My maternal grandparents are in their mid 90s, my paternal grandfather passed away a week before her 97th birthday.
A lot can happen within a century and there's usually hardly anyone alive to confirm some facts. My paternal grandmother's birth certificate was gone before the end of WW2 and when asked she would give an age six years younger - initially it was to prevent a scandal because not only was my grandfather of lower status (Pah! "Just" a doctor! Scandalous, I daresay!), he was younger.
As for my maternal grandparents their age is confirmed by their marriage certificate(would be harder to obtain one with this date as a younger person), children in their late 60s and living siblings of my grandpa, of whom there are seven.
Family history is funny like that. I have a few (usually female) ancestors who, according to censuses, just don’t age at quite the same rate as other people :)
I find it kinda charming. Gives some insight into who they are, and that fear of aging is a pretty universal feeling.
My grandmother was born in 1899 in Ireland, and moved to the USA in 1920. In the early 1980s, she came clean: "I don't want to spend eternity with a lie on my gravestone. I was born in 1894."
I only learned the truth right after she passed away and my father was free to discuss this - the year was 1911, not 1917 - clouded by two wars' worth of lost records.
A lot can happen within a century and there's usually hardly anyone alive to confirm some facts. My paternal grandmother's birth certificate was gone before the end of WW2 and when asked she would give an age six years younger - initially it was to prevent a scandal because not only was my grandfather of lower status (Pah! "Just" a doctor! Scandalous, I daresay!), he was younger.
As for my maternal grandparents their age is confirmed by their marriage certificate(would be harder to obtain one with this date as a younger person), children in their late 60s and living siblings of my grandpa, of whom there are seven.