When a tombstone or cemetery office record tells us the age of a person at their death, we know what that means. But, what if the stone says "died March 4, 1902 in his 60th year"? Do you realize that the person was only 59 years old when he died? I child who is 14 months old is in its second year of life, but it is only 1 year old. Using the same reasoning, a 59 year old is in his or her 60th year of life. Genealogists who are not familiar with this distinction, sometimes misreport death information. I don't have much experience transcribing tombstones. Perhaps someone with more experience knows of other pitfalls that should be mentioned. Sometimes a stone may say AE. 60. I used to think that it was just an abbreviation for the word 'age'. Actually, it is an abbreviation for the Latin word Aetas (or a closely similar word such as Aetatis), which means 'age, lifetime, years'. In effect, therefore, it does mean age, which is 60 in this case. One might think that the use of Latin on gravestones would occur mainly on Catholic stones. Perhaps, but it also occurs on the stones of Protestants. I have not heard these ideas discussed on any mailing list, so I thought that they would be worth mentioning. Cliff