Thursday, August 20, 2015

Treasure Chest Thursday - Post 276: Death Record of Joseph Champlin (1757-1850) in Worcester, Mass.

It's Treasure Chest Thursday - time to look in my digital image files to see what treasures I can find for my family history and genealogy musings.

The treasure today is the  1850 death record of Joseph Champlin (1757-1850) in Worcester, Worcester County, Massachusetts:


The snippet for Joseph Champlin:


The extracted information from this death record:


*  Date of death:  17 June 1850
*  Name:  Joseph Champlin
*  Age:  92
*  Sex and Condition:  Male, Widower
*  Occupation:  Farmer
*  Birthplace:  So. Kingston
*  Parents Names:  Elijah and Phoebe Champlin
*  Cause of Death:  Killed by the Cars

The source citation for this record is:

"Massachusetts Vital Records, 1841-1915," digital images, New England Historic Genealogical Society, American Ancestors (http://www.AmericanAncestors.org : accessed 23 June 2014), Deaths, Volume 50, Worcester, Mass., 1850, page 158, Joseph Champlin, age 92, entry.

In addition to the "normal" death information in this record (name, place, date, age), the Massachusetts Vital Records collection also provides the birthplace, the occupation, the parents names and the cause of death.  From all of that information, I know that this is the Joseph Champlin who is my 4th great-grandfather, son of Elijah and Phoebe (Card) Champlin, husband of Nancy Kenyon, and father of 12 children, including my third great-grandmother, Amy (Champlin) Oatley.

The really interesting piece of information in this record is the cause of death - "killed by the cars."  I believe that means he was killed by a train car in an accident of some kind, perhaps at a station.  One reference book I have says he was on his way to visit a son in Rome, New York by train.  Worcester was probably the closest train station to South Kingstown, Rhode Island at the time to travel to central New York.  At age 92.  That's really amazing, I think.  I wonder if someone was with him.

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Copyright (c) 2015, Randall J. Seaver


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