How To Read a Death Certificate

N.B. The death certificate in this post was randomly selected from Ancestry. These are not client nor personal records. 

    When doing genealogy, one of the richest and most productive records we have at our disposal is the humble death certificate.  I particularly love finding death certificates for the sheer wealth of information they can provide to researchers. 

Hint: Keep in mind, the information on the death certificate was provided by other people! They are sometimes wildly inaccurate, and represent what people around the subject believed to be the truth.

    Obtaining a death certificate varies wildly depending on place and time. Some states, like Kansas, require that you send them proof of identity in the form of a copy of a drivers licence or a passport. Some also require proof of decendancy, which often takes the form of multiple birth certificates with parent names to prove that you are actually related to the person on the death certificate. Some will go as far as to possibly require a court order to get the certificate (lookin' at you New Jersey). This is to protect the privacy of living individuals and to comply with state laws. However, in most states the process is relatively painless and easy. Also, you will need to check the state department of Vital Statistics to see what year your target state and county started requiring death certificates to be filed with a state or county agency. In my experience, the states in the eastern US required death certificates far earlier than states west of the Mississippi. 

    A few states provide death certificates for free through either the state department of Vital Statistics websites, or on Ancestry and/or FamilySearch. Iowa and Missouri are among the states that place death certificates on-line after a certain amount of time has passed.

  

    

Every death certificate contains three major areas; the layout might be different, but it will contain all three sections. This is a random Missouri death certificate I pulled from Ancestry.com. This certificate is for a woman named Lillie Smith who died 20 Dec 1912 in St. Louis, MO.

 

    Section 1: The Recording Data and Place of Death

    Pre-printed in the upper left corner of this certificate is the registration district, number of the certificate, and other clerical information used by the state vital statistics department:

   

This section also gives the address where she died: 316 Lami St. in the 9th ward of the city. If Mrs. Smith had died in a hospital, it would have given the name and street address of the hospital or facility where she died, so we can be relatively sure that she died at a private home. We don't know if she died at her own home or the home of a family member or friend, but it seems to have been a home not a hospital. We can sometimes cross check this in the city directory to see what was located at that address, and at the same time check to see Mrs. Smith's address. In this case, the St. Louis City Directory for 1912 only lists businesses, so the directory would be a dead end. 

Section 2: Vital Statistics

    Next, on the left hand side, is some of the information that we really want to know: her vital statistics. Remember, this is being filtered through someone else, so there is a chance that it may not be correct. Just be careful while evaluating this information. 

This tells us that Mrs. Smith was married, that she was white, and born on 5 Jun 1879 in Illinois. Furthermore, we know that she was only 33 when she died, and she wasn't employed outside of the home. This is all good evidence we can use to corroborate other facts.

Birth dates can sometimes vary by a few years one way or another between records, so don't automatically rule out someone because their birth date isn't spot on.

       Almost all death certificates will list the parents of the deceased, if known:

In this case it lists both parents: Peter Kirk, born in Ireland and Mary Burges, born in Missouri. Again, this is not concrete proof that these were her parents or where they were born, but it can corroborate evidence we already have or give us a clue where to research next. Occasionally you will come across death certificates where the name of an adoptive or step-parent is given, so evaluate this information carefully if you're looking for bio parent information.

    

    A death certificate can also be a clue to a possible estrangement in the family. Researching one of my ancestors I discovered that his parents were not listed on his death certificate, because his family didn't know who his parents were. Investigating further, I discovered that this ancestor had been estranged from his parents and siblings for years before his marriage, neither of his two wives and his children had ever met them. and thus didn't know their names to record on his death certificate. This, obviously, is not always the case, and parent information could be missing for a variety of other very valid reasons, but it is worth keeping in mind. 

    

    After the parental information, it gives us who gave these details: James A. Smith, living at 316 Lami Street. Since her informant is living at the same address where she died, we can infer that she in fact died at a private home, not a hospital or care facility. Whether or not it was her home we can't tell from this document, but we do know that someone named Smith was living there. From there, we can ask who is James A. Smith? The most likely explanation in this case is that James A. Smith is her husband; at only 33 years old, it seems unlikely, but not impossible, that this was her child. However, we would need to look up Lillie or James in other sources to be certain, such as marriage or census records.

    

    Below that, we find the date that the death certificate was filed with the county clerk's office and the name of the clerk that filed it. 

    

Section 3: Medical Cause of Death and Burial Information

    On the right hand side of this death certificate we find the medical information, including cause of death:

In this case we see that Mrs. Smith's cause of death was lobar pneumonia, with no secondary contributing factors such as TB or cancer. There are also two numbers scrawled in the box containing the cause of death- 92 and 101; take note of those, we will return to those numbers in a future post, as they do give us some good information.

    Above the cause of death, the time and date of her death was given, plus a doctor's testimony about how long he had been attending her case, in this case since the 7th of November. She had been ill and under a doctor's care for over a month before her death. We also know that the doctor was not present at her death, and that he had last seen her alive the day before she died.

    Finally, the certificate gives us the name of the undertaker or the undertaking firm, and the date of burial. Mrs. Smith was buried on the 23rd of December, making for a grim Christmas indeed. The place of burial is the New St. Marcus Cemetery, at 7901 Gravois Rd., in St. Louis, so we know now where we can look for her burial and stone.

Conclusion

    So what can we learn about Mrs. Lillie Smith from this record? A whole awful lot! We know where and when she died, obviously, but we also know a whole lot more. We know she was a married housewife and not doing any factory or other kind of work outside her home. This alone tells us about her economic status; her husband was earning sufficient money to keep her in the home and not require her to earn money too. How comfortable they were is up for speculation, but comfortable enough. We know that her maiden name may have been Kirk, and her father, whether biological or not, may have come from Ireland, but her mother was probably born in Missouri. Plus, we now also have a clue to the maiden name of her mother. This is a huge source of information for use; we can now track her potential family down and confirm their existence and whereabouts across two states, Illinois and Missouri. She had a male relative named James A. Smith, who may have been a husband or son. We also know that she had been ill for well over a month before she died, and that she wasn't suffering from obvious secondary illness that would have contributed to her death. 

    Although death certificates may vary in layout and quality of information, the sheer volume of information that they can provide to us opens multiple pathways to future research. As long as we are careful with evaluating the reliability of the informant and the information that they are providing, death certificates are one of the most valuable sources of information available for genealogical research in the US. Later, I'll walk you through death certificates from the UK, which are slightly different to those from the US.

As always I welcome questions and comments!