Samuel Jones, b 1825 Clearwell ? (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Tuesday, June 06, 2017, 16:23 (2514 days ago) @ Sonia

Thank you for your help. I did see the 1851 census and I did think it was the same
Samuel Jones married to Sarah Stephens that went on to marry my husbands great grandmother Matilda Thomas. The confusing points were that there was ten years between Sarah's first two children and her last two. I did look into her hospital records and she was in the hospital numerous times because of her illness. The mother in laws name change on the different census records also was confusing. Samuel's age changes two to five years on some of the records. Is it common for variances in age as much as five years or more?

Hi Sonia, glad we could be of help fleshing-out your family. A quick reply for now:

Regarding the 10 years gap between births, are you looking at just those children named on Census forms, or do you include more you may have found from Birth/baptism records ?
If just the former, I guess there may have been more children born, but maybe they were staying in other households (family, friends) at the time of the Census, possibly as a result of Sarah's illness or stay in hospital ?. Again, if you're going from just the Census records, in those days even for healthy mothers infant mortality rates were very high, so maybe Sarah had more babies who didn't live to see the next Census ?.
I don't know what Sarah's illness was; could this have been caused by the stress of her losing babies, OR, could babies/infants have died as a result of her illness... ??

Eitherway, unlike nowadays, it wasn't unusual in those times for working-class families to have several children born over several years; for example my grandmother was the last of 13 children born over a 26 year period, all into a coalminer's family from Lydbrook (with occasional dips into Monmouthshire), this wasn't unusual in my experience.

Ref variations in ages, this is a regular forum query. I'm unsure as to what records you're comparing between, but note that ages in the 1841 Census were often rounded-up or down to the nearest 5 years. The later Census' recorded precise ages, but don't forget those ages recorded on the form were whatever the family told the census official, and they weren't checked against any other sources. Hence apparent age variations between Census years did occur, depending on people's own records, memories, or even standard of education - there were no National Databases etc etc to remind them.
Census ages also varied to depending on an individual's personal "vanity" - often ladies would lose a few years if approaching the "magic" ages of 30 and 40 etc, yet they sometimes gain a few years when in their old age, when seniority was seen to be a good thing. Also, if a couple married particularly young, or with a wide age disparity between man & wife, again sometimes they might massage their ages, both in front of their neighbours and hence in public records like Census'.

Hope this helps, J.