Records of Death

 

 

John Denver (real name Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr.) was and will always be my favorite musical artist. Sorry; had to start this post with something. :-) 

There are nearly 20 sources that will furnish family searchers with death information for an ancestor:

• Sexton Records (in cemetery office)
• Church or Religious Registers
• Burial Permit Registers
• Cemetery Plot Maps
• Grave Opening Records
• Lot Cards (in office; who's also buried nearby)
• Plat Records
• Family Bible
• Death Certificate
• Obituary
• Funeral Home Records
• Transit Permits **
• Doctor/Hospital Records
• Coroner Records
• Church Records
• Military Records
• Newspaper mentions

** A burial-transit permit, also known as a removal permit, is a legal document required to transport a deceased person's body, especially across state lines. It essentially serves as permission to move the body to its final destination for burial or cremation. A death certificate must be completed before the burial-transit permit can be issued. 

So if you cannot find great-grandpa's death documentation, you might try these ideas to dig a little deeper. 

Death Records Available on New Seeking Michigan Site

From the Michigan Department of History, Arts and Libraries:

‘Seeking Michigan’ Web site employs today’s technology to deliver Michigan’s history to information seekers

The Department of History, Arts and Libraries today announced the launch of the Seeking Michigan Web site (www.seekingmichigan.org), a growing collection of unique historical information that – through digitized source documents, maps, films, images, oral histories and artifacts – creatively tells the stories of Michigan’s families, homes, businesses, communities and landscapes.

Seeking Michigan’s first major project is the digitization of roughly 1 million death records covering the years 1897 through 1920. These records – never before available electronically – are indexed for easy searching by name, death date, location and age, and hold tremendous research opportunities for genealogists, historians and students.

Whether you are interested in Civil War records, photographs, architecture, music, photography or family history, Michigan enthusiasts are sure to discover a brand new side to Michigan through this unique online resource, a collaboration that has long been in the making between the Archives of Michigan and the Library of Michigan. Site design and digitization of resources were funded through various grants.

“Seeking Michigan takes great information from both of our agencies and makes it available to everyone in a convenient and easy-to-navigate Web site,” said Sandra Clark, director of the Michigan Historical Center. “We were inspired by the state motto in designing the site. If you look, you will discover stories, photos and much more to connect you to our state’s pleasant peninsulas and one-of-a-kind past.”

With plans in place to add much more material, Seeking Michigan currently includes:

More than 100,000 pages of Civil War documents;

Approximately 10,000 photographs;

A variety of Michigan sheet music;

Roughly 1 million death records;

A rich section about Michigan’s 44 past governors;

Works Progress Administration data (circa 1936-1942) about land and buildings throughout rural Michigan; and

Oral histories with notable Michigan residents.

According to State Librarian Nancy R. Robertson, Seeking Michigan boldly moves the archives and library experience outside of the bricks and mortar of the building in which the collections are housed. By employing the latest Web technologies and social media, the site aims for an enhanced user experience. “We want to give visitors historical content and, whenever possible, the context for that content,” she explained. “For K-12 educators, there’s also a ‘teach’ page that links up with related resources and grade-level content expectations.”

Clark noted that Seeking Michigan will open up Michigan’s history to a whole new market of information hunters. “Seeking Michigan is definitely a big boost for those who already have an interest in our state’s history, including scholars, authors, genealogists and publishers,” she said. “What we’re very excited about is the prospect of introducing new generations of Michigan residents to the Michigan they thought they knew and helping them forge connections with our state’s remarkable past.”

Seeking Michigan was made possible with generous funding from the Talbert and Leota Abrams Foundation, a Lansing-based nonprofit that primarily focuses on funding library and educational science programs. Since the mid-1980s, the Abrams Foundation has provided more than $2.5 million toward the development of the Library of Michigan’s and Archives of Michigan’ genealogy collection, including the digitization of the death records so crucial to family historians’ research efforts. The National Historic Publications and Records Commission provided additional funding.

The Library of Michigan Foundation (www.michigan.gov/lmfoundation) and the Michigan History Foundation (www.michigan.gov/mhfoundation) helped facilitate the funding process for Seeking Michigan and provide donors the opportunity to contribute to Seeking Michigan and many other initiatives. The Archives of Michigan is part of the Michigan Historical Center. The Michigan Historical Center and the Library of Michigan are agencies within the Department of History, Arts and Libraries (HAL). Dedicated to enriching quality of life and strengthening the economy by providing access to information, preserving and promoting Michigan’s heritage and fostering cultural creativity, HAL also includes the Mackinac Island State Park Commission and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs. To learn more, visit www.michigan.gov/hal.

In an additional message, I received the following:

The flood of visitors searching Seeking Michigan has caused the site's response time to drag. This challenge illustrates how popular we knew the information would be. We encourage researchers to check back periodically and continue to try to explore the site. We are working on the problem and hope to have things running smoothly in the near future.

Some Michigan Death Certificates, 1898 - 1920, Available Online for Free

Seeking Michigan has been adding images of death certificates for Michigan citizens for the years 1898 - 1920 to their website over the past couple months, with this last week seeing a huge influx of data. Genea-blogger Pam Warren tells me that the Department of History, Arts, and Libraries hopes to open Seeking Michigan on Tuesday, March 17th, with slightly over one-quarter of their data online. The plan is to add more data in three or four following stages, and the word from the Archives of Michigan is "it's new, be patient. We're getting fixes as quickly as we can after problems are discovered."

I am happy to report that I have found death certificates for half a dozen of my ancestors. Some of it confirmed what I already had, but other information was brand new (always a delight)! I've also found information on siblings, children, and other relatives of my ancestors, expanding my family tree. I have found that running the same search on consecutive days yields new information each day, so apparently data is being added on a daily basis as Tuesday's opening day looms near. Comparing what I've found with data at FamilySearch Record Search, which has Michigan State Births (1867 - 1902), Marriages (1867 - 1925), and Deaths (1867 - 1897) from information gathered from county libers, as well as Federal Census records, helps confirm and expand the information I'm finding at Seeking Michigan.

The addition of these death records brings the death record information for Michigan available online for the following years: 1867 - 1897 (FamilySearch Record Search - liber records, images), 1898 - 1920 (Seeking Michigan - death certificates, images, currently incomplete), and 1971 - 1996 (Ancestry - death indexes, transcribed, requires subscription). Michigan began keeping birth and death records in 1867, but they were gathered census-style, once a year by township supervisors and city supervisors or assessors, so many of our ancestors' births and deaths went unrecorded until birth and death certificates were issued in 1905 and 1897, respectively. If you are looking for death records during the "gap" years, check out the Michigan page at Joe Beine's Death Indexes website for county death indexes, obituaries, burial records, and other alternative sources.

Finally, if you have ancestors from Michigan, you should be aware that due to severe budget cuts, the Library of Michigan may be closed completely. Pam has a detailed article here, and urges her fellow Michigan citizens to contact their legislators regarding this serious matter. I think it would behoove those of us non-Michigan residents to "contact Senator Thomas George, chairman of the Michigan Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for History Arts and Libraries by phone at 517-373-2768 to express your support for the Library. You may visit his web page for more contact options." These legislators need to know how much such a drastic action would affect those who live outside Michigan and the economic impact it would have on the State of Michigan by cutting out-of-state income from those who would pay research fees or visit the Library themselves.

SSDI - Free on GenealogyBank

Tom Kemp just announced today that the Social Security Death Index database will now be free to access at his website, GenealogyBank.

"So what?" you may be thinking. "I can access the SSDI in several places online for free already."

BUT, the SSDI database at GenealogyBank is the most comprehensive one on the Internet.

It has expanded & enhanced the data – adding the day of the week when the person’s birth or death occurred and the GPS coordinates that many genealogists like to have for their records.

Also, no other site updates the SSDI weekly. Most update every month or longer.

Check out Tom's announcement here.

News from the Genealogy Blogging World

Here's some news that's been making its rounds in the genealogy blogging world lately:

• Georgia's state death index from 1919 - 1927 is now available online with links to digital images of original death certificates. Details are here.
• The parent company that owns Ancestry.com, The Generations Network, has been acquired by Spectrum Equity Investors. Details are here, and a current list of commentary and interviews of CEO Tim Sullivan are here.
• "Halloween and the Supernatural" was the theme of the 34th edition of the Carnival of Genealogy, which was hosted by Jasia at Creative Gene. Click on the link to read your free online "magazine" of great genealogy-related "articles" written by 19 bloggers! (I forgot to write about the 33rd Carnival edition when it came out. Its topic was "Weddings," and was published October 4th.)
  
• Craig Manson, a genea-blogging law professor, has published a new series of law lessons entitled "Defamation and Privacy Issues in Genealogy" on his blog, GeneaBlogie. The first post is here. Craig's last series on the law regarding genealogy was about whether Ancestry.com violated copyright law with its Internet Biographical Database (part one of that series is here).