Genealogy Chat

I was reading an article in one of the monthly magazines about finding people in the 1841 census. Many times i see on here people say to round the ages down by 5yrs. The article stated.. Only the parents ages are to be rounded down by 5 years and not the childrens dates.

Mark, this is what the policy was SUPPOSED to be:

In the 1841 Census a policy of rounding down ages was in place. As such, people aged:

15-19 were recorded as 15
20-24 were recorded as 20
25-29 were recorded as 25
30-34 were recorded as 30
35-39 were recorded as 35...and so on

But, many of us have seen anomalies such as people's exact ages shown without any rounding, children aged e.g. 13 rounded down to 10 and so forth. Although that was the policy, the enumerators sometimes applied their own!

From fmp:-

In the 1841 Census a policy of rounding down ages was in place. As such, people aged:
15-19 were recorded as 15
20-24 were recorded as 20
25-29 were recorded as 25
30-34 were recorded as 30
35-39 were recorded as 35...and so on

However, a lot depended on the enumerator.

I have found that ALL my family with the exception of one of my g/g/grandmothers had their ages listed correctly. Hers was way way out. But it remained like that until her husband died and then she reverted to her correct age. It would seem that she was about 7-11 years older than her husband. Like me she had a toy boy!!!

My 3x great grandfather is listed with correct age in 1841-1901 census he was born 1826 and died 1907

Mark, your 3x gt. grandfather would be listed with the correct age in 1841 because he happened to b 15, no rounding down needed.

It can cause confusion if you aren't aware of the system.

One branch of my family had 15 year old triplets! That is, until a later census made their correct ages 15, 17 and 19.

The problem though is that you always have to be aware that the rounding down was not always adhered to!

Of course, the give away that the 1841 enumerator did as he was supposed to do is the the ages of people over the age of 15 always end in either 5 or 0 .................


........... but I'd like to guess that around 15-20% of the 1841 census records that I have looked at over the last 8 years have NOT been rounded down!


I would like to point out to Mark, though, that the vast majority of helpers usually say something along the lines of the following .............

Please remember that on the 1841 Census, the ages of people over the age of 15 were supposed to be rounded down to the nearest 5 ................ so that they could be as much as 4 years older than the census shows them to be

many of us then give examples.


That is almost exactly what the article you read said ...........

............ so I fail to see why you are now querying it?


In exactly the same way, the birth year for someone on any other census may be as much as 2 years out, although more often it is only 1 year "wrong"

That results from the fact that the census asked for peoples ages.

The modern transcriptions require a year of birth, so the transcriber has to translate age to year of birth.

accuracy depends on when a person's birth date was compared with the date that the census was taken.


All ages given on any census do depend on the person knowing how old he or she was, and if the knew the ages of their children!