Death In Texas

OK, so here's the situation: I'm busy indexing in hopes of being helpful indexing the 1940 US Census when it comes out April 2nd. Every genealogist on planet Earth is excited to have a look and a good ol' search of that record... but... searching can't happen until and unless many volunteers work at indexing the massive project. (See posts below about indexing.)

I indexed some birth records and some other stuff and was looking for a small bundle of items to index, about 10 to 20 records, to keep practicing on. All that I could find for beginners that had handwriting that didn't freak me out were Texas death records. Well, kinda creepy, I thought, but I took a look and ended up indexing a couple of them. Actually really interesting.

These records were for 1954 in San Antonio. Babies to old folks (whatever that was in the mid 1950s). And I just had to read why they died... I love the story stuff. Were they married, where were they born? Were they a "Jr." or was the mother or father's name known or unknown? It all started to come a bit together to frame a tiny picture of them. Fascinating, really, how much you can get from one death certificate.

So that's why we index: to fill in missing bits for those descendants out there looking for more information to better complete the picture of their ancestor. Yeah, I like indexing.

Photo of the day from my Archive:

My Aunt Dot, Dorothy Williams Conrad,

ready for her prom, 1938.

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/03/death-in-texas.html