The age of the census

Have you ever lied about your age?  Have you ever had to think carefully and check your current age before quoting it?  Or have you ever simply made a mistake when writing your age or date or birth?  Sometimes one just wants to give an imprecise answer - "21 again!"

My great-great-great-grandmother Charlotte Stockwell seems to have given imprecise answers.  There is record of her baptism on 11 July 1819.  Subsequently,

• 1841 census - age 19  -  actually age 21 - living with her parents.
• 1851 census - age 31  -  right, for once - living with 30 year old Peter and 2 young sons.
• 1861 census - age 30  -  11 years missing - living with 38 year old Peter and 3 sons.
• 1871 census - age 49  -  nearly caught up, just 2 years missing - living with 51 year old Peter.
• 1881 census - age 58  -  only 9 years more than last census - widow living in the household of her son Robert who had lost his wife and had 3 children to care for, as mentioned in Vital events.
• 1891 census - age 72  -  a rare overestimate, although only by 1 year - head of her household with a boarder, a 54 year old single man.
• 1901 census - age 72  -  same age as the previous census, and the same lodger.
• 1908 death - age 79  -  actually the ripe old age of 89 - her son Robert was the informant for the registration.

From those records, the estimated year of birth would be a range between about 1818-1831.  Meanwhile, her surname starts out as Stockwell but in later years appears in the census records and variety of transcripts as: Maquay, Magnay, Magway; Quay; Macquay, Marguay, MacGuay; Mc Quay, Mcquay and McQuay.   That seems like a lot for one person, although it is a subset of all McQuay name variants.

So, this short summary represents a long journey, over many years, a triumph over diversity of counting and spelling.  To finally have the up-to-date set of census records for this great-great-great-grandmother seems like a significant achievement.

Each ancestor's recorded age, references to date of birth, surname, relations and location are all key to my family history hobby.  However, in their day they probably never imaged that records about them would be cross-checked and analysed by a clerk with a computing machine.  In my day I can only glimpse concerns that Charlotte faced that were far greater than getting her age recorded accurately on successive census records.