Kevin, I have been told that because birthdays weren't celebrated, people often did not know their date of birth. I have also found birth records after 1864 which have a date of birth that differs from the one given on the Baptismal record. In some cases, I imagine the father did not get into the registration office right away to report the birth. The dates don't differ greatly, but they are often not the same. With some of my family members, they added on years to be old enough to work, while others took years off so they would appear younger. My grandmother's sister shaved 20 years off her life. She lived in Charlestown, MA, and did not want to be put "out to pasture" on (I think it was) Deer Island with the elderly and infirm. At least that was what she told my cousin when he visited years and years ago. I noticed that she shaved those years off when she was very young too so I wonder if she didn't want to let her husband know she was about 20 years older than he was. My aunt was helping me search for records and said that the year of birth attributed to my ggrandfather James Kenny was definitely wrong. He would not have been 15 years younger than his wife. She said my grandfather, James's son, was terrific with dates and numbers so we brought garden tools and cleared away the stone that was on the ground. Sure enough, the dates my grandfather had put on his father's stone were different by 15 years. There was just one more glitch. His stone gave 1898 as year of death, but at Vital Records in New Hampshire, the year was 1899. At the cemetery office, someone pulled out the city annual report, which had vital records at the end. James had died in October 1898, but the annual report had already gone to press so he was included in the 1899 report only. I thought it strange that the vital record took the date from the annual report. I have to wonder about the different dates given for immigration. I think sometimes they really did forget what year they came. Other times a spouse or family member gave the information, and they might not have known. Occasionally, I think a neighbor might have given census information because names were misspelled (one of my grand uncle's children was Mary Hilda, but her name was spelled as Hildreth), and the same person who had emigrated from Ireland, was enumerated as someone born in the US. I found the latter error several times with family members. That was quite frustrating when I was trying to check all of the siblings to see what year of immigration they gave because with a US birth there would be no date of immigration. And to further add...... the most common year of immigration for my Gallagher family was 1879. I finally found them on a vessel that arrived in NYC in June 1880. Interestingly, we brought up a family of refugee siblings. When they were in the refugee camps, the children (who were minors without parents) were told to report a younger age as families were more willing to take in younger children. I guess most of us have learned to be very flexible when looking for family records. :-) :-) :-) Jan ----- Original Message ----- From: <KELKEV956@cs.com> To: <IRL-CORK-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Friday, August 12, 2005 11:13 AM Subject: Fluctuating Irish birth / immigration dates > In a message dated 8/12/2005 7:05:43 AM Central Daylight Time, > janfortado@comcast.net writes: >> Because my family gave different years of birth >> on any record that was ever filled out, it is almost impossible to tell >> which John Kenny is mine. It does seem that age 21 was a popular age to >> be >> when boarding one of these ships. Also, when my different family members >> were enumerated in the various U.S. Censuses, they gave different years >> of >> immigration each time so I can't even be sure which year to look for on >> ship's records. > > Thanks, Jan, > > This has been my experience exactly with my KELLY family, which I > eventually > traced to the Beara Peninsula in County Cork. I eventually realized that > these ancestors, most of who were illiterate when they came, had a more > "relaxed" > attitude about time and its passage. They perhaps didn't so much care > exactly > when they were born, or even forgot with the passage of time. "The Man > who > made time, made plenty of it." > > Kevin Kelly in Missouri > > ______________________________