Birth date doesn't match age at date of death

By JeffH13 on Wed, 08/07/2024 - 16:17

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Did people use to calculate age at death differently than we do today?  Specifically, did they not count the day the person died?

I have seen a number of records like the attached in which that seems to be the case.  Or was it just miscalculated?

The attached record states Walter was born Mar. 30, 1875 and died  Aug. 28, 1941 at the age of 66 years, 4 months, and 28 days.

If one considers the birth and death dates to be correct then the age should be ... 29 days.  (By my calculation and that of my genealogy software.)

Frequently we will have an obit with death date and precise age, resulting in a calculated birth date which turns out to be 1 day later than other known sources (because seemingly the actual death day wasn't counted in the age).

In the case of the attached Walter Joseph Bodger, his WW I draft registration states a birth date (which he would have provided himself) which is the same as his death record.  Therefore, I conclude that the age on the death record is wrong.

If someone was born 1 March 2000 and died 1 March 2024, we say he/she lived exactly 24 years, not a day less.

Thanks,
Jeff
 

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Walter Joseph Bodger death certificate

Submitted byEEon Thu, 08/08/2024 - 08:20

Hello, JeffH13.  Different cultures do calculate age differently. In some cultures, for example, we're considered to be 1 year old at birth (having gone through nearly a year of gestation).  In the situation you describe, it's more an issue of how individuals do this-or-that. Some might count the day of death in tallying the days one lived, and some might not. Some, if they knew the deceased's hour of birth, as well as the day, might not include the day of death in the calculation if the hour of birth had not yet arrived.

The takeaways for us are these:

  • Humans don't tend to live by rigid rules in every aspect of life. Civil government has always imposed rules and churches/social groups have their rules for membership. For all the other mundane things of life, humans have tended to do what they pleased or what seemed logical. 
  • As researchers who reconstruct past lives, we strive to assemble all records created by the person-of-interest, correlate all details, and then reach conclusions on each point--conclusions that we explain in our research notes. It's issues such as this one you've raised that teach us "proof" and "facts" aren't decided by a single document.