This is a message I received from one of the other mailing lists that I am a member of. It is in reference to the misinformation that has been discussed. I found it to be interesting... I have a friend who is 96. She says that when she was a child and the Census taker came around, they took the word of whomever they could find at home. She said that at 5 years old, she just guessed at everyone's age and birthdate. When she got older, she deliberately switched birthdates with her brother because he wanted to sign up for military duty when he was 2 years underage. Later, she had an awful time getting it straightened out with Social Security when she wanted to retire at 65 and they thought she was 63. Evidently, the Census data, right or wrong was a legal proof of age for some purposes. I used to worry a lot about not having the exact dates correct on an ancestor match but now I just smile and shake my head, especially when I have high confidence in the rest of the data.> What good insight into some of the reasons for Inaccuracy of census data, especially dates. I've always been told the census is an unreliable source because of the tendency of people to tell "white lies" such as illustrated here or, more importantly, to maintain appearances. The census taker is likely a neighbor and, although the census data are supposed to be private, how could one resist juicy information? I always try to find families in more than one census and compare the implied birthdates. In one family, there were two daughters who seemed destined to become old maids. It was interesting that they did not advance 10 years with the last census I found. More like two or three, and it can be presumed either they or their parents still held out hopes. Both funny and true.