By now, you’ve done quite a bit of research online and in cemeteries for records of your ancestor’s death. But dusty cemetery tombstones, weathered grave markers, and databases such as Find A Grave <www.findagrave.com> and BillionGraves <www.billiongraves.com> are just the first of several places to discover information about your ancestor’s life. Genealogists make use of many kinds of death records that were created for a wide variety of reasons.
In this chapter, we’ll discuss the records that you can’t typically find on cemetery grounds, plus what each kind of record can provide for your research.
Death records are an abundant and important source for genealogists. Created at the time of death with information provided by a family member or someone who (hopefully) knew the deceased well, death records are part of a trio of vital records that document the most important (hence, “vital”) events in a person’s life: birth, marriage, and death.
In the United States, most death records are kept at the local, county, or state level, meaning you should look to these repositories to find copies of them. While death records are great sources of information, most states didn’t require them to be kept until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and you’ll find that different parts of the country have different levels of coverage. New England states, for example, have much better death records because their churches have been registering this information for over three hundred years, but researchers with ancestors in other parts of the country may have more difficulty.
Death records can lead you to investigate other files such as church documents, probate and court records, civil records, and Social Security forms. These documents provide valuable detail, including medical information that can help you identify diseases and disorders that are common in your lineage.
Death certificates are the legal proof of an individual’s death, kept by the government and filled out by a medical professional or coroner. These death records typically contain the most detail, mentioning the time, date, place, and cause of a person’s death.
Throughout the past several decades, death certificates have become more common (and more detailed). Local counties may have kept records of who had died within their jurisdictions from early in their histories, but it wasn’t until 1900 that widespread vital recordkeeping became common in many states. Early death records contained little more than the deceased’s name and date and place of death. Around 1910, death records began to contain facts about an individual’s life and circumstances of his death, and by the mid-1930s, all states were collecting information about an individual’s death. In later years, certificates began noting race, education, occupation, marital status, spouse’s name, maiden name, birthplace, Social Security number, military service, and (if female) whether the deceased was pregnant at the time of death. You can also find place of last residence, occupation, parents’ names, marital status, and the name of the informant and her relationship to the deceased.
State Your Business: Usually, local or county offices can accommodate an inquiry faster than the state, so (if given the choice between the two) you should contact local offices first. And when requesting a death certificate, be sure to specify that you would like a full death certificate, as this can include much more detailed information than the shorter version. Also be prepared to show ID and verify your relationship to the deceased.
Be on the lookout for erroneous information, especially in older records. While informants were usually in a good position to know details about the deceased, they may have been neighbors, friends, or in-laws with limited or imperfect knowledge. Even close relatives still could have been mistaken regarding specific facts. For example, my grandfather, Robert Dellinger, is listed as a truck driver on his death certificate, even though he and my grandma ran a poultry-processing business on their farm—the only truck Grandpa ever drove was a Ford pickup of various models. Why Grandpa’s daughter (the informant) listed his occupation as truck driver, I don’t know.
Transcription errors (for digitized records) and typos (for more recent records) also occur, and these can significantly throw off your research. For example, my grandfather’s death certificate lists him as dying on December 20, 1000. Always be prepared to back up these records with other documents, and be skeptical of other information until you can verify it for yourself.
Assign Yourself Records Homework: Use a map to locate churches and schools that were located near your family’s residence, then check these organizations for family records. This could help you in locating children who died early and appeared to have vanished. And don’t forget to check the church and nearby cemetery for burial records for family members.
Not everyone has a legal right to obtain a copy of a death certificate. Many records repositories impose a fifty-year stay on death certificates to protect the privacy of the deceased and their families. Those eligible usually include the spouse, children, siblings, or other direct-line descendants or relatives of the deceased with a documented medical need for the certificate.
Probate records, which include wills and estate records, are created as a person’s estate is settled after death, including distributing the deceased’s assets to heirs or creditors. If the deceased had a will (i.e., if he was testate), the court is to document the will’s validity and oversee its implementation—and field concerns from people who wish to contest the will. If the deceased left no will (i.e., if she was intestate), the probate court appoints an administrator to decide the distribution of the deceased’s assets according to the appropriate laws.
Probate records can list the names of the deceased’s spouse, children, married daughters’ spouses, and grandchildren, as well as:
Probate records can tell you a lot about your ancestors and their lifestyle. Did your great-great-great-great-grandfather leave his estate to his wife, or did he put a son in charge? Were provisions made to care for an ancestor’s widow and underage children? Did all children inherit equally, or did the deceased favor one child over others? Did his daughters’ inheritance pass into the care of their husbands? The answer to these questions gives you an intimate look into the family’s structure and social and economic status.
Probate records will also show if the family was charitable in the community and to what organizations (churches, hospitals, political parties) contributions and assets were gifted. This can help you determine what religion and/or political party your ancestors supported, which can lead to more records.
Obituaries and death notices are favorite death records for genealogists because they’re loaded with information and increasingly easy to locate. Thanks to the Internet, newspapers across the world are now placing their obituaries online for easy access, and recent advancements in optimized character recognition (OCR) technology are making them keyword-searchable. Older obituaries that aren’t yet online may be accessed through a newspaper’s archives or on microfilm at local libraries and universities.
Some obituaries contain only basic information about the deceased, while others may be lengthy biographical sketches detailing the decedent’s life. An obituary usually lists:
At one time, a newspaper editor or reporter wrote the obituary, pulling information from previous publications and/or details provided by the family. In small communities, the publisher or editor might know the deceased firsthand, so could therefore write a detailed obituary. The undertaker could also be called upon to write the obituary from information provided by the family.
An obituary gives more personal information about the deceased than other kinds of records, such as death notices. Death notices are simple, straightforward announcements of a person’s demise that give just the basic facts (no biographical information), including death date and time along with funeral location, date, and time. Depending on the relationship and financial situation, a family may decide to initially publish only a death notice.
Learn the Lingo: Keep in mind that the medical terms we use today are not necessarily what our ancestors used. See our list of archaic disease names <www.familytreemagazine.com/article/name-that-ailment> and other online guides to learn more.
Once you’ve found your ancestor’s obituary, make a list of all the names and relationships mentioned (see chapter 8 for an example of a transcribed obituary), then figure out how these people are related to other members on your family tree. Keep in mind that spelling has changed in the past three hundred years, so deciphering an older obituary may be difficult.
Newspapers may have archived older obituaries. If not, check with the local library, historical organization, or genealogical society, as these groups could have records on microfilm. Contact state historical societies to see if the obituary has been published in a state genealogy periodical or abstract. Also look for newspapers published where the deceased was born or resided during an important part of his life. These papers may have been notified and crafted their own obituary based on what was known about the deceased when she resided there.
Obituaries, along with the publications they appeared in, are being digitized and indexed with increasing speed. For-pay databases such as Genealogy Bank <www.genealogybank.com> and Ancestry.com’s Newspapers.com <www.newspapers.com> have made thousands of publications available to subscribers, and more titles are becoming searchable as OCR technology improves. Other free sites, such as FamilySearch.org <www.familysearch.org>, RootsWeb <www.rootsweb.org>, and USGenWeb <www.usgenweb.org>, also contain collections of obituaries.
Funeral home records, also known as mortuary records, are yet another overlooked resource for the genealogy researcher. These documents contain the same basic information about the deceased as the death certificate, but offer more detailed family information including addresses, a copy of the obituary, possible insurance data, and financial records related to the cost of the funeral and burial. Mortuary records can also assist you in locating the cemetery and the burial records held there.
Funeral homes began keeping files in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Before that, the church held death records, and funerals, wakes, or remembrance events would have taken place in the parlor of the deceased’s home. As the undertaker had a more active role in the embalming and burial process, memorial services and burial rites shifted to his establishment (known as the “funeral parlor”), and the name morphed into “funeral home” as fewer and fewer people had parlors in their homes. Besides keeping records and hosting services, the funeral director also became responsible for completing and filing the death certificate, working with an informant to gather the required data. The funeral director also writes and sends obituaries to media outlets.
Funeral home documents include the deceased’s name, age, date and location of death, burial date, cemetery, officiating clergy, family informants, family members, and last address, plus a copy of an obituary and clippings from newspapers. Other records may include memorial cards and flower lists, along with a detailed list of funeral expenses or simply a sum total bill. If the invoice is detailed, you can also learn about the family’s financial status.
To begin a search for records created by a funeral home that’s in business, contact the establishment to make sure it still has the records. Schedule an appointment with a funeral director and let him know whose records you would like to review, including the date of death and any other information he may need to locate the files.
If a funeral home is no longer in business, check with other mortuaries in the area to see if the records were transferred or if another undertaker purchased the business. If not, visit the local or county genealogical or historical library and society to see if the records have been moved there or if someone knows what became of them. Many times, the director took the records with him for safekeeping when a funeral home closed.
When our ancestors died, authorities may have created documents about the circumstances of their death, and these can be valuable resources for genealogists.
Specifically, a coroner (a medical professional trained in forensics and either elected or appointed by the government to the position) may perform an autopsy to determine a cause of death. An autopsy consists of an external exam of the body, both with and without clothing. The coroner looks for traumatic injuries and signs of disease. Physical evidence collected includes hair and nail clippings along with organs, tissues, and bodily fluids. The full autopsy is restricted to certain people: immediate family members and (if applicable) an insurance company.
Still, autopsies—if you can find them among family records—are of interest to genealogists because they can reveal heredity illness and if the death was caused by a work-related injury or by a disease not previously diagnosed.
Coroners reports, which summarize details from the autopsy and couple it with other documents related to the deceased’s death, are more accessible, as they’re available to the public. A coroner’s report may be one page or several, depending on what the coroner was searching for, the reason for the investigation, and the actual findings. The report is made up of several records, including necrology reports (similar to obituaries), pathology reports, toxicology reports, police reports, testimony, and jury reports.
Coroners reports contain:
These details can guide you to do more research in newspapers, court reports, hospital records, and police reports.
While autopsies and coroner’s reports are produced if the cause of death is suspected to be unnatural, coroner’s inquests are created when a death was not due to natural causes. This is a probing interrogation into how, what, when, where, and why the death occurred. Inquest records include the deceased’s name, address, occupation, description, where and when the inquest was held, witnesses’ names, jurors’ names, and the verdict. Testimony at the inquest may include police statements and testimonies, along with photographs, suicide notes, and other items relevant to the case.
Don’t forget to check local and regional newspapers to see if the inquest was mentioned. Most are public, so the newspapers can carry the basics unless the inquest is part of an ongoing murder trial. Early records may be found at the county courthouse in the county clerk’s office. Also, check with the current coroner/medical examiner’s office for suggestions on where old files are stored. And be sure to search the state archives.
Records created to document a person’s death will obviously contain information relevant to that event, but other kinds of genealogy records can still be crucial to researching your deceased ancestors. This section will provide a crash-course on other kinds of genealogy records that you should consult when researching your deceased ancestors.
City directories are great for research because they link people to specific regions at certain periods of time. City directories were first developed for merchants, salesmen, and other professionals/companies who wanted to contact residents in certain towns. The first known directory, which would become the template for early city directories, was A Directory for the City of New York in 1665, which covered the newly colonized city of New York.
City directories were published annually and mainly included information on the male head-of-household: his name, address, spouse’s name, and occupation. But they can tell us a lot about our ancestors and give us an historical perspective concerning our ancestors’ lives, where they resided, and when. Since the directories were published once a year, these annual accounts of life can help fill in the gaps between the decennial census years. By utilizing city directories for each year our ancestor resided in this location, we get a more adequate picture of who he was, what he did for a living, where he worked, and the neighborhood he lived in.
And even though they generally only featured information about men, city directories can still tell you about the whole family’s life. Other family members may be hiding in records of marriages, births, and deaths that occurred each year, and we can also follow a family as it left one town and moved to a new home elsewhere (or at least become aware that a family left the town, even if we don’t know its destination). These directories are very useful when searching for someone new to the area, a family that was renting living space, or ancestors residing in the city temporarily. This may be the only place to locate those who didn’t own land and were not registered to vote.
One of the most productive city directory publishing companies was R.L. Polk and Company, which published its first directory in 1872 for the city of Evansville, Indiana. By 1907, R.L. Polk and Company had expanded into producing gazetteer business directories, along with regional directories of post offices and banks. Other published directories included elite and social registers known as Blue Books.
A city directory typically has the following features:
Originally, city directories only included the movers and shakers of the community. Later, the majority of the town was included. Unfortunately, certain parts of town were ignored due to racial or economic status.
As city directories became more popular (more than twelve thousand were published in total), they began to include more diverse information. City directories indicated who the head of the household was and (in many cases, in parentheses) his wife’s name. If children worked outside the home, their names and occupations could be listed as well.
Besides recording names and addresses, a directory might also have the occupations of the head-of-household (later to include all residents), a reverse street directory, and a listing of local businesses and government institutions. Later directories also provided not only a person’s occupation, but also his employer and what neighborhood he lived in.
Sometimes illustrations of businesses shops and factories were included, helpful when searching for local stores, churches, and schools the family may have patronized. Some directories were so complete that they even included the sunrise and sunset times for each day, along with stagecoach and steamboat arrival and departure times.
Directories, which were published annually, also began to include a section that noted additions, changes, and deletions from year to year. Pay special attention to these sections—the changes and deletions may be due to a death, which can help you narrow the date of death (i.e., when your ancestor disappeared from the directory). In a similar way, if your male ancestor’s wife is suddenly listed as a widow in one year’s directory, you have a good idea when her husband died.
Many directories also have an addendum that includes information received too late to put in its proper place. This could be due to people just moving to the city, or who were not home when the canvasser visited. By checking the appendix in the annual directory, you can learn the year your ancestors relocated to an area and even their date of immigration into the country.
You can also often use directories as gazetteers, since many include maps that show the location of schools, hospitals, fraternal organizations, clubs, associations, cemeteries, and churches. Reverse street listings listed street names alphabetically, making it easier to discover the names of the people living at each address. By using the address listed on death documents, you can locate where the deceased was living when she died. You can also use the address to locate tax records and property information.
If you’ve searched the city directory and can’t locate your family, be sure to check the spelling and try different variations. Just as with census records, the names in city directories could be spelled incorrectly because the enumerator didn’t ask for the spelling and simply wrote it down phonetically. Other directories allowed people to opt out of being included.
Maybe your ancestor settled in a nearby town, or possibly there is another location within the state with a similar-sounding name. For example, Illinois has both a Palatine and a Palestine. The names are often confused but the distance, between the two towns is 270 miles, which could help you decide which location was meant.
There’s not central database for city directories, so you may have to search around. The Library of Congress is the single largest repository of city directories <www.loc.gov>. City directories are available at individual genealogical societies, historical societies, and local libraries. State libraries are great resources if you’re checking several different cities at a time. Also look for directories at the local Family History Center, as the staff there can assist you in locating the directories you need and requesting the microfilm from the Family History Library in Utah.
Land records describe what property the deceased bought, owned, and sold, allowing genealogists to tie ancestors to certain locales at specific times. Other family members may be found living in the area or moving to the region.
Pay attention to whom the heirs sell parcels of property. Do they have the same surname, or the last name as wives or mothers in the extended family? Land records are made up of several documents. Let’s take a closer look at deeds, homestead land grants, and military bounty land warrants.
Deeds, which make up the bulk of US land records, establish the ownership and legal transfer of property from one person to another. When land is sold, the seller signs a deed transferring ownership of the land to the buyer, indicating that the owner (such as your ancestor) owned property, and where that property was located. The deed will also list a purchase price and selling price; if not, the deed is known as a “deed of gift” and indicates that the land was gifted to the “buyer.” Deeds are located at the courthouse in the county where the property is located.
One question to keep in mind when searching deeds: Were there several grantors (sellers) involved? These could be relatives who purchased land together, or heirs of an estate who wished to sell land they were not going to use. Both situations give you more relationships to explore.
The federal Homestead Act was established in 1862 to encourage settlers to relocate to more than one billion acres of public-domain land in the western regions of the United States. Homestead grants usually allowed for any American (including freed slaves) to claim up to 160 acres of federal land for free, provided the settler live on the land and make improvements on it for five years.
While only 40 percent of settlers fulfilled the homestead requirements, the government archived most of the homestead requests that were filled out. These applications can contain the names of family members, neighbors, marriage and death certificates, citizenship applications, and affidavits, providing researchers with a wealth of family information. Begin your search with at the National Archives <www.archives.gov>.
Bounty land warrants were originally offered as incentives for soldiers to serve in specific military conflicts: the Revolutionary War (1775–1783), the early Indian Wars (1775–1855), the War of 1812 (1812–1815), and the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). Military bounty lands were later given to soldiers as remuneration for serving their country in a broader “time of need.” Bounty lands could be claimed by the soldier or by his heirs, but a warrant was not automatically issued; a soldier or his family had to file an application.
Soldiers were typically awarded a standard amount of public-domain land once they had met the eligibility requirements of their military service, but not all soldiers were awarded a land bounty. For example, Revolutionary soldiers and noncommissioned officers usually received one hundred acres while officers could receive up to five hundred acres, but not each of the two hundred thousand soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War received a land bounty. If a warrant was granted, the veteran then applied for a land patent—the document that would grant him ownership of the land. Few veterans actually applied for a land warrant, and those who did usually sold or traded their warrants to others for the cash or for land in a more appealing location.
Bounty files contain all types information and records regarding your ancestor’s military service, including pension documents and other correspondence. A land bounty warrant will include his name, age, and place of residence at the time of application, along with his rank, military unit, and period of service. If a widow applied for her husband’s land warrant, the information gathered included her age, maiden name, and place of residence, plus the date and place of the couple’s marriage. A file can contain up to two hundred pages of information, but a typical file has about thirty pages including the application, evidence of identity, service records, claims, and a decision on approval status.
More than eighty thousand of these forms have been placed on microfilm at the National Archives, and most of the records date from 1800 to 1900. (Files before 1800 were thought to have been destroyed in a fire in November 1800.) Most of these files involve the query of soldiers and families seeking to be granted a pension or land.
Locating land bounty warrants may take some time, but they can be extremely informative once you find them. Begin with the present day’s state land office or historical society, then look in these large online databases:
When searching, remember that some modern state boundaries have changed since your ancestor applied for bounty. “Virginia” bounty land, for example, was located in today’s states of Kentucky and Ohio, while records for Maine may be held in Massachusetts. Be sure you’re searching in the correct state.
Court records document legal proceedings that took place due to a violation or dispute of law. Ancestors may have been called into court as witnesses, plaintiffs, defendants, or jurors, and records can include names, genders, race, ages, martial statuses, occupations, and addresses. While records can be difficult to locate due to changes in court names and jurisdictions, don’t be dissuaded from trying.
When searching for court records, begin by researching these three types:
Equity cases do not involve any violations of the law, but are based in disputes and arguments between individuals, such as property rights, estate probates, adoptions, or divorce proceedings. Equity cases are tried in county and local courts, and records can be found in the town’s courthouse or at the local repository for legal historical archives. (Note: Modern equity cases are now tried in civil court, so more recent records will be found in civil court proceedings.)
Civil cases involve the alleged wrongdoing by one individual (or party) against another. They include charges of libel, property damage, or domestic violence, and plaintiffs sue to protect an individual’s private rights or to request retribution in the form of monetary compensation for a violation of rights. Civil cases are usually tried in state court systems according to state laws and statutes, and you can find records at county courthouses, state archives, or state genealogical societies.
Criminal cases are brought forward when individuals break the law or society is otherwise harmed by an individual’s actions. Criminal cases include sex crimes, involuntary manslaughter, and murder, and the state (which represents “the people”) files a lawsuit against an individual. Crimes vary in severity, with distinctions between a felony (a serious charge carrying possible jail time) and a misdemeanor (a less serious crime with no jail time). Criminal court cases are usually tried in state courts according to the state constitution and laws, or (if the crime involved a violation of federal statutory laws or the US Constitution) in federal court.
Local and state criminal records can be found at the appropriate courthouses. The location of federal court records will depend on the time frame of the court case. Check Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) to get started <www.uscourts.gov/courtrecords/find-case-pacer>.
It’s always interesting to imagine our ancestors’ lives. Were they business people in the community, or were they sage farmers, toiling from daylight to dusk? Were they rule-abiding citizens, or lawbreakers with a record? Only records can tell. Ah, there’s the rub—those highly sought-after records are sometimes hard to find. Institutional records—documents from schools, hospitals, orphanages, almshouses, and prisons—can provide insight into some of these questions, simply because they gathered different information than other kinds of records.
Institutions are organizations that govern the behaviors of a specific group of people, all with something in common: prisoners, veterans, children, and the poor. These specific groups of records are intertwined and usually lead back to other records and reports.
Every level of government maintains institutions. The federal branch houses veterans homes and hospitals, along with federal penitentiaries, while states manage (state) prisons, hospitals, asylums, and institutions for the mentally disabled. Local governments oversee orphanages, almshouses, schools, and jails.
Institutions are wonderful at generating research leads. If you search for records at a veterans home, those files could lead you back to records about military service and fraternal organizations. By checking documents for hospitals, medical history becomes clearer and could aid you in understanding your family’s health and genetic disposition. School documents may lead to orphanage records and church or charitable groups. Prison records indicate the types of crimes and age of offenders, and they can lead to court records and possibly newspaper accounts.
Government-directed institutions were historically better at recordkeeping than private companies. Luckily for us, document-purging schedules were not always closely followed, so you can still find records, albeit not without some challenges. Privacy laws affect who is allowed to view records. Some government institutions have established time frames when information may be made available to the public—if ever. For example, the federal census records cannot be released to the public until seventy-two years after the census was taken in order to keep personally identifiable information about individuals private for most, if not all, their lives. The seventy-two-year rule restricts access to census records to all but the individuals named in the records and their legal heirs.
Private institutions have fewer regulations concerning paperwork, which means those records may have been destroyed or stored in a location that no one now remembers. Either situation is bad news for the genealogist. Private companies can also deny anyone the right to view the records, and there is no legal recourse to appeal the decision.
Trying to find these records can be difficult. Here are nine places to check for these elusive documents:
Educational records tell us more about our ancestor than just her name, age, and grade. These are documents that can make an individual “come alive” in our minds. Just by looking at her report card, we know what subjects our ancestor excelled at, and what she didn’t care for.
Educational records include:
When researching a student from the distant past, keep in mind that children raised on farms didn’t attend school on the same schedule as city kids. Rural children also had to help with the planting in the spring and the harvest in the autumn, so they would only attend school during the winter months. Many children dropped out of school at a young age to help support the family by apprenticing or working in factories, and this could have been noted in the teacher’s class journal.
Educational institutions can include elementary, middle, and high schools, along with trade schools, colleges, and professional schools. Other schools include preparatory, boarding, and military academies. There were also ethnic schools for Native American, African-American, Jewish, and Asian children.
As schools became integrated during the 1960s, race was still a factor that was listed in educational records, sometimes in covert ways, such as the color of paper used to document the child’s records. Unfortunately, microfilmed documents in black and white do not share this bit of clandestine history with the researcher.
University documents can hold information about the student’s family from admission records. Other information includes the main course of study, grades received, personal biographies printed in college newspapers and yearbooks, groups and associations the student belonged to, graduation dates, and alumni information.
When searching for educational records, contact the state archives or visit the National Archives for relevant school forms. Yearbooks may be found at local historical societies or libraries, plus at the school library (if the school still exists).
Orphanages were set up in the United States during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to care for children who had been abandoned or whose parents had died. Orphanages were operated by religious organizations, charities, private contributors, and local and state governments. As states took over orphanages, provisions and policies began to differ widely.
Orphanages were particularly crowded from the end of the Civil War until the end of the Great Depression. In 1909, the White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children suggested that children who could not be cared for in their homes should be placed in foster homes, but it was not until after World War II that traditional orphanages either converted into group homes or closed their doors.
Orphanages operated by local and state governments kept detailed records and had appointed overseers who investigated the homes for cleanliness, food, and education. Those run by religious organizations, private groups, and charities also kept good records, but those records became difficult to locate once the orphanages were closed.
Orphanage records include the child’s name, age, birthplace, date of birth, name of parents, date of admission, and date of discharge, plus whether the child was orphaned or abandoned. Other information may be found in the “Matron’s Report,” which details a day-to-day existence at the orphanage—who was ill, who visited, who was admitted, and why. The “Manager’s Book” is also worth a look for administrative figures, health reports, finances, and other business-related data. Records for government-run orphanages may be accessible through the state’s archives. For records from orphanages operated by non-governmental entities, check with state and local historical societies. If a religious organization ran the home, request record books and information from the headquarters.
Early hospital and doctor records list everything from the patient’s information (name, age, date of admission, disease, and date of death) to treatments used, with special notations if the disorder was hereditary in nature. Tuberculosis sanitariums, in particular, were usually run by the state in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to combat “consumption,” which was taking a heavy toll across the country.
When starting a search for hospital records, find out how long medical records must be kept by the state where the facility is/was located. The number of years can vary.
Unfortunately, finding the hospital where your ancestor sought treatment may prove a challenge, since early medial facilities changed names, closed down, and moved. If the hospital is gone, search for public hospital records through the state’s medical board, or visit the National Archives and search for medical treatment records. Documents kept by hospitals that are still in operation may be considered confidential records, so gaining access to them could be difficult unless the specified time frame has elapsed.
In the nineteenth century, the indigent were sent to live in poorhouses, institutions on “poor farms” that provided housing and employment for the destitute, those without work or who could not work, and those who had no where else to turn. A poorhouse was run by the country government and supported with public tax money. Food and housing were provided in exchange for residents working on the farm—cleaning house, doing laundry, and raising vegetables, grain, and livestock to be consumed by those who lived there. Strict rules governed the establishment.
Poorhouse records provide a stark look at what life was like in these institutions. Documents include the name of each resident, along with each person’s age, race, township, date admitted, cause for admitting and by whose order, and date discharged. If the person died while in a poorhouse, the documents also note his date of death, cause of death, and location of burial, plus any other remarks.
Poorhouse records may be found at state archives, or by contacting the county courthouse to locate annual town or county reports for the specified time period. During the 1930s and 1940s, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) inventoried numerous county archives. Check with the county where the poor farm was located to see if the WPA kept local poorhouse records.
Hundreds of fraternal groups and organizations in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century brought people together through service, religion, military experience, or business interests in what was called “the Golden Age of Fraternalism.” And these groups took their membership seriously and kept exceptional records.
Organization and lodge records contain members’ names, dates of acceptance, levels of rank attained, and offices held. These groups include the Freemasons, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Improved Order of Red Men, and the Ancient Order of United Workmen, to name just a few. These groups may also have built and run homes for the widowed and elderly, orphanages, and hospitals. Many had their own cemeteries in which members were buried, and (as we discussed in chapter 6) gravestones may bear the fraternal organization’s logo or mark as a way of identifying the deceased as a member of this elite group. Try contacting the organization’s headquarters with the member’s name and other identifying information to request records.
Your ancestors may have also joined a fraternal benefit society, a voluntary association formed to provide a mutual benefit—usually insurance—to its members. For example, the Modern Woodmen of America and the Woodmen of the World were both founded by Joseph Cullen Root in the late 1800s to make life insurance available to working men and their families.
Details pertaining to the family, their policy, and any benefits paid would contain a wealth of information for the genealogist: names of the members and their families, dates (and causes) of death, and information about the value of the family’s property.
Prison records are a gold mine of information. Although the initial discovery of having a jailbird in the family might be scandalous, this is one of the best-kept and most detailed record systems in the country.
The first prison in the United States was established in 1773 in Philadelphia. The federal prison system was established in the 1890s, and early offenders were convicted of “crimes” that today our society would consider to be minor violations.
The information that prison records include will differ according to the penitentiary and what entity had authority over it, but here are several to search for:
There are four jurisdictions that control prisons: federal, state, local, and military. You can locate a currently operating prison by searching the Federal Bureau of Prisons website <www.bop.gov>. When searching for records from a prison that is no longer in operation, contact the state’s department of corrections, the state’s archives, or the National Archives for assistance in tracking down the required documents.
In May 1933, with the country in the throes of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order creating the WPA. From this agency stemmed the Historical Records Survey (HRS), which provided needed employment to historians, librarians, researchers, and clerical workers. Placed in regional, state, and district divisions, these workers were to collect, identify, survey, index, and conserve any historical records found in state, county, and local archives throughout the United States. Some of the information gathered was compiled into books of historical information.
Thanks to the HRS, the archives of courthouses, town halls, and vital statistic offices were recorded and inventoried from all (then) forty-eight states. Of the information collected, here are just a few highlights for the genealogist:
Most of the work done by the HRS was either bound in book form or copied onto microfilm and placed in local libraries and archives, along with college libraries and other designated federal depositories. Unfortunately, some of the gathered work was never organized, thanks to a shutdown by Congress in February 1939. Congressmen feared Communists were being employed by “such artistic groups,” including the HRS.
Because of the WPA and its HRS branch, an untold number of records were saved, indexed, archived, and kept for future generations, and today that information—if you can find it—is a boon to genealogists and historians. The government didn’t set up a process when the HRS was terminated, so the records were not sent to one major location. Instead, the records were scattered around communities and states and today can be found in a variety of places. State archives and the National Archives house a majority of the information gleaned by the Historical Records Survey.
Begin your research for HRS records locally. Since the records were never well organized, they were placed in boxes and file cabinets and stored out of the way for future generations—tucked away in basements and attics across the United States. Many local libraries, historical societies, and universities became the custodians of theses files, so be sure to ask around.
If local groups did not have room, the records were usually boxed up and sent to the state’s historical society or state library. Most state historians realized this information could be useful some day, and thankfully (since it seems to go against an historian’s nature to toss things away) many were preserved. As a result, you may need only a few calls to discover where the records were sent, either regionally or to the state capitol.
On a national level, the National Archives has a large collection of WPA and HRS records, with over 1,400 pages on file. You may also request information on the WPA researcher who worked on gathering the information in your area, then request his or her personnel files. And because the National Archives have branch offices across the country, you don’t necessarily have to go to Washington, D.C. to view records; simply request they be sent to the district office in your region. Learn more about these records on the National Archives site. Likewise, the Library of Congress has its own collection of HRS and WPA records <www.loc.gov/manuscripts/?q=wpa>.
• Continue your research beyond the cemetery for other kinds of death and burial records, such as civil death certificates, religious death records, obituaries, funeral home records, and more.
• Branch out to investigate other kinds of resources (such as city directories, court cases, school class photos, probate records, and fraternal organizations) to discover more about your deceased ancestors.