Hello Bob, Several questions arise here... 1) Were both your grandparents living at the same address in 1911? 2) Did they then accurately report their surnames as being different? 3) Alternatively, what was the relationship shown between them? 4) How soon before he enlisted did they marry? What comes to mind is that whatever they may have stated in the 1911 Census, this was - as far as they were concerned - totally confidential, and nobody other than the Enumerators and Summarisers would see their answers. It was a totally private document... However, if they weren't married - and grandfather was volunteering to enlist - then *if* he was killed there'd be little likelihood of a widow's pension for grandmother. It made sense to marry - or at least "go through a form of marriage", for there's also the unanswered question of why didn't they marry earlier? [Might one of them have already been married but undivorced?]. The Marriage Certificate, however, was a Public Document that anyone could see (although I wonder slightly why they didn't merely say that they were "of age" or "over 21"). And I don't know what the maximum age for enlistment was in 1914 - but *if* the 1911 Census details were accurate, then grandfather would've been 34 or 35, which might've "kept him out of the war". OTOH a marriage certificate (to prove his potential widow's entitlement) showing that he was 30 would've been quite acceptable to a Recruiting Officer... Have you found their Birth Registrations to establish just how old they really were? Gus ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Holmes" <holmes@holmesr923.plus.com> To: <WARWICK@rootsweb.com> Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2007 7:00 AM Subject: [WAR] age discrepancy I have just paid out £45 for a copy of the 1911 census and very useful it is too. However,it is difficult to explain away certain age discrepancies: In 1911 ,grandfather is 31 and grandmother is 29 . When they married in 1914-just before he volunteered for the army- the stated ages are 30 and 24! While both could write, was their arithmetic so awful or memory so bad. As she had already declared her real? age in 1911 was their any point in concealment at the marriage. bob holmes ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to WARWICK-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message