Issue with Ages on Staffordshire Marriage Index
I noticed marriage licenses in this index set have most people as 21 years old because that was "full age" to be married. In reality, most were not that exact age. I used 1810 as the restriction in my example, but it's like that for the the other years as well, e.g. 1850.
I see there's a note here about "full age," but it's not explicitly said that the index itself simply recorded 21 for entries with that designation. I understand that the index might not be changeable, but could that note be amended or some warning applied? An incorrect birth year causes a lot of confusion!
Thank you.
Answers
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Minor detail: When I look in FindMyPast at the John Reece example quoted by @GFre, the image of the original actually has "aged 21 years and upwards", so 21 hasn't been indexed as a substitute for "full age". (There isn't any reference to age on the actual marriage record). The bit "and upwards" is pre-printed and I've seen it on licences used by other dioceses, but how prevalent it is across the UK, I've no idea.
Personally, I've always been very way of these "aged 21 years and upwards" entries, as I suspect GFre is, and interpret them simply as "not a minor". (In fact, I'm always suspicious of an age of 21 anywhere!)
Ideally, I would agree that people ought to know that
- Both "full age" and "aged 21 years and upwards" simply mean "not a minor";
- "Age 21" in the FamilySearch index may mean that "aged 21 years and upwards" appears on the original and the image of the original should be consulted. That may not be financially possible, of course.
I don't know the best place to put such warnings.
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I once raised this issue under the former "Indexing" category of Community. An experienced indexer responded that he felt it to be quite in order to index an age as "21" when the original record recorded the commonly found "upwards of 21" (or variant phrase). As far as he (and I believe "project instructions") was concerned, it was better to record the number that was written, rather than leave the age field blank.
Unfortunately, this attitude - which originally caused me no end of confusion (until I became familiar with the original documents' wording) is often applied by Family Tree users. Many deduct 21 years (sometimes 25 for the male!) from the known date of marriage and enter that as the year of birth in the Birth field (in the Vitals section). Very misleading when I have eventually found these individuals actually married at around 40 (or even 60) years of age.
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As marriage records may have the only clues about female ancestors with their surnames, family witnesses, etc., it's particularly unfortunate to have unsaid rules potentially causing brick walls. I know that I had dismissed a record for a long time, despite being a strong match, because the bride would've been about 21, but the groom was closer to 29. The "birth year" also being present seems especially concrete and misleading to me.
I'm sorry to hear, @Paul W, that this has been brought up before. I hope something can be done to help make this rule more obvious. I couldn't find mention of it even in the research wiki.
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