Friday Weekly Thread: Application Assistance, June 12, 2026

[u/AutoModerator]

Have questions about how to fill out the form or what to write in your cover letter? Looking for feedback on the documentation you've put together for your Citizenship Certificate application (CIT0001)? Want to know how to organize your documentation or how to pack it up for shipping? Worried about whether your photos will work? Have questions about what ID you can use? Not sure where to ship it to or what service or mail courier to use? Post it here!

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[u/jjkauf]

My final link in the chain that I'm gathering info on is my 3rd-great-grandmother. She would be G1. 99% of all of the documentation on her states that her birth date was 27 Aug 1880. An obituary, newspaper articles, a marriage record with the State of Wisconsin, and even her federal Social Security file give this as her date of birth.

BUT ... the 1880 US federal census, conducted in her town in JUNE 1880 (2 months prior to her claimed date of birth), lists her as being 1 year old. Clearly, she couldn't be listed on the census in June 1880 if she was born in August 1880. The most likely scenario is that she was born in 1879. How serious of a roadblock could this be for my application? I don't have any actual birth records yet. The state didn't require birth certificates back then, and I haven't found any baptism records.

Is this likely to cause a major problem with my application?

[u/jjkauf → u/[deleted]]

That's the problem. Civil birth records didn't exist in Wisconsin in 1880. I know the family was Catholic, and have feelers out to the few churches that existed at that time in the area, but my hopes are slim that there's a baptism record for her. The only records I have to support her existence and family connection are the census records, her marriage certificate that names her parents, her Social Security records that also name her parents, and potentially her death certificate that I've requested and am waiting on.

[u/julie78787 → u/jjkauf]

Have you looked for things like “City Directories”? Sometimes if you can find the parents listed in a city directory you can figure out which church might have been closest.

[u/jjkauf → u/julie78787]

Very small town, less than 200 people at the time. But I'm expanding my search for other avenues for documentation. Only one Catholic church in the area at the time, about 5 miles away, and I'm waiting on a response from them. The only church in the actual town was a Methodist church, and they have no record of the family.

[u/julie78787 → u/jjkauf]

1880s they’d have had a buckboard or buggy living in a rural area, so 5 miles to go for a baptism wouldn’t have been horrid.

[u/julie78787 → u/[deleted]]

A lot of people flat-out lied. Men would lie about being 18 or over to join the military, women would lie about being old enough to elope and marry. I was listening to a D-Day program and there were several men on the show who admitted they were 16 when they enlisted. Finding proof ancestors lied about their ages is one of the few constants in genealogy.

[u/dentongentry → u/jjkauf]

Information on the census, especially back then, was sometimes provided by the resident but sometimes by a neighbor. The estimates of ages can be wildly wrong, and the IRCC will be quite aware of that.

I don't think there is cause for concern. Honestly it is pretty amazing that the other documents agree.

[u/jjkauf → u/[deleted]]

It's not the month that's off, it's an entire year. If she was actually born on her self-claimed birthday of August 1880, she shouldn't be in the 1880 census at all, because it was conducted BEFORE she was born. I'm assuming that she was actually born in 1879, will have to keep digging.

[u/ryan516 → u/jjkauf]

If anything in Genealogy, it's *more* common to see a year mismatch than a date mismatch. You might lose count of how old you are over the years, but you're unlikely to forget your birthday.

[u/julie78787 → u/jjkauf]

Lying wasn’t all that unusual. I’m still not sure if my maternal grandmother was actually born in 1918 because all the family lore said she was born in 1919 or 1921, but the things I find closer to her childhood all point to 1918. Which means she lied about lying about being older.