Hi All This is something someone sent to one of my list I heard something really neat at my FHC this evening. Someone said that sometimes, a census taker would ask a person to state their age in terms of how old they were as of, for example, March 1. (Assume the census is being taken on July 1, 1860.) The person might say 32 years old, but really when he is answering the question, he is really 33, only his birthdate was after March 1. If you didn't know this, you would see 32 in the census and assume he was born in 1848. But suppose the previous time around in 1850, the census taken just asked for the person's age on the day the census is being taken. Say it is being taken on July 1 again. This time, the person will give his correct age as 23, and now if you calculate when he was born, you'd assume the person was born in 1847. The person at the FHC said this is one reason why the ages of people in the census records sometimes don't match from census to census.