On 2011-05-13 11:06, Ian Goddard wrote: > Peter J. Seymour wrote: >> It is however in my experience rare for an event to be assigned more >> than one possible date. > > I have one ancestor whose origin was quite difficult to pin down, > largely, I think, arising from age differences between herself & her > husband which lead to an element of concealment of the marriage. I was > originally working from the age calculated from the '41 census & her > stated age at death (even then understated by two years - maybe she > never told her husband the truth). In this case she died before the '51 > census otherwise I'd have had another view of the date. > > Where an individual is a collateral & it's not currently worth trying to > chase down a birth or baptism I have a few instances where I just have > multiple estimates of birth based on different census records. Even when > they agree they're multiple data points and, IMV, should be treated as > such. > I guess my tendency is to think if they are different dates they could refer to different people. So I have a weak group of a few individuals possibly the same person but with their own events. However, it depends a lot on the surrounding circumstances such as how common the name is in that particular setting.