Pennsylvania Death Certificates

 

            One of my favorite places to look for information is in the Pennsylvania Death Certificates database on Ancestry.com.  I consider the PA Death Certificates to be a real jackpot for family information. (Ancestry.com is available for use free in the Marx Room.) Death certificates for the state of Pennsylvania are available between the years 1906 to 1963.

            The Pennsylvania Death Certificate form is usually completed by someone who was close to the deceased named an informant. This doesn’t always mean that the information put down by the informant is necessarily to be taken as 100% correct. Plus some questions may be left unanswered because the informant just doesn’t know.

            The following are some of the items of information to be found on Pennsylvania Death Certificates.

 

Place of death/ address where death occurred

Deceased person’s name

Usual residence of the deceased

Age at death                         

Cause of death

Date and exact time of death

Person’s date and place of birth

Race of person

Date and place of burial/ disposition of cremated remains

Details about the length of illness if that is relevant

How long in this country or location

Maiden name of deceased if it is a woman

Marital status at the time of death

Name of spouse, whether alive or deceased

Name (and sometimes address) of informant, frequently a surviving spouse, child or other close relative

Name and location of funeral home

Names of parents and birthplaces if known

Occupation and/or name of employer

Religious Affiliation - It may not say exactly but at times it can be deduced from the information recorded.

Signature of attending physician

 

            There can be vast differences between one person’s certificate and another depending upon the informant, even whether there was an informant.

Here is some of the interesting information I’ve found by looking at the PA Death Certificates:

 ~ One of my great-grandmothers, Anna McGrath died at Homeopathic State Hospital, Allentown, PA from erysipelas. I always thought she died in New Jersey because she lived in New Jersey. Her father’s name was listed as O’Connor, which I knew. What I discovered was her mother’s maiden name was Ward and they are listed as both being born in Scotland.

~ My grandfather, Thomas McGrath’s little sister, Lavina Catherine died in Glendon, PA from cardiac exhaustion - excessive muscular exertion while skipping rope at age 7. She disappeared after the 1900 Census. No one knew what had happened to her. The death certificate revealed that she died in 1907.

~ A stillborn baby born March 3, 1934. We knew my grandmother Helen McGrath had several babies who were stillborn or only lived a few months.

~ Another baby boy, William was born January 31, 1921 and died March 5, 1921. My father and I would visit the cemetery when I was small and bring peonies in coffee cans. (I always got to run the spigot at the cemetery!) I would see William’s grave and wonder about him, what had happened. He had died from acute gastroenteritis which is more curable today than it was in 1921.

 

            Use the database in different ways to get the full benefit of what it contains. Search by last name only; search by parents’ names; if the first name is unusual, search by first name only and county. Mix it up and you may come up with information you might not have found in a conventional way.

            Additional death certificates from the following places are available at Ancestry: Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Philadelphia, PA, Missouri, Washington, Vermont, Utah, and Oconee County, GA. The years available for these locations vary. Some have an actual view of the death certificate; others are a brief list of the information from the death certificate. If a word or name does not look quite right it might be because the document was converted using OCR (Optical Character Recognition). OCR is certainly helpful but not infallible. Take a look at the copy of the original document and decide for yourself what was written on the page.

            It would be great if more years and death certificates were added for Pennsylvania in the future. In the meantime, take a look at this wonderful resource and see what new information you can discover about your own family.