Always keep in mind that the individual who is giving the information to the engraver, or for the death record itself may not know the true date of birth. The person reporting the death or ordering the gravestone is often a spouse or child of the desceased, but may be a grandchild, a cousin, an aged sibling who doesn't even know his/her own exact birth date, or even a dear friend trying to recall what he/she was told by the individual long ago. Also, those doing the transcriptions do make errors (as we all do -- even me). Many of the transcriptions were done as part of the post depression (that earlier one 75 years ago -- not this one) to put people to work and get money moving into the economy. Those most in need of the work were not the best educated nor were they highly motivated toward accuracy. They were more interested in the small check that they received at the end of the day. I suspect they may have been paid by the number of transcriptions they did while working. I use the dates and ages on gravestones as a guideline only after resorting to other, more reliable sources. I dare say that if one were to take one of the books of transcriptions to the cemetery and compare them to the actual headstones, the percentage of discrepancies would be large. In early Columbia County, I high percentage of the children born were baptized and the baptismal records are usually accurate and provide the best primary source. Regards, Jim Groat ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Brady" <brady.j@att.net> To: <nycolumb@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:45 PM Subject: Re: [NYCOLUMB] Age on a gravestone > Hi Cliff, > > They're two separate thoughts. > > First, when people use "died in his/her Nth year", meaning an actual age > of > N-1, it usually matches up with the known birthdate, as it should by > definition. If you see a case where it's off by one year exactly, I would > question if the user properly understood the difference, was bad at math, > mis-informed or the garvestone was mis-iterpreted. > > Second, the transcriptions of Columbia County inscriptions that I'm using > lately have numerous instances where I look at an entry and "know" the age > or date of death "must" be wrong because it doesn't "equate" to a known > DOB. > > I've thought of posting on this phenomenon to see if others have noticed > this when I saw your post and kind of conflated the two issues. > > Jim > > -----Original Message----- > From: nycolumb-bounces@rootsweb.com > [mailto:nycolumb-bounces@rootsweb.com]On Behalf Of Cliff Lamere > Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:08 PM > To: nycolumb@rootsweb.com > Subject: Re: [NYCOLUMB] Age on a gravestone > > > Jim, > > Just so I am sure, what was "such a regular thing?" Are they regularly > N-1, regularly N, or do they just regularly not match up with what you > already have (for various reasons)? > > Cliff > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > James Brady wrote: > >>When I see so-and-so died in his/her Nth year, I understand his/her actual >>age to be N-1. >> >>I've been working my way through some of the graveyard transcriptions of >>Columbia County and am non-plussed when they don't match up with what I >>already know because it's such a regular thing. >> >>I don't know the absolute reason, but in many cases in may be a bad >>reading >>of the gravestone that causes the date of death, minus the given age, to > not >>match up with the known birthdate. It may be innumeracy. It may be that >>the >>person supplying the info for the marker wasn't knowledgeable. In some > cases >>I can surmise what went wrong and add a note to my citation. In other > cases, >>if it was real importnat to my work, I would want to get another citation >>from another source, say a funeral record or obit. >> >>Jim >> >> >> > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > NYCOLUMB-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes > in the subject and the body of the message > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > NYCOLUMB-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message