Death certificates

When death certificates begin

Statewide death registration came slowly. Massachusetts passed the first state registration law in 1842 and strengthened it in 1844, and six more states had passed registration laws by 1851. Many states had laws on paper long before they were enforced, so early registration is often incomplete.

In 1880 the Census Bureau began a national death registration area, made up of places with reliable registration: Massachusetts, New Jersey, the District of Columbia, and several large cities. By 1900 the area included ten states plus the District and a number of cities. States joined one by one as they passed and enforced registration laws, and beginning with 1933 all 48 states were included.

So a rural death in 1870 may have no certificate at all, while a death in the same county in 1920 is much more likely to have one, depending on when that state began enforcing registration. For deaths before your state's registration began, look to church burial registers, newspapers, probate records, gravestones, and the federal mortality schedules taken with the censuses of 1850 through 1880.

Facts about the death

The lower part of a typical early 1900s certificate is the medical certificate. A physician, or in some cases a coroner, signed it and gave the date of death, sometimes the hours of attendance, and the cause of death, often with a contributing cause and its duration. These facts were recorded within days by someone with direct knowledge, so they are usually reliable.

Causes of death use the vocabulary of their time. Phthisis or consumption means tuberculosis, la grippe means influenza, and dropsy is swelling from fluid, a symptom more than a disease. Look up unfamiliar terms rather than guessing, and remember that a doctor's diagnosis in 1910 reflects the medicine of 1910.

Near the bottom you will also find the place of burial, the date of burial or removal, and the undertaker's name and address. These lead directly to cemetery and funeral home records.

Facts about the person

The upper part of the form gives personal details: full name, sex, color or race, marital status, the name of a spouse on later forms, date of birth, age in years, months and days, occupation, and birthplace. Then come the father's name and birthplace and the mother's maiden name and birthplace.

Every one of these came from the informant, whose name and address appear on the form. Ask yourself what that person could really have known. A son reporting his father's death may know his father's birth date well. A son-in-law, a landlady, or a hospital clerk may have had no idea of the dead person's parents, and lines reading unknown or do not know are common. Even close family members guessed at birthplaces in the old country or confused a grandmother's maiden name with a married name.

How to weigh the informant

Treat the parents' names and birthplaces as a strong clue, not a final answer. Confirm them with records made closer to the time: the person's own marriage record, a baptism record, census entries with the parents in the household, or a parent's will naming the child.

Compare the informant with other records too. If the informant was the dead person's spouse, the marriage date and maiden name of the wife may be accurate even when the parents' details are thin. If the informant shares a surname with the deceased, you may have found a sibling you did not know about.

Small details worth noticing

An age written in years, months and days lets you calculate a birth date by subtracting from the death date, but the result is only as good as the informant's knowledge. Check whether the stated birth date and the stated age agree; if they do not, one of them is wrong.

The length of residence in the place of death, asked on many forms, can show when a family arrived. A note that the body was shipped to another town for burial can point you to the family's original home and burial plot.