Birthday Wishes

A birthdate is one of the most basic facts about an ancestor’s life. Yet determining the correct one can prove quite the challenge for genealogists.

Dates of death are literally carved in stone, and marriage dates have been recorded by churches for hundreds of years. Both regularly appeared in news-papers as obituaries and marriage announcements, respectively.

But birthdates are more likely to be a mystery—perhaps even to the individual him- or herself. People may simply have relied on what they were told by parents and other relatives, particularly before the adoption of government-issued vital records. Some localities kept records as early as the 1600s, but many states didn’t adopt mandatory registration until the late 19th (or even early 20th) century.

The result is a wide variety of records (created throughout a person’s life) that can provide birth information, with each document possibly reporting a different birthdate. How do you discern which is correct?

There isn’t a straightforward answer, and you’ll need to carefully evaluate each record. While you might not be able to determine an exact birthdate, examining records will hopefully provide at least a range of time.

In this article, I’ll share five questions you should ask yourself when comparing birthdates across records. I’ll also share a case study from my own research, in which I sifted through six different birthdates for an ancestor to determine which was the most accurate.

1 WHEN WERE THE RECORDS CREATED?

You can’t guarantee that one type of record will always be