On a research trip to Pennsylvania, we found this letter attesting to the fact that Daniel Clifford Davies was born in Pennsylvania in 1896. He was attempting to obtain a delayed certificate of birth.
This wasn't quite the truth since we had found his 1891 birth certificate while on a trip to Wales.
I guess women aren't the only ones that lie about their age, but at least we admit where we were born.
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2 comments:
That's very fascinating! Do you know his reasons for trying to get a birth certificate that showed his birth in the U.S. and at a later date? The picture you posted seems to look like a WWI service uniform -- I admit my first thought was that he might have been trying to be "younger" so that he could better attempt to avoid serving in the Great War.
I have an ancestor's nephew who did this but he made himself older in order to serve in the Civil War.
It is always intriguing to find an ancestor doing something like this and it certainly makes you curious!
Patti;
It is intriguing. He willingly served in WWI...so it wasn't to avoid the military. He wasn't the only one of the children to claim US birth. I assume he did this (as did the others) because US citizenship was preferred to foreign birth. I believe he may have made himself younger so that he could claim to have been born after his parents arrived in the US. But that's speculation. Our ancestors didn't make it easy :-)
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