For the past two weeks, many NEHGS staff members celebrated birthdays, bringing to mind my birthday celebration last year. At the restaurant, our waiter announced my birthday to the entire restaurant and led them in singing to me. While that was embarrassing, it was fine until he asked my age. I answered with the old adage, “You know, it’s not polite to ask a lady her age.” As a genealogist, however, that answer left me feeling disappointed in myself. Where would we be today if our ancestors always responded to that question in such a way?
Besides our names, perhaps the most identifying pieces of information about us involves our age and/or birth date, which is why most forms and official questionnaires ask participants for just that information. This becomes useful to us as researchers. We search these documents for the Andrew and Mary Smith in Pittsburgh who were born about 1878 or 1879, and weed out others born earlier or later.
Knowing a person’s age at any given time provides us with clues about what he or she might have been doing then. Was the person old enough to marry, buy land, serve in the military, or was that person too old to be having children? Andrew Smith and Mary Dornburg would have turned 18 in 1896 and 1897, respectively. That gave me a better idea of when to look for their marriage, which turned out to have occurred over the border in Ohio in 1898.
We also use a person’s age to work backwards to find the birth date. This can lead to identifying that person’s parents and other useful information. Although Mary’s marriage record did not list her parents’ names, it confirmed that she was 19 in 1898. Looking for Mary Dornburg, aged about one, in the 1880 federal census led to an eleven-month-old Mary, daughter of Frank and Saville Dunbaugh. Mary Smith had a daughter, who could have been named for this mother. Sure enough, upon tracing “Saville Dunbaugh,” I found the obituary for “Sebilla (Herzog) Dornburg” naming one of her surviving daughters as Mary Smith.
At some point, each of us has been frustrated by that elusive ancestor who either didn’t know his or her own age or lied about it. We have been thwarted by these inconsistencies and even the magical de-aging of women (in particular). Sometimes, the trouble comes from the record-keepers. In my experience, Americans in the nineteenth century were more fluid in regards to recording ages in census records, while Scandinavian censuses featured consistently accurate ages. With a surname like Smith, I actually lucked out with the regularity in recording ages for Andrew and Mary.
Since I do not wish to lose my identity when researchers many years from now try to follow my life journey, I will be as precise as I can be about my age on any and all future documentation. Time will tell if I answer differently next time someone casually asks my age. For now, I leave this hint: shortly before 2100, like Bilbo Baggins, I hope to exclaim proudly, “Today is my one hundred and eleventh birthday!”
 Jefferson County, Ohio, Marriage records, 14: 496 [Family History Library film 0900,077].
 1880 U.S. Census, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, roll 1092, ED 125, p. 19.
 “Death Notices,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Thursday, 5 March 1936, p. 9.
3 thoughts on ““Ask a lady her age!””
Delightful story on why being complete and honest about age in public records matters. When the 1940 census came out, I was able to find all my relatives except one great aunt. I knew her date of birth, and the small town where she was living that year. She had an unusual first name–Twila, and even trying all possible spellings didn’t turn her up. Then someone looked for her for me, and there she was. My problem had been in putting in the age I knew she was. She was lying! I didn’t realize she was already engaged, or at least seriously involved with, the man she’d marry two years later. He was seven years younger than she, so she made herself six years older than she was! By giving a range that was too narrow, I’d missed her. Twila didn’t stop lying about her age. She had her only child at the age of 45, and never told her daughter her actual age. A physical education teacher, she looked much younger than she was, so she got away with the lies. Sometime after her husband died young, one of Twila’s many sisters felt sorry for her daughter, and told her the truth about her mother’s age. The daughter was relieved to know the truth, at last. It didn’t seem to affect their relationship. Twila continued to lie on the census, as near as we can tell, but her obit and her gravestone are correct. Her daughter must have wanted to set the record straight!
I should have said Twila continued to lie on official records, since we don’t yet have the 1950 census! She lived into the 1960s, when she was in her 90s. They were a very long lived family.
My female ancestors on my mother’s side consistently lied about their age at every possible turn. In the family their vanity has become a running joke. Admittedly they were beautiful and never looked their ages, but, it has made for some difficult searching.