Friday, April 18, 2014

Pennsylvania Death Certificates (1906-1924) Now On Ancestry.com

I've been looking forward to this record collection becoming available for a long time.  While I don't have any ancestors who died in Pennsylvania who died after 1906, I do have many persons in my database who died between 1906 and 1924.  How I wish Ancestry.com had a "Record Match" like feature so I could easily mine this database!

The Pennsylvania Death Certificates, 1906-1924, database is at http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=5164.  The database description says:

"Pennsylvania’s Department of Health began keeping birth and death records on a statewide basis on January 1, 1906. This collection includes death records beginning on that date through 1924. Later records will eventually be added to this collection.
"Death certificates recorded the following details:
  • name and residence of the decedent
  • city and county of death
  • gender and race
  • marital status
  • age and date of birth
  • occupation
  • place of birth
  • parents' names and birthplaces
  • date of death
  • dates attended by physician
  • cause of death
  • attending physician and address
  • length of stay in hospital or institution or length of residency for transients or recent arrivals
  • place of burial or removal
  • date of burial
  • undertaker name and address
  • name and address of informant
"Records of stillbirths were required to be filed as both a birth and death record, so you may find records of stillborn children in this collection."

Here is the search page for this database:


I put "carringer" in the last name field and clicked on "Search" and saw:


There were only 24 matches for Carringer, but I think that I have every one of them in my database.  I looked down the list and saw the entry for Mary Jane Feather (Mary Jane Carringer):


I did not have an exact date of birth or date of death or death location for Mary Jane.  I clicked the "view original image" link:


This death certificate for Mary Jane Feather has lots of very useful information, including birth date birth place, death date, death place, parents names, parents birthplace, occupation, cause of death, length of residence, and place of burial or removal.

A source citation for the death certificate of Mary Jane Feather is (using the Vital Records (state, certificates, online) source template in RootsMagic):

Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Death Certificates, 1906-1924, No. 89928 (stamped), Mary Jane Feather entry, died 10 August 1923; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 18 April 2014); citing Pennsylvania (State). Death certificates, 1906–1963. Series 11.90 (1,905 cartons). Records of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, Record Group 11. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/.

Eventually, there will be death certificates online up through 1963 in this database.

Now on to do the rest of the Carringers, the Spanglers, the Feathers, the Vauxes, the Remleys and more!  I'll have some genealogy fun this weekend!

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2014/04/pennsylvania-death-certificates-1906.html

Copyright (c) 2014, Randall J. Seaver


3 comments:

Ed Hamilton said...

Thank you. I have many relatives who died in PA in that time frame. I had most of the dates from their obituaries, but not the certificates. PA is strict about who can obtain them, last I knew, and I also just don't have the $$ to be requesting certificates for collateral relatives.

Still going through them for information, may take days.
Thanks again

Elizabeth Handler said...

I have purchased quite a few PA death certificates when they first became available a couple of years ago. However, you had to have a pretty good idea of the year of death, or you were searching the index a long time. Now that they're on ancestry, you can search much more easily! I blogged about one find at A Jewish Genealogy Journey.

Claudia said...

I am so glad to see this collection. Ninety nine percent of my ancestors settled in PA, as well as my husbands.

What I am finding a lot is Name of Father--unknown, Name of Mother--unknown.