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:
~ 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.
