Deborah Barr <deborah.barr@rocketmail.com> wrote:

My relative was widowed sometime between 1906 and 1908.
Her 1910 census record has 11 for the Number of years of
present marriage.

How should I interpret this - that she was married 11 years
when her husband died, or that she was married in 1899?

Well, when humans are involved there are instructions and then there
is practice. My go-to resource when wondering about what enumerators
were told to do is the Minnesota Population Center, University Of
Minnesota. They have the instructions to enumerators for census
enumerations. For the 1910 census, go to

https://usa.ipums.org/usa/voliii/inst1910.shtml

Item 115. Column 9. Number of years of present marriage.
This question was only applicable to people reported as married, so,
one can immediately see the problem here. The answer was supposed to
provide the number of years married to the present husband or wife.
The enumerator made an error. No number should have been placed in the
column for your relative.

My suggestion: don't interpret it without additional information

from other sources.

Emily Garber
Phoenix, AZ