Fleshing Out Ancestry Research How To Get the Most Out Of a Death Certificate

Transcription

1 Fleshing Out Ancestry Research How To Get the Most Out Of a Death Certificate Prerequisites: This tutorial assumes you have: 1. an Ancestry account and you are signed in 2. a family member you are working on 3. you have exhausted all Ancestry hints 4. you still need more info before proceeding with temple work Start by finding your family member in Ancestry. Let's run a manual search or look in hints to see if we can find a death certificate. While we're looking at your ancestor's profile, let's notice some information that will be useful things to watch for. A good family history detective always takes at least mental notes of any information he or she may come across. In my case, I'm looking at Monroe Kline, and I'm seeing the following information: Birth: Dec 1867 Marriage: 1891 (Ancestry likely pulled this out of the census record we added during the last tutorial) Spouse: Emma Katie Anthony born 1866 Children: William H Kline born 1891; Alvin D. Kline born 1892; Frank G Kline born 1894; Ralph Joseph Kline born 1899 and died We recognize son Ralph from last time. Places of residence: Coplay, Pennsylvania 1899; Allen, Northampton, Pennsylvania 1900 Now we're armed with some good search information. Go ahead and click to run the search or enter your hints list.

2 Notice that in the box at the top much of the information we took before is available. This is helpful in case you forget to make notes of this information beforehand. Okay, now let's look at the search results:

3 Notice the marriage record for 1891 in Coplay Pennsylvania. This fits their residence in 1891 as well as their marriage date from the census records we collected back during the ancestry hints tutorial. Note Monroe Kline and Ema in the same death certificate. All these records warrant further investigation. This part is identical to handling hints, but the death certificate presents some additional things to think about. I'm going to click into the death certificate.

4 Right off, I can see Monroe, his wife Emma, and his son Frank G. We don't yet know exactly whose death certificate this is; all we know is it could belong to any one of these three, and we're seeing it from Monroe's perspective. I always view death records because they always contain more information than what Ancestry saves for me. Click 'VIEW' The first thing I notice is that this death certificate isn't for Monroe; it's actually for his son, Franklin G. Kline. Ancestry likes to do that: throw you a death certificate because the ancestor you're investigating appears on it as a parent or informant.

5 Take notes: Frank died in Allen township, Northampton county, Pennsylvania. In family history work, whether in Ancestry or FamilySearch, the convention is City, County, State or, in this case, Allen, Northampton, Pennsylvania. Date of death: 30 January 1914 Date of birth: 13 October 1895 Notice the convention I used for the dates. Ancestry uses month names abbreviated to the first three letters; FamilySearch uses the full month name. Notice also you can see the cause of death in the lower right. Let's scroll down and see what else we can find.

6 Note the occupation: our friend Frank worked as a laborer at Atlas Cement Company. I usually just manually enter this into FamilySearch once I get him added. Father's name matches our Monroe, and mother's maiden name matches our Emma C. Anthony. This is definitely a record we want to add, but we'll have to be careful about which family member it gets added to. Notice the informant is Emma C. Kline, formerly Emma C. Anthony. You always want to make a note of the informant because it's usually a son or a daughter-in-law someone you'll want to recognize when next you see their name. Date of burial: 4 February 1914 Place of burial: Coplay Cemetery (we only need to know Coplay, Pennsylvania) Let's go ahead and save this record to Monroe Kline. Click 'SAVE'. As with hints, click the check box to activate each person in the record, make needed edits, and save. In the case of Monroe's wife Emma, you'll notice I'm not preserving the spelling in the record. This is partly because I've seen spelling in other records, partly because the spelling here is not correct. (Update: in later research, I was able to confirm that this is indeed Emma C Anthony; the Katie I'd seen was short for Catherine ) In this next screen shot, you'll notice I've not only activated Frank, I've clicked the checkboxes next to his name and birth date. This is because the death record has better information than what I currently

7 have, and I want to add it. You'll also notice there's more information on Frank than on anybody else in the record. This is because it is Frank's death certificate, as we found out before. Click 'SAVE TO YOUR TREE'. This puts us back in Monroe's profile. Click on Frank's profile to switch into his. I click on 'HINTS' and I get these:

8 The baptism record shows the exact birth date. The place is consistent with where his parents were living at the time. Click 'REVIEW'. I know from Monroe's confirmation record that Monroe and Katie were Lutheran, so the faith fits. I know her middle initial is 'C' and that Monroe called her Katie even on her death certificate. This warrants further investigation. The abbreviated Cath makes me curious, so I decide to view the document to see why it was indexed that way.

9 I note that next to Monroe's name is is wife Cath. - with a period showing what has to be an abbreviated Catherine. Let's save this record. Click YES. I activate Mom and Dad, save the middle name George, and I go ahead and write in Mom's middle name as Catherine. Because we had an exact death and birth date, Ancestry gave us Franklin's baptism record along with what amounts to the only birth record we're likely to find. It also gave us his mother's middle name. In my mind, the death record is probably the single most useful record you can get your hands on, the marriage record coming in a close second. The death and birth dates cause Ancestry to really narrow down its hints and search results to give us more and better information about the person we're researching. This is usually a good way to find a spouse and parents as well as residence, occupation, and sometimes a child, depending on who reported the death. One thing that to me is conspicuous by its absence in this case is the name of a spouse. Looking at his death and birth years tells us why: Frank died when he was just 18 years old. One final step is to review hints to see if this newly added record caused Ancestry to give us any more. I want to point your attention to one record that we actually won't be using.

10 Let's test your family history detective skills. Why did I choose to 'ignore' this hint? There are three reasons. See if you can guess them. Okay, now you can peek: 1. Our Frank Kline died in He was not around when the 1940 census was taken. (Note how it helps to know the death year!) 2. This census record was taken in Buffalo, Eerie, New York. Our Frank evidently never left Pennsylvania, at least not long enough for there to be any record of it. 3. Katherine's name is not spelled right. In all our records, she is either Katie or C or Cath. Scanning back through our notes that we took while we were looking at the death certificate, there isn't anything I need to add in Ancestry that isn't already there. I would, however, like to add the occupation in FamilySearch. Using what we learned in the data sharing tutorial and the 'other information' tutorial, I add Frank to my FamilySearch tree from within Ancestry. I also go to Emma's profile and do a Compare person in FamilySearch to transfer what we've just learned about Emma. Now, if we go back over to FamilySearch, we can see that Emma's middle name has changed and Frank is waiting for his temple ordinances to be reserved.

11 And we're done! That's how you get the most out of a death certificate.