USBH 1880: What to do when the census entry is wrong and no other sources are found?

Question

I'm working on the USBH 1880 project in Yalobusha County, Mississippi. There is a census entry for Sarah Wade, age 26, with daughter Mary Newton, age 18. (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M4PZ-R96) The writing is pretty clear. I have done several searches to try to find other records and have found none.  

I hate to enter the information exactly as found, but I hate to change it more.  I'm going to have to click through the screen telling me that a parent needs to be more than 8 years older than the child.  Do I just do it?  Anyone else able to find more info about these two?

Answer 1

Sarah is listed as born in TN, and Mary's parents are from Mississippi...Mary could be a stepdaughter.

Personally, I would create them as separate profiles, and provide an explanation and links to the other profiles in the Research Notes.

Also, could Mary Hoston be a possible match in the 1870 census?

Comments

Everyone's answers were good, but the observation about the parents' places of birth was wonderful.  Sometimes I see this stuff and sometimes I'm just tired and miss it.

Answer 2

I think I would link them to each other in the bios, and not as mother-daughter. Since Sarah Wade is divorced, perhaps Mary Newton is her stepchild. I'd put Wade as Sarah's LNAB (Unknown is also an option, but she may be going by her maiden name, and this saves an LNAB change, potentially)

Answer 3

You can always create them as single profiles that are not connected as mother/daughter. Then in the bio add a research note about the relationship in the 1880 census that is impossible, with a link to the other profile (some like "Sarah's 1880 census record says she was the mother of [[Newton-123|Mary Newton]], but she was not old enough to be her mother - she would have only been 8 when Mary was born."). That way people can find/navigate to the other profile, but they're not connected in an impossible relationship.

Or you can skip them for now and come back when the county is getting close to being finished - sometimes as you build out more families from the community you find information that helps identify people like this and connect them up to their family members.

Answer 4

Another consideration is that the ages given in the census might be wrong.  The records I've been working on in New York state are often wildly inconsistent from one census year to the next. (Not to mention spelling!)  Sometimes I have found more records by widening the birthyear range when searching.

Comments

All so true.  Yet absent another record it's all speculative--which is what I was struggling with.  The observation that Mary's mother's place of birth didn't match Sarah's place of birth combined with the closeness of their ages was enough for me to justify not connecting them.  And it was all there in an available document.