Find a Grave is a great website that my sister and I use frequently. I had searched it earlier because Fred's obituary mentioned where he was interred. Somehow there was a disconnect and I didn't find the grave. However, I used World Vital Records at the library to search on his name and it came up with a link to Find a Grave. He and Faith are buried in the same cemetery. There are no pictures of the headstones, but fortunately it's close to where my sister lives and I've asked her to go photograph them.
Meanwhile I ponder the information on Find a Grave because it gives Fred's birth year as 1878. His obituary says his birthdate was October 17, 1873, which agrees with the passenger list and naturalization papers we believed to be his. However, his age as listed on the censuses of 1900, 1910, 1915, 1920, 1925, 1930, and 1940 compute to his birth year being from 1874 to 1877. His draft registration card, dated September 12, 1918, lists his age as 43 and his birthdate as October 17, 1875.
In addition, the difference between Fred and Faith's ages on the censuses ranges from three to seven years. There are further inconsistencies with her age. She appears on the 1880 census as a one month old infant, yet her obituary and headstone give her birth year as 1881. The two newspaper articles about their elopement say she was 16. Given a birthdate of May 13, 1880, that would be accurate as their marriage date of April 24, 1897 would have been a few weeks before her 17th birthday. (The marriage date is the one date that stays consistent through all the documentation we have gathered on them.) The age that Faith gives on each census computes to birth years from 1879 to 1882.
Those naturalization papers and passenger list make him out to be 16 years old when he arrived in New York in 1889, but in a newspaper article about Fred and Faith's 50th anniversary, it says that he came to America when he was seven years old. The 1930 census asks for an immigration year and Fred answered 1889, which matches the passenger list. The 1925 New York census asks for the year of naturalization, which he said was 1898. That does not match the naturalization papers we have, which were issued in 1894.
All of this leads me to believe that those naturalization papers and the passenger list may refer to another Fred Groth. There were several Fred Groths in New York during those years, even some who immigrated. I have searched for other records but so far I haven't found anything that seems like it might be him.
In my search on Family Search, I did find a new document from an index of marriages ("New York, Marriages, 1686-1980" which you can find in the records on that site by browsing collections) for Fred and Faith's marriage. It did not give me any new information on their birthdates, but it did list their parents' names. This is my second source naming Fred's parents as Conrad Groth and Martha Bainhauer (Beinhauer). It lists Faith's parents as George Botsford and Rhoda Wilkins. Faith's mother's name has varied a lot through the documentation and this is the second time she shows up as Rhoda.
I've speculated that Fred may have started to lie about his age so he seemed to be closer in age to his sixteen-year-old bride. Perhaps he wasn't sure when he was born. I'm hoping that the marriage papers I've ordered from the City of New York and Grace Church will shed some light on the problem. We can also follow up with the church and cemetery where they were members and were buried. We will just keep following the clues, however tiny they may be.
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