My m-i-l had the same problem.
Born at home, youngest of the children, nobody alive that was older and could vouch for her, all she had were church docs for baptism & marriage, and had gotten doc sec thru her husband ( back when church docs were OK to use), and her drivers license had expired (she had gotten that back when it was OK to use church docs to prove age).
Back before 9/11, it was rough being able to get her & her companion/attendant on the plane with us, to relocate them from NYC to L.A., but we found an airline that would deal w/ old people in their situation.
My husband rented an apartment on his credit & added her name to the lease so she could have a place to stay.
Trying to open a bank account where nobody knew her was interesting.
I talked to the bank manager & said “OK she’s getting her soc sec checks mailed to her in this town, now if she doesn’t have a bank account how will she be able to write a check and pay the rent?”
They let her open an account with her old d/l; she still had the funny 60’s hat from the picture & we brought it there to show it was her.
Yep. My mom was born in 1913 so you can imagine the level of difficulty. At the time, only her children were alive - all others had passed.
“..all she had were church docs for baptism & marriage...”
I recall 25-30 years ago a discrepancy in DOB was in court for some unrecalled reason, and the court accepted the church baptismal certificate as valid; and the story went on to say that historically, church records were accepted as more accurate as government records were known to be riddled with error.