Birth year Confusion

I have a member who has lived in the area for a while. When our ward boundaries were moved she was transferred to our ward. I Google her name to search for a possible obituary as she is quite old. I ended up with a picture of a cemetery headstone that has her full name, birth day and month but the year is different. She shares a head stone with her son which matches the information on her membership record (Full son name and birth date). The problem is that the birth year on the head stone is two years different than what is listed on the membership record. Even familysearch shows the year is the same as the headstone. Can I assume this is the same person even though the birth years do not match up? Would I need to change the birth year?

I read your post three times, and I'm a bit confused. Are you sure she is deceased? Sometimes you use language that indicates that she is still alive. Clearly the person in FamilySearch is considered to be deceased, or she wouldn't be visible to you. But is the headstone for a deceased person (headstones can be placed for living persons, particularly when they share a headstone with a deceased person, and the death date is filled in when they die and are buried there)?

Note that FamilySearch takes information directly from the membership record for deceased members, but of course someone can edit the date to change it. You could look in the history of the FamilySearch record for this person to see if the birth year has been changed and by whom.

swblack wrote:I ended up with a picture of a cemetery headstone that has her full name, birth day and month but the year is different. She shares a head stone with her son which matches the information on her membership record (Full son name and birth date).

Sounds like a match to me.

swblack wrote:The problem is that the birth year on the head stone is two years different than what is listed on the membership record. Even familysearch shows the year is the same as the headstone. Can I assume this is the same person even though the birth years do not match up? Would I need to change the birth year?

Unless all the names were as common as dirt, I think it's safe to say she's the same person.

As for the different year - don't sweat it. There's a good possibility that the stone is inaccurate. The information comes from the family, and they could be wrong. (Oh, and welcome to genealogy, where conflicting facts are common.)

There is a death date for her on the headstone that goes back three years from now. Her son passed away twenty years prior to her death date. FamilySearch has the same birth date and death date as the headstone. But then it misspelled the middle name with a different vowel. The name on the head stone and the church membership records are all spelled the same way.