Good Day edward,
Just for your knowledge I am below giving you the experience gathered from
another researcher in another Forum as an example what you can find
everywhere.
Although education opportunities might have been scarce for some
inhabitants, the dialect spoken there, the missing of documentation in
general to be presented at any event etc. might have yielded those
discrepancies you found...
Good Luck
Victor I. Mueller - Sao Paulo Brazil
vmueller@vimtrade.com.br
Taken from another Genealogical Forum !
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I'm no expert on this, but my experience with all my ancestors, whether
German or Scot Irish---is that they were not terribly concerned with the
year of their birth. They have been inconsistent with their age on the
various census rolls for sure---and the year of immigration (1883) got a bit
fuzzy in their minds as the years passed. My baby-book records had all
wrong dates, as info was related to my mother.
My great grandfather Johann Joseph WILLMS birth year (have orig. records
now) was Feb. 1858, Blankenheim, Germ, but the year 1859 was often used and
sometimes 1860---even by his wife in his 1909 obituary in Guttenberg, Iowa.
Speaking of his wife, Magdalena (Anna Helena) PAULY, born 1856, (orig.
records) Ripsdorf, Germ.--her birth year/age appeared on census rolls as
anywhere from 1859 to 1861. She might have fudged on her age so long she
forgot her year of birth--who knows. And their son, born Heinrich Joseph,
Jan. 1882, Blankenheim, Germany (orig. records) forgot how old he was. He
became Joseph Henry WILLIAMS in America--and all his siblings were given the
surname WILLIAMS. I'm not sure his parents celebrated birthdays or ever made
a point to make him aware of his birth year---until he had to fill out some
governmental form probably. When he died in 1964, his brother and family in
Iowa showed him to be have been born in Wisconsin (where his parents
settled) and in the year 1884---rather than 1883 in Germany. His own brother
did not know.
You just have to remain flexible when it comes to ages---and also spelling
of their names. I grew up being told my dad that his WILLIAMS family had
anglicized their name from WILHELM to WILLIAMS. I suppose when his
grandmother told him the family name was WILLMS, it sounded like WILHELM to
him.
When a government census taker asked for a name and the person could not
speak or read English very well, or had no formal spelling for their
surname, the official likely wrote down the name the best he could, as the
name sounded--phonetically. Imagine, if you will, my Parthenia ANDREWS
great-great grandmother down in Georgia telling the census taker her
name----"Ahhmm tellin' ya, mah naim is Bahtheenna Ahnndruss," thus her given
name has appeared as Berthena, Barthenia, Berthena, Parnelia, Partheny and
Pertunni--and her surname has appeared as ANDRES and ANDRUS and eventually
became ANDERS when the family settled in eastern Arkansas! Her parents,
Michael ANDREWS and Parthenia ended up on the 1860 census in Monroe Co., AR
as ADAMS--I was lucky to find that one and only did find it with a line by
line search!
Our newly discovered relatives in Munstereifel, Germany tell us it was quite
fashionable to spell one's name phonetically---the more ways you could write
/ spell you name was a mark of an educated person. Has anyone else heard
this? All I can say is that it appears to be true because our PAULY name
appears sometimes as PAULI in records---and the RIQUIER name is sometimes
RIQUIR, RIQUER and even RIQUIS when the Old German is misread.
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