Many days when Ol' Br'er isn't out in the world scampering amongst the tombstones, he is ensconced back in the warren, in his shorts, and surfing the web researching dead folks. With more than 10,000 people on the family tree, there are plenty to research.
And all these cemetery visits just end up adding to the research list. Interesting people are found who just beg to be researched. Hell, they sometimes even get their own tree built to further the research effort and help to update Find A Grave memorials.
Find a child who is not linked to its parents? Research and update the memorial.
Find a veteran without birth or death dates? Research and update the memorial.
Find someone with a surname in Br'er's tree? Research to see if they are related.
I think you get the idea. Rare is the time when Br'er doesn't have several Find A Grave updates queued up for approval. And all that doesn't include updates to cemeteries and graveyards themselves. Descriptions, directions, GPS coordinates - they all need to be checked and updated as well.
All this research has the natural result of reading a lot of death certificates as well as comparing data from multiple sources. More to the point, this reveals discrepancies between the various sources.
And these discrepancies drive me crazy with questions.
One of the most common is age or birth year. I have lost count of the number of times I see someone with conflicting birth years.
Let's use fictional Mary as an example. Her Find A Grave memorial gives her birth year and 1881. And that is the year given on Social Security records. But! she appears on the 1880 US Census as being 2 years old. Skipping the lost 1890 Census for obvious reasons, we find here again on the 1900 US Census still in her parents' household, this time age 20.
Neat trick, that. No question that this is her on the Census. The location, parents, etc. are all correct.
The current movement of "Gender Fluidity" has nothing on prior generations. Hell, they had Age Fluidity and Spelling Fluidity in spades!
To be fair, specific age was less important in the 19th century. Exhibiting maturity and judgment were far more important and drove when one might be considered an adult in the eyes of the community.
The less said about spelling the better. Education was not as important as being able to work.
It is the errors and missing data on death certificates that befuddles me.
I am not talking about cases where a 'friend' or acquaintance provides the details on a death certificate because the deceased has no family around. No, I am talking about a spouse or child who apparently knows nothing about the deceased's parents, birth details, etc.
The initials "D.K." infuriate me. Don't Know.
If I am generous I can forgive not knowing birth locations for parents of the deceased. But not even their names?
Then again.....
I can't complain too much when there are so many examples in my own family.
- My father did not know his grandmother's name.
- I had the first and middle names of one of my uncles reversed. This is what my father told me his brother's name was. We were both shocked when he died and saw the official paperwork and learned that we were wrong.
- My father reversed my first and middle names on some banking paperwork.
- My aunt (by marriage) did not, after decades of marriage, know my uncle (another of my father's brothers) was named for his grandfather.
I am beginning to sense a pattern here. My family knows next to nothing about each other.
Another habit of mine is reading people's causes of death. At least when I can READ it. Deciphering handwritten cause of death is second in difficulty only to reading written prescriptions. I mean, I have horribly poor handwriting but these people make me look like a medieval monk making illuminated manuscripts!
I thought about sharing the images of some of the more interesting cases I have encountered but decided against it. Yes, these are public documents. And yes, these are a century old, more or less. But on the ridiculously remote possibility that a member of the individual's family might come across this, I am opting to not share the images. I could spend a lot of time 'greeking' (a video production term meaning removal of all identifying data) the images, but frankly, that is too damned much work.
Some of the more typical causes I've seen:
- Stillborn (always tragic and heart-wrenching)
- Influenza (Gasp! These seem to be concentrated in the late 1910s!)
- Dysentery (I will forego the obvious jokes about what a way to go this is - that fruit is too low hanging)
- Various cancers and heart issues
Then there are the more unusual, though still tragic
- Suicide
- Bullet in the brainpan (that is literally what is listed as COD)
- Self-inflicted gunshot (sometimes noting to the head - yes, I have seen more than a couple of these)
And then there is my all-time favorite. I repeat that, for the families involved, all deaths are tragic - even those where the deceased is over 90 years old and passed away from natural causes. But this one, well I still laugh thinking about it. Before I came across it I would have bet any amount of money that it never happened.
"Sudden deceleration trauma".
The individual died in a car wreck.
Thinking about it now, one could write an interesting book based on an analysis of death certificate data over time. Aside from the more colorful CODs like sudden deceleration trauma, breaking out the data by age, COD, date, etc. could be fascinating.
Or maybe I am just a data nerd and no one else would give a damn.
Yeah. That is probably the case.
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