had 6) were twins. Not so! :D

[kestrel91316]

6. My g-g-grandmother and g-g-grandfather DIVORCED in about 1905.

It's the only divorce among ANY of my ancestors, and we have got things traced WAAAAYYYYY back in most lines, lol. The funny thing is, Granny called herself a widow in the census for years. Family tradition was that her husband ran off with another woman and vanished. I am quite certain that my grandmother and her mother never knew anything whatsoever about the divorce (but I found the documentation in Denver records).

The rat eventually married the woman he dumped Granny for, moved to the PNW, had three little boys, and died in the Seattle area. The census is an amazing tool, eh?? Actually, I couldn't have found this out without the great search engine on Ancestry.com (shameless plug).

I have reason to suspect his family lied to my Granny and maybe even filed fake death papers somewhere (or somebody else with his name died in Denver about the time he took off for the PNW), but I found out the truth eventually. Too late for my grandmother to know, and way too late for my great-grandmother, who mourned losing her daddy her WHOLE life. And sadly, I still can't trace his family back to their NY roots. F---in' brick wall......