Cousins, This is an improvement over William Dollarhide's method (BunBan p.1123) pub in 1999. However does this magic number work for the Julian Calendar? Remember Colonial America changed to the Gregorian Calendar in September 1752 and dropped eleven days from the month, plus the first of the year was changed from March 25th to January 1st. All right class. Pencils ready? Begin. gil ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mary-Gene Page" <mgpage@unlimited.net> To: <BUNKER-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2003 1:38 PM Subject: [Fwd: [POWELL] Fwd: [AR-CEM] How to calculate birth dates] Passed on to me from Rev Jim Crowe, and sent to ya'll with his permission Great info!! HOW TO FIGURE A BIRTHDATE REMEMBER THIS NUMBER: 8870 This is not an error: It is the number to remember when you want to find the birthdate of someone when you only have the date of death and age. How do you figure the birthdate? Suppose the person died May 6, 1889, at the age of 71 years, 7 months, 9 days. 1. Write the year, month, day as: ------------ 18890506 2. Subtract the age at death: --------------------- 710709 3. This gives the figure: ------------------------ 18179797 4. Now subtract 8870: -------------------------------- 8870 5. The result is: ---------------------------------- 18170927 Year 1817, 9th month (Sept), 27th day or 27 Sept, 1817 Charlie Ward