In my last post, Visualizing Birth Evidence , I used date ranges calculated from an age on a particular date. It took me a long time to wrap my mind around this but now that I understand how it works, I find it much more useful than just subtracting an age from a year and it isn't that much harder to do. Let's use Frank M. Smith as an example. On 2 July 1885, he stated, under oath, that he was forty-eight years old. [1] Subtracting 48 from 1885, I get 1837. (To easily do this in my head, I subtract 40 from 1885 and get 1845. Then, because I can't take 8 from 5, I take 8 from 15 and get 7 and just reduce the 10s by 1 to get 38 instead of 48. And, I try to remember to add things back up to double-check my mental math.) So, if 2 July 1885 happened to be Frank's birthday, he would have been born on 2 July 1837. And, in fact, if he had been born any time between 1 January 1837 and 2 July 1837, he would have already turn 48 by 2 July 1885. But what if he happened t
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