Steve,   The census enumerator's instructions for the 1841 census were to round the ages up to the nearest 5 years.   However, even on the later censuses you will find that it is not unusual for ages to vary on the census from decade to decade so don't expect to always find the right information (they could be very haphazard about birthplace too!)       Does the burial entry specify that the William Stooke buried in Dawlish is definitely the infant born in 1787?   Also, the place you ae born is not necessarily the place where you are baptised.   It is more likely these days where many births take place in a hospital but even in the past women sometimes went to a neighbouring parish to be with female relatives for the birth or the family could move shortly after the birth.    People did move about quite a lot.  For instance, there is a removal order on A2A dated 1832 of a George Stooke and Elizabeth his wife being removed from St Mary Major, Exeter to Dawlish. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=027-971a&cid=6-5-1-198&kw=stook dawlish#6-5-1-198   There is also a document on A2A which shows that a Philip Stooke (mariner) of West Teignmouth had interests in a property in Dawlish in 1765 so that may be another place to look for baptisms: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=028-81_2&cid=4-41&kw=stook dawlish#4-41   There is a bit about Woolcombers on the Moretonhampstead History website which says that they were mostly employed in their own homes.    http://www.moretonhampstead.org.uk/texts/glimpses/occupations/wool.ghtml   Joy ________________________________ From: Steve Hayes <hayesstw@telkomsa.net> To: stooke@yahoogroups.com; devon@rootsweb.com Sent: Sunday, 26 January 2014, 2:37 Subject: Re: [DEV] STOOKE family of Dawlish On Thu, 23 Jan 2014 20:48:06 -0000, "Robin Jarvis" <robinj@talk21.com> wrote: ><snip> > >> Marriage >> >> Thomas STOOKE of this Parish and Mary STOOKE of this Parish were married >> in this Church by Licence this thirty first Day of August in the Year one >> thousand eight hundred and twenty two by me D. Perkins DD, Vicar >> (both signed) >> In the presence of Elizabeth MARTIN  Jacob COCK >>Sorry, "Mary STOOKE" above should read "Mary Ann PEARCE" Robin, thanks very much for your help in this. I'm now trying to sort out the various Dawlish Stooke families, and it is really confusing. Names, ages, and dates don't seem to fit. You gave me the dates of baptism of what were apparently the children of that couple, and I found them in the 1841 census, but they are all 5 years younger than they should be. I wonder if the enumerator misunderstood the instructions, and subtracted five years from the age of everyone in the household? Has anyone come across anything like that before? There's also a Stooke family in Clifton, Bristol, where the progenitor, William STOOKE, claims to have been born in Dawlish about 1788. He married a Susannah, and at one time kept the York Hotel in Clifton. According to what you sent me, there was a William, son of James and Mary, born in Dawlish 10 April 1787, which seems to fit. But it also seems that he was buried on 29 Aug 1787. Could the one in Bristol have done a "Day of the Jackal" trick and stolen the dead child's identity? I have quite a lot of information on his descendants, but his origin and ancestry remain a mystery. I'm not expecting you (Robin) to answer these questions for me -- you've done a lot to help already, but just wondering aloud in case anyone has any ideas about these things. I've also had some help from Tricia Whiteaway of the Dawlish Local History Society, and I'm trying to put together various pieces of the puzzle. She introduced a new family, an Edward STOOKE who married Mary BEST in Dawlish on 4 October 1764, and they had several children too. Tricia suggested that Edward and James STOOKE (who married Mary BARJERON  on 28 October 1771) were brothers (both were woolcombers), and that both were children of James STOOKE (of Okehampton) who married Catherine PAINTER, except that neither seem to have been baptised in Dawlish. My alternative theory is that woolcombing is perhaps a seasonal occupation, and that the brothers Edward and John travelled around, and in Dawlish found girls that they liked, and married and settled there. There's no proof of this, of course, but Edward STOOKE and Elizabeth DINGLEY of Trusham had sons Edward, born in 1732, and James, born 1742, who did not apparently find wives or die in Trusham, and who could possibly have ended up in Dawlish. This theory could immediately be disproved by finding a record of the baptism of Edward and James in Dawlish, but apparently there is no such record. Would anyone care to comment on the credibility of this theory? -- Steve Hayes Web: http://hayesgreene.wordpress.com/     http://hayesgreene.blogspot.com/     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/afgen/     ------------------------------------------ The DEVON-L mailing list is co-sponsored by GENUKI/Devon ( http://genuki.cs.ncl.ac.uk/DEV/ ) and the Devon FHS (http://www.devonfhs.org.uk/ ) List archive for Devon can be found at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/index/DEVON/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to DEVON-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message