Читать книгу Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy: The definitive reference guide to tracing your family history - Nick Barratt - Страница 186

It was not uncommon for ancestors to provide inaccurate details when filling in the schedule forms. This could be for a variety of reasons:

• A different name was given. Although your ancestor’s official name might have been Jennifer Sarah Marks, she could have been commonly known as Sally and be recorded under that name. People could always use their middle names as their first names or vice versa. Check both if you are having problems.

• Ages were inaccurate. Sometimes teenagers would register as older than they were so that they could work at an earlier age than was legal. Other times, people would give younger ages for reasons of vanity (especially when there were large age gaps in marriages). Alternatively, people might simply not remember their exact year of birth.

• Covering up family secrets. The most common secret a family might wish to conceal would be illegitimacy, and information might have been tweaked to hide this. For example a child may appear to be a year or two younger on the census than was the case, to mask a birth outside wedlock. Another possibility is an untruthful relationship, whereby an illegitimate grandchild of the head of the household may be recorded as their child to avoid scandal.

Bear all this in mind when searching for your ancestor. Most of the search facilities on the various websites allow people to filter the results with as much or as little detail as possible so you can allow for such inaccuracies when searching.