RootsChat.Com

Further back in time (1600s and 1700s), I'm always sceptical of extreme old age noted in parish registers. I think in an age where most people were illiterate and innumerate, and when there were no  bureaucratic reasons to recall your date of birth, it would be much easier to lose track of age.

I imagine some elderly people estimated their age based on other dates - a monarch's death for example, or born a certain number of years after a sibling. Of course if family members were the ones estimating an elderly/deceased relative's age, that creates further opportunity for inaccuracy.

I want to find out whether my 102-year-old ancestor who died in 1820 was really 102.

It must just be an error or some sort of placeholder.

It can't possibly be anything new, since ancestry appears to have stopped adding fresh material to its UK collections.

In my experience a lack of age on a Family Search record doesn't mean there isn't one in the original register. Several nearby parishes in Norfolk include ages from time to time in the late 1700s, I'm curious if Runcton Holme is one of them.

The reason an age would be useful is to confirm that this is the correct Margaret, as I know everything about her, except for the date of her death. She was born in 1687 and would be 88 in 1775, which is making me extra cautious in linking this burial to her.

I believe it is.

I love those archaic Cs!