A few years ago there was a discussion on another internet list about the importance of birthdates. Why do we work so hard to get the exact birthdate of a person? After some discussion, one member of the list proposed that the primary purpose of birthdates in genealogy was to be able to distinguish one person from another. A prime example is that of my g-g-grandfather, John D. Campbell (1812-1890). There was another John D. Campbell (1813-1893) who lived near my g-g-grandfather. With birthdates less than a year apart, keeping them separate has been quite a challenge. For a long time I thought that the two were the same person, but since there was a gravestone for each, there had to be two people. I was able to separate them by the names of their children on the census. Oh, yes, both their wives were named Elizabeth. When we have several dates (such as birthdates) for an individual, we need to record each instance that we find along with the source. Then we need to use our best judgement as to which one to use. Note that I did not say which one is correct, because we probably can't be certain which is correct. Jim Campbell