I know what you mean, Erin. But what I do notice is that many times those younger children tend to age on a different time frame than the elders. So many times I've seen a child age from 6 yrs in one year, to 10 yrs old in the next census. I've grown to believe there was some kind of different way of counting time than they do now, it's that bad. I've heard, though, that sometimes the families didn't tell the children's real ages to keep them from being bonded out, which could also be a reason. And of course, as you know, we're always faced with the bad spelling of the census taker; I was just looking at a page where a son was listed as "Oval G." when his real name was "Cofield G.", the "G" was for "Gideon". Lord help us all looking at these census pages.

Deloris