Record Inconsistencies

Census and Immigration records revealing details inconsistent with your vital records is more common than you might think.

Passenger manifests and census records fall into a specific category that often contain detail inconsistencies. The main reason for these errors or inconsistencies is the basic chain of communication.

Go back in time and picture the environment of boarding or disembarking a passenger ship in the 19th century. Make a movie in your mind. Leaving one's own native country was not a glamorous or exciting experience especially if they did not speak the language of the country to where they were immigrating. So often the immigrants are in a desperate state of mind. Immigrants were often taken advantage of by customs agents, immigration assistance officers and people on the streets of the ports where they embarked. Some immigrants traveled great distances to catch a ship in one country to a final destination in another. It was exhausting! A trip from England would take at least 40 days, sometimes 60 (two months??! on a ship??). If you left from a port farther away, your trip was obviously going to be longer.

If the ages of the adults appear spot-on but the ages of the children vary, compared to other records you have examined, then you are right to believe that your ancestors might have been dishonest for the reasons you mention. I think dishonesty was a means of survival for many immigrants. If there were daughters, for example, they would be vulnerable to some older male predators or marriage negotiations. If there were sons, they could have been vulnerable to being used for hard labor or indentured servitude. Families needed to look desperate but not too desperate that they would do anything for passage and protecting their children, I imagine, was the highest priority.

The main reason for the inconsistencies is the informant. Who is the person documenting this information? Does this person speak the language of the passengers? If not, the recorder might not understand what they are saying. The passengers might not understand what they are being asked. Does the informant have an interest in the accuracy of the information being recorded? Probably not. They are just trying to get through their day. No one thought that we would be referring to these records in 100 years or more. That's why many passengers are undocumented and many records are lost.

If 30-40 ships are arriving in the port of New York alone each day in the 19th century, imagine being among the crew of people who have to document this occurrence. 2000 people could be disembarking in the span of a week. It is my belief that many of the immigration personnel were not looking for the same particulars back then that the descendants of the passengers are today. Many agents were concerned with nationality and religion because that's what most governments would want to document rather than ages and names. How many Catholics are we admitting into Yankee Boston? Even if these categories are missing on a passenger list, the people in power did not question themselves when making assumptions about the passengers. They had all the power. The immigrants were powerless.

For census records, the informant is also a main point of consideration in accuracy of reporting. Imagine a census taker in the 19th century, going door to door. There was no policy that the person who answers the door is 18 or older or that the person would have knowledge of where their parents were born or what their ages are. Sometimes a grandparent or aunt would be living with a family. Maybe they did not know the family they were living with very well. The family could have come from another country and the aunt could be a US born in-law, again, not knowing the accuracy of particulars on whom she is reporting. And the census taker doesn't care. He/she is not looking for proof, they are just collecting info. The same situation as the embark/disembark environments as in the census as well. Do they speak English? Does the census taker understand them? Do they understand what they are being asked? A census taker isn't investing the time to make sure the information is accurate, they are just doing a job and maybe they forgot their lunch and it's 100 degrees out. So many variables can contribute to inconsistencies in these kinds of documents.

Another point that is important to remember about the past is, in general, it wasn't until the boomer generation that children had a childhood with happy memories and time for play. Especially if you were an immigrant, your biggest concern was survival. Many immigrants did not have money and were often hungry and tired. Remembering a birthday was not a priority and if you were leaving a war-torn country you weren't spending time thinking about how old you are. If you had an extended period of disease or disregulation from sleep and food then you were highly likely to misremember details about your life that did not pertain to surviving tomorrow. If you never celebrated a birthday in your native country, there would be no reason to remember your age. It's hard to believe but if you were not a member of the upper class, then you didn't really count. People came to the states to have more than that. And if you were a member of the upper class, there would be little reason for you to change that environment.

Also, parents did not discuss their childhoods very often with their kids and other descendants. Especially if they were immigrants, the reason for them leaving their country was unpleasant and remembering the past was not a regular behavior. Think about your grandparents or aunts or uncles. Some of us do have stories that were passed down but in my work there are many people who will say "my grandmother never talked about her parents" or "my mother said her father never talked about his brother who died as a child". We have these missing links even in a generation or two before us so imagine how little our ancestors would know about their own ancestry.