I had hoped to say welcome back to Patsy Desilets, however mail to her new address is already bouncing :-( As always, if you haven't already contributed, we hope to hear from you soon. ****** ****** ****** While not based on my Bute research lines, the following anecdote reaffirms the need to find all available documents for our ancestors ... While inputting data from one of my mother's lines into my Reunion database a while back, I came across an 1871 census entry with the age of a child given as 11 days - indicating a birth date of 23 March 1871. Later in her records, I found a photocopy of the birth certificate for a child of the same name dated 18th May 1870 with the hand written comment "should the 1871 entry read 11 months ?" and in a different colour "maybe an earlier child of the same name?" but this was in turn crossed out with a further comment "dates too close !?!". With the benefit of a fully searchable CD set, I then found the 1881 entry for this child - away at boarding school with her elder sister in another county - this gave her age as 10 yrs - matching the birth certificate. So why "11 days" in 1871 - was my mother correct in her assumption of an error ? I now have the answer as the baptism date for this child was, as some may already have guessed, 23 March 1871. So while incorrect in one sense, the 1871 age did connect to a real event. Moral: if an age at census does not match known facts (especially with children), do not be too quick to dismiss it as an error - equally make sure that such queries are marked so later researchers can follow up on them. ****** ****** ****** List Admin: SPAM Blocking If you are switching to a spam blocking program that requires the sender to reply before their e-mail is allowed through; please change your ButeshireGenWeb subscription to Digest mode then add ButeshireGenWeb-D-request@rootsweb.com to your "safe" address list. This should allow you to continue as a subscriber without loss of posts, and keep you in your fellow subscribers good books :-) ****** ****** ****** Feel free to join in and present your own items. Peter Cook cookfmly@bigpond.com List maintainer and Co-host with Barbara < babrown12@optonline.net > of the ButeshireGenWeb mailing list.