What a wonderful story, Carolyn!

"Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are." 

--Chinese Proverb



"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page."

--Saint Augustine



"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."

--Soren Kierkegaard



"One of the tragedies of life is the murder of a beautiful theory by a brutal gang of facts" - La Rochefoucauld



"As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to live it more and more."

--Jules Renard

--- On Tue, 5/18/10, Carolyn Bruce <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

From: Carolyn Bruce <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [VA-ROOTS] reliable sources
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Tuesday, May 18, 2010, 2:35 PM

My great-grandfather Byrd (also Bird and Burd) SMITH was born 17 Oct 1841. In 1850 he was listed on the census as being aged eight, which was correct since he hadn't yet had his birthday that year. Ten years later, he was listed as being 13! He had lost five years between censuses! I think I have figured out why... his mother died in 1857. His step-mother thought, because he was of small stature, that he was younger than his brother John, when in fact he was older. When the Civil War erupted, he was thought to be too young for service, and wasn't enlisted until near the end of the war. He married in 1864, thinking he was 16, when actually he was 22. He and his wife had at least five children, and he was widowed in 1899. Thinking the old fellow was going to just fade away, they were quite surprised when about 1903 he remarried and had another family of seven children. He died at age 88, 31 Aug 1929, never knowing his true age.

Carolyn HALE BRUCE
Virginia Beach, VA

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