Always Look At the Image, Not Just the Indexing

"Pennsylvania, Philadelphia City Death Certificates, 1803-1915," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-64GS-47L?cc=1320976&wc=9FRT-SP8%3A1073227701 : accessed 3 March 2019), Film Number (Digital Folder Number) 004009605,  image 1172 of 1771; Philadelphia City Archives and Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Oh, for Pete's sake.

After years of periodically looking through FamilySearch's "Pennsylvania, Philadelphia City Death Certificates, 1803-1915" I finally found Solomon Hartley's death record in Philadelphia:

This is to Certify Solomon Hartley was accidentally Drowned. -- John Dennis Coroner
August 9th 1814
                                 Aged about 40 Years.

What has thrown me off all this time was how this record was indexed ("Solomon McCarkley" instead of "Solomon Hartley").  I should know better by now that indexing is not an exact science, and yet that appears to be the only reason I didn't find this record earlier.

The record basically reveals what I already knew, that he died about 40 years old about 1815 after drowning.  I didn't know the date, and further inspection of the record indicates that he was buried in the same cemetery as his brother George Hartley.

"Solomon Mccarkley"

Solomon's brother George Hartley.

I'm not sure if August 9 is the date Solomon died, or when he was examined by the coroner.

I had no idea that he was Baptist.



© 2019 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Wish Mistakes Like This Happened More Often

Jacob B. Rittgers, my 3rd great grandfather, died in 1879, and the 1880 Census taker originally wrote down his being in the household, and when he died.  This date is backed up by the 1880 mortality schedule, probate, and grave records.  1880 U.S. Census, Polk County, Iowa, population schedule, Valley Township, enumeration district (ED) 172, p. 541C (stamped), dwelling 131, family 134; Jacob B. Rittgers; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 16 Jan 2018); citing NARA microfilm publication T9, roll 360.

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

New (to Me) Database on Ancestry.com: "Iowa, Death Records, 1920-1940"

I only had the death year for my 2nd cousin 3x's removed cousin Mildred Brush's first husband, Allen Leonard Swift (1925).  Now I know the exact date, and more of the story (although there is no second image in the scan, despite the "over" note in the cause of death field).  State of Iowa Department of Vital Statistics, Buchanan county, death certificate no. 10-1049, Leonard Swift (1925); digital image, Iowa, Death Records, 1920-1940 (http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=61442 : 9 September 2017).

The date on this database is 2017, and doesn't show up in the "Recently Added and Updated Collections on Ancestry" page (which goes back to June), so this little treasure must have been released in the first part of this year.  While I'm late to the game (probably because I've been concentrating on my locations cleanup), I welcome this.  I have a ton of Iowa cousins whose death certificates might help my research.  The Texas, Missouri, and Indiana death certificates already on Ancestry have certainly proved that.

I think I might treat myself to a break in location cleanup today, and use a technique I posted about already "Fantastic Find: Genea-Musing's Ancestry Hack to Search Hints By Specific Database" to find out who on my tree now has a death certificate waiting for me.




© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Fantastic Find: Missouri, Death Certificates, 1910-1962 now on Ancestry

The Ancestry search form for the Missouri, Death Certificate, 1910-1962.

"Missouri Death Certificates, 1910 - 1964" has been available free for years from the Missouri Digital Heritage through the Missouri Secretary of State's office.  Now it looks like Ancestry has incorporated a search form for that collection through its Ancestry Web Search.

You don't have to have an account with Ancestry to search these records, it just provides a link to the Missouri site--Ancestry already does this with FindAGrave, among other sources.  While the FindAGrave search form on Ancestry is a big improvement on the original site's search form (as I covered here), I found the Ancestry search form for the Missouri Death Certificates to be only slightly more flexible (you can search exact date of death instead of just year and month, and you can also search other locations beside death place).

The advanced search page for the Missouri site.

For an Ancestry user this is a nice addition to the search.  If you are not an Ancestry user you can go directly to the free Missouri site.


A "Brief History of Vital Records in Missouri" here.  There is also a "Missouri Birth & Death Records Database, Pre-1910" that is not as comprehensive as the 1910-1964, but still worth a look.  Ancestry has a collection, "Missouri, Death Records, 1834-1910," that may or may not contain the same set of records as the pre-1910 mentioned above (it's not clear to me, although the Ancestry database description indicates that it comes from the Missouri state archives).



© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

More Ways to Get Online Death Records In California: FamilySearch.org wiki's Tip

I find it really pays to click on the "Learn more" link to any database on FamilySearch.  You get a background on the

• Record Description, 
• Record Content, 
• How to Use the Record, 
• Searching the Collection, 
• Using the Information, 
• Tips, 
• Known Issues, 
• and related websites and articles.

In this case, the following tip was helpful to me:

FHL Keyword California, Death Records

I decided to try the Keyword link and got the following:

The default includes all results in all of their libraries, both physical and online.

It's good to know all that is available.  Since I like to try to exhaust all online sources before resorting to ordering microfilm or traveling to a library, I narrowed my locations to "online":

I've selected "online"

I think that most, if not all of these online results are in the FamilySearch.org "California, County Birth and Death Records, 1800-1994" collection that I covered earlier this week, but displayed in a different way.  If you access any given subcollection it will just throw you into the images, while the results page from the Keyword search directs you first to a description of each subcollection, and then a link to images.  I like this because I always like to know what any given collection is and why it exists in the first place.




© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Thrifty Thriller Thursday: Death Certificates online and free

Indexes of death records are everywhere in genealogy resources, but free images of the actual death certificates?  That is thrilling!

Most of these are at FamilySearch.org, and many of the collections require you to sign in (it is free to register).

Statewide unless otherwise indicated.

• Delaware Death Records, 1855-1961

• Georgia, Deaths, 1914-1927

• Georgia, Deaths, 1928-1938

• Idaho, Death Certificates, 1911-1937

• Michigan, Deaths, 1867-1897

• Missouri Death Certificates (1910 – 1963)

• Montana, County Births and Deaths, 1840-2004 (no index)  The collections consist of registers and certificates from Broadwater, Deer Lodge, Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, Powell and Silver Bow counties.

• New Hampshire, Death Certificates, 1938-1959

• New Mexico, County Death Records, 1907-1952  Acquired from the county courthouses of Sandoval, Socorro, and Valencia.

• North Carolina, Deaths, 1906-1930

• Ohio, County Death Records, 1840-2001

• Ohio, Deaths, 1908-1953

• Pennsylvania, Philadelphia City Death Certificates, 1803-1915

• Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh City Deaths, 1870-1905

• Texas, Deaths, 1890-1976

• Utah Death Certificates, 1904-1956

• West Virginia Deaths, 1804-1999

© 2014 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.