I'm sure you've heard the old saying: "I've got good news and bad news, which do you want first?" Well, in genealogy you hear this every other day. Remember the obit I was waiting for from the Pottsville Republican and the Shenandoah Evening Herald for Anna Bradley, well I got it in the mail this week. So much for good news. The bad news - after paying the $10.00 fee, she is not MY Anna Bradley. The first clue was the title of the obit: Miss Anna Bradley - I wasn't a Detective for ten years for nothing. Well back to the drawing board.
Next good news: I got a letter from the Hoboken Cemetery in the mail today. Bad news: They have no records of Jack (John) Brady - the younger brother of my father who died at about two months old. They also have no record of Mary Ann Sullivan - which does not surprise me because I know her last name was not Sullivan, but I don't know what it was because she married before her death and I don't know her married name. Actually there is more good news in this letter - they did not request a genealogy fee.
Now I have some good news with no bad news to counter it. I was listening to a podcast - The Genealogy Guys - and they go over news and answer e mail questions. One of the news items was that Pennsylvania Births and Deaths between 1904 and 1961 are now public records and stored in the PA State Archives. They are indexed on line on the PA Archives site by year. Once you get the year, they are indexed in one of two way: either alphabetical or in the Russell system. The Russell system is a combination of key letters and numbers used to find the page on which your name is listed in the ledger book. They include instructions with the on line index, but I find it difficult to understand sometimes. I have never used it by myself, I usually have someone there to help. So this exercise should at least help me understand it better.
When you look up the name, it will give you a date of death, and the place, and a state file number (which is the important thing). Well, actually it is all important. I find the place of death is a great clue. If I had looked up Anna Bradley in the index, I would have seen that she died in Philadelphia, but I knew she lived with her daughter in Pottsville for at least ten years (1910 census and 1920 census, and the family is still there in 1930, but she is not). So if I were a betting man, my money for place of death would have been Pottsville not Philadelphia and I could have saved a few bucks. Are you picking up the underlying theme here - all of the $10.00 and $20.00 fees that I don't like paying - so a free one here and there helps keeps you going, cause this can get expensive. So anyway, I looked up Ann Bradley starting in 1929 and working backwards to 1920, and I found her. She died 27 Dec 1928 - Merry Christmas, in Pottsville, PA (don't forget the important part) State File #124066. So now you download the form on line to order a Non-Certified Death certificate and the best part - $3.00 each. I have ordered death certificates before and they were $20.00 to $25.00 each, so this is really good news - Break out the party hats and blow up some balloons YAHOO. The form does not give you a turn around time, but it has to be quicker. The last one I sent for took about four months.
Just in case you're new at this and don't know why I am so happy about finding death certificates, I'm going to tell you. Death certificates help you big time in genealogy. They are usually filed within a couple of days of death, which means it is fresh information. The person getting the information writes it down right away, so there is a smaller window for memory to screw up, and secondly it helps you go back further because it usually lists the names of the deceased person's parents (including mother's maiden name) and their place of birth, it usually gives the birth date and place of birth for the deceased, if your ancestor is a married female, you also get her maiden name (and her mother's maiden name). The last tidbit that you get is the name of the informant. That is the person who gave any personal information to the doctor - like birth date, parents names, etc (obviously the deceased didn't spill his guts before he checked out). So you might find a name you know, or someone else to look up. For example when I got our Great Grandfather, "Pop" Bergen's death certificate, the informant was our mother Claire Bergen. It was actually kind of sad to see her name there. It was 1943 and both of her parents had died, her two brothers were off to war and she was living with her mother's family, and giving information to a doctor on the last of her father's family. It may have made it easier because she was in Nursing School at the time and becoming more used to seeing people dying, (this is no reflection on my mother's nursing skills - just a fact of life) but this was a man that she had grown up living with. I don't care if she was an undertaker - that had to be tough.
When our Great Grandfather, James E Brady, died in Gordon, PA, his death certificate coughed up some info that I had been trying to find for awhile. The informant was his sister, Mary G Brady of Scranton, PA. She informed the doctor that their parents: Thomas A Brady and Bridget Convey were both born in Ireland - but she added a place in Ireland - Swinford. I don't know how she let that slip out, apparently her parents must have thought that if anyone knew the town that they were born in they could break the DaVinci Code with it. Well, maybe not - but no one had ever mentioned where in Ireland they came from - now I know Swinford, County Mayo. Ah the joys of death certificates.
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