During the post-WWII period, my parents were set up on a blind date by his aunt Mary and her aunt Rose. Today I want to write about a discovery I made while looking into original documents for my great aunt Mary.
All these years, I've believed the Social Security app info about Mary's birth date, knowing that Mary herself would have self-reported the info when she registered for Social Security back in July of 1963 (see transcribed record above). In fact I planned to write about Mary's 128th birthday for today's blog post.
Then I decided to look for Mary's original birth record, using the FREE New York City Municipal Archives Historical Vital Records site. I had the birth cert number from Ancestry, plugged it in with the year and the borough, and you can see what I saw right here. Or look at the cert below.
Without a doubt this is great aunt Mary's birth cert. Her surname spelled creatively (Maller, not Mahler) but her father was indeed Meyer (here, Mayer) although the mother's name is mangled (maiden name was Jacobs not Jacobson, first name was Tillie, not Mary). The home address is absolutely correct, the number of children born to the mother tallies.
Now I know I should have celebrated Mary's 128th birthday on July 11th, not July 23d. The lesson is to check the original document created as close to the actual event as possible. Interestingly, the Social Security Death Index shows Mary's birth date as July 11, 1896, in conflict with what Mary self-reported on her Social Security application. In the end, the original birth cert (not a transcription, not an extract) is the most solid and reliable evidence of a birth date.
I'm shocked she changed the date. I wonder why??
ReplyDeleteMaybe Mary didn't know the exact date or maybe there was a tradition in the family of celebrating at a particular time. We'll never know why!!
DeleteTo your comment above, I think you're right about not knowing the exact date. I have a similar discrepancy in my post today about conflicting arrival dates to the U.S. I think it's unlikely that our ancestors who were illiterate had a good handle on exact dates. They couldn't read a calendar - if they had one - and didn't write dates down anywhere. How could they keep track.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE original records!!
Was the SS App INDEX, the only record that showed the 23rd, or did she give her birthdate (as known by family) as the 23rd? Great job! Yes, NEVER use the index as an only source, ALWAYS look at the original. :)
ReplyDeleteGood reminder that even when we have what we think is a valid primary source, it may not be correct.
ReplyDelete