Thanks, Brenda for that helpful information. In the meantime I discovered this http://searchforancestors.com/utility/birthday.html It is listed as for Tombstones, but might also work... for Census. At 10:25 AM 1/16/2002 -0500, Hombre10@webtv.net wrote: >HOW TO FIGURE A BIRTHDATE >REMEMBER THIS NUMBER >8870 >This is not an error: It is the number to remember when you want to find >the birthdate of someone when you only have the date of death and age. >How do you figure the birthdate? >Suppose the person died May 6, 1889, at the age of 71 years, 7 months, 9 >days. >1. Write the year, month, day as:->18890506 >2. Subtract the age at death:------->710709 >3. This gives the figure:--------->18179797 >4. Now subtract 8870:----------------->8870 >5. The result is:----------------->18170927 >Year 1817, 9th month (Sept), 27th day or 27 Sept, 1817 Virginia Crilley