[APG Public List] Ancestry Public Trees Use of Census Ages pre-1850

[Rolgeiger at aol.com]

In einer eMail vom 05.04.2010 23:05:40 Westeuropäische Normalzeit schreibt  
clsheets1 at yahoo.com:

I'm not  much of a fan of Ancestry trees, but they do not compute ages from 
census  records.  They compute the age from what one enters as a birth  
date.  If you enter "abt 1780" as a birth date, then yes, it will tell  you the 
person is age 50 at the time of the 1830 census, but if you leave the  
birth date blank, there is no age shown for the 1830 census  event.


Hello, Connie, 
 
What you write is quite true. But this recording this date with "abt" is a  
common thing to record in your tree in case you don't have anything clearly 
or  near clearly at all. I have a big file containing some 50,000 people 
from long  ago to a moment ago. Thus when I record a person I will give her a 
birth date.  If I don't have one, I will provide an estimate of may 25 years 
before the birth  of the oldest child or between 20 and 25 years before 
marriage. Or 50 years  before death - or an estimate relating to the events 
which lead me to that  person. It will always be an estimate - therefore it has 
that "abt". But viewing  my long list of people with that particular name 
when I record another person  with that name I'll have a chance to say "well, 
it could be that person  here born about then-and-then". Otherwise you have 
nothing but a long list of  people with no dates at all and you have to 
check one by one to see whether she  might be the one you're looking for. Well, 
that's what I do using the German  version of family tree maker 2005 (I 
don't like the younger versions).
 
Yours
 
Roland Geiger, St. Wendel, Germany
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