Links to a few of our most popular features
Birth Date
Calculator
This calculator is
a useful tool for genealogists. It is designed to calculate the birth date
when the age at death and the date of death are the only facts known. As
we all know this is often the only information recorded on older headstones.
Note regarding Birth Date Calculator:
While doing some testing on this with 30+ death certificates
already containing a birth date, death date, and age, I have found it to
be only 39% accurate. It was 1-3 days off 38.5% of the time and more
than 3 days the remaining 22.5%. No one really knows
exactly how stonecutter's figured the age of the person. Did
they use a formula, count off the days between birth and death, did they
figure in Labor Day? Varying methods could have been used. A
friend has a different method of calculating a birth date and
running the same test, found it to be only 22.5% accurate! These
methods work ok for approximate birth dates, but it should be understood
that these date's are most likely not correct. In running a
several step process from when the stonecutter first figures the
age from the birth date and carves the date on the stone and then someone
tries to do just the opposite, there is lots of room to make errors
along the way.