fbpx

Month: June 2019

Posted on

Causes of Death and Old Medical Terms – Great Grandpa Harry Died of Phthisis, What Does That Mean?

causes of death
Leonardo da Vinci on his deathbed in 1519

Why investigate your ancestors’ causes of death?

They died, and they didn’t really do anything after that, so why take an interest in how it happened? Well, it’s all part of their story. As we know, family history is all about the stories. The lives our ancestors led inevitably culminated in their death and their cause of death can be a major part of their story. They can also tell us a lot more about the circumstances of their life.

Some people like to know the causes of their ancestors’ deaths for their own personal medical history. It’s true this can be useful. However, it is difficult to get a feel for what ‘runs in the family’ when earlier generations died at a significantly younger age. Until the 20th century, most people didn’t have the ‘luxury’ of living long enough to develop lifestyle diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Genetic predisposition to disease is probably better determined by having a DNA test done. Then download your raw data and run the results through Promethease to discover your disease risks.

Changes in causes of death over time

Once we get back to the early 20th century and beyond, there are really two main causes of death:

  • Infection
    • no antibiotics
    • often poor sanitation
    • lack of access to clean water
    • the Industrial Revolution had led to crowded living conditions
    • vaccinations were not as widespread or sophisticated
    • According to the CDC, the top 3 causes of death in 1900 were pneumonia, tuberculosis (TB) and diarrhoea/enteritis.
  • Accidents
    • no workplace health and safety provisions in Victorian times and earlier (workers were expendable and easily replaced)
    • fast-moving machinery did not have guards or emergency stop buttons as they would today
    • explosions were not infrequent
    • As the Industrial Revolution progressed, new machinery did not always mix well with human failings. A member of my family tree well known for his clumsiness managed to die after being run over by Stevenson’s Rocket. Therefore he became the first person to die in a railway accident! Not just a story, but a whole book has come out of that tale…
causes of death workplace accident
Workers in the fuse factory Woolwich Arsenal

Where can you find the causes of death for your ancestors?

The most reliable source of the cause of death is the death certificate. It is also the most accessible and formal source containing the doctor’s direct diagnosis. The contents of death certificates vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and some contain more useful information than others. However, they all contain the cause of death where it is known. Sometimes the death certificate will point you to an inquest. If the inquest files survive for your ancestor’s case, these can be fascinating. They will not only give a fuller description of the cause of death but often the circumstances surrounding it. Therefore I heartily recommend tracking them down. Of course inquests were the exception rather than the rule and only done when the death was unusual or suspicious.

Other potential sources of causes of death include burial registers and occasionally memorial inscriptions. These causes are supplied by a family member, so may not be as accurate as the death certificate (or a less technical term or a euphemism may be used).

Newspapers can also be a useful source of details around a death. Was your ancestor was well known in the community? Look for an obituary. Was there a link between your ancestor and an epidemic (for example, the ‘Spanish flu’ of 1918) or an event (such as the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, a factory explosion or a mine collapse)? Your ancestor may or may not be mentioned by name in the newspaper coverage of these incidents, but at the very least you get some further background about what happened.

Old medical terminology (Wait…this cause of death is something I’ve never heard of…)

Here is a list of some of the more common archaic names for diseases you might find, along with the modern name you may be more familiar with.

  • Ague – Malaria
  • Apoplexy – Stroke
  • Bilious fever – Typhoid fever
  • Brain fever – Meningitis
  • Breakbone – Dengue fever
  • Bright’s Disease – Kidney disease
  • Camp fever – Typhus
  • Childbed fever – Puerperal fever
  • Chincough – Whooping Cough
  • Confinement – Puerperal fever
  • Consumption – Tuberculosis
  • Decline – Tuberculosis
  • Dropsy – Oedema (swelling), usually from congestive heart failure or kidney disease
  • Dropsy of brain – Encephalitis
  • Enteric fever – Typhoid fever
  • Falling sickness – Epilepsy
  • French Pox – Syphilis
  • General paralysis – Tertiary syphilis
  • Inanition – Starvation
  • Infantile paralysis – Polio
  • King’s Evil– Tuberculosis of lymph glands
  • Le Grippe – Influenza
  • Lockjaw – Tetanus
  • Lung fever – Pneumonia
  • Marasmus – Malnutrition
  • Mortification – Gangrene
  • Natural decay – Old age
  • Phthisis – Tuberculosis
  • Pott’s Disease– Tuberculosis of spine
  • Purpura – Puerperal fever
  • Putrid fever – Diptheria
  • Quinsy – Tonsillitis
  • Scrofula– Tuberculosis of lymph glands
  • Softening of the brain – Dementia
  • The Grip – Influenza
  • The Pox – Smallpox (usually)
  • Winter fever – Pneumonia
causes of death doctor
Doctor avoiding catching the plague by wearing a mask filled with herbs and carrying a stick to avoid touching the patient and keep the family away from him!

What is the most unusual cause of death you’ve found in your family tree? Comment below!

Posted on

Your Ancestors’ Wills – Part 2 – Finding Wills And Tackling Reading Them

Last week we looked at the uses of wills for family history research, and what you might hope to find in your ancestor’s will. This week, we’ll take a look at why they are often not used, and tackle the problem of finding wills.

Why Are Wills So Under-Utilised?

To be honest, I think people are a little scared of them! The reasons that I have heard often boil down to misconceptions, or things that can be easily overcome. It’s worth the effort! Here are some of them:

‘They’re too hard to read’

True, the writing can be daunting when you first look at it. However, practice does make it easier over time. Here’s a nice little tutorial from the UK’s National Archives on how to read the old script in wills.

As we discussed last week, wills generally have a fairly set pattern in terms of content. My suggestion is to look at that first paragraph where you know the words are fairly standard and use it as a kind of ‘codebreaker’ for the rest of the document. That way, you can also cover patterns in individual writing styles too.

paleography

‘My ancestors weren’t rich, so there’s no point in looking for a will’

  • Anyone who was an adult, not insane or a criminal, and was male or an unmarried female may have left a will.
  • Men with any amount of property who had children would be likely keen to make a will. If they didn’t and his wife remarried, all his property would legally pass to the new husband and any children that man might have with his wife, leaving his own children unprovided for.
  • People often made wills if they were going into the military or a sea-faring occupation, or had any reason to believe they would be at risk of dying before their time.
  • Of course, this doesn’t mean that the majority of people made wills. It’s human nature to think you’re immortal, even today! Based on comparison with burial records, it seems that between 1 in 3 and 1 in 4 men left wills. That’s pretty good odds that you will find at least one in each family line even if not your direct ancestor. Remember the FAN Club!

‘There wouldn’t be much useful information in them’

It depends on what you mean by ‘useful information’. No, there are no vital records type dates in them. But remember, your ancestors are more than just dates and names. As we discussed last week, wills provide information about your ancestor’s relations and relationships, as well as an idea of his circumstances. And all written in his own voice.

‘I reckon they’d be expensive, they’ve been near a lawyer!’

You’d be surprised. Depending on where you are getting them from, they range from absolutely free through to about the same cost as a single birth, marriage or death certificate in most cases.

‘I wouldn’t know where to find wills’

Okay, there is some level of complexity in finding wills, as they are not usually all in one place for a single country. I am not even going to try to list all the sources for all the countries, or this blog will become a book! I would suggest taking a look here (and here for the UK only, and here for Australia only).

In a nutshell, the location of wills is dependent on the time period, the country, and the location within that country (e.g. county/state). Often they are found in national, state or local archives and record offices near the testator’s last known residence. Increasingly they are to be found digitised and online at some record office and subscription websites but there is still a long way to go.

Finding Wills In England

Probably the most complicated country for finding wills (and the one where most of my readers have ancestors) is England. Therefore, I’ll spend some time explaining how the location of English wills can be determined. If you can locate a will in England, you’ll find the rest of the world a doddle!

Finding Wills After 1858

After 1858, it’s simple. Go here. They’re all there and at about the same price as a certificate. All you need to know is the person’s full name and approximate year of death to find them.

Finding Wills Before 1858

Before 1858, wills were dealt with by the ecclesiastic courts (i.e. the Church). The country is split into dioceses for administration purposes. Each diocese has a bishop and a cathedral. The first step is to work out in which diocese the testator was living at the time of their death. A quick and easy way to do this is to use the FamilySearch Wiki. Enter the name of the parish in the search box and the ecclesiastical jurisdictions are listed in the box on the right of the parish page. That box also tells you the legal jurisdiction and the local archives which in most cases will house the wills proved within that diocese.

You should be able to order the wills online through the record office website in most cases, and if not you can do so by post. Wills for some dioceses are now online and more continue to appear all the time. Check the catalogues of your subscription sites regularly and remember Google is your friend!

Finding Wills When Your Ancestor Had Extensive Or Multiple Properties

If an ancestor had a property that extended across the border into other dioceses (or several properties around the country) his will went to a higher authority to be proven. Each diocese belongs to either the Province of Canterbury or ‘PCC’ (in the South) or the Province of York or ‘PCY’ (in the North). The provinces are headed by an Archbishop. If all his property was within one Province, that Province administered the will. If his property extended beyond one Province, the Province of Canterbury administered it. Also, all wills between 1653-1660 were administered by the PCC.

PCC wills are easy to get. If you have a subscription to TheGenealogist.co.uk or Ancestry.com (or can access either of them through your local library), images are accessible within that subscription. If not, go to the National Archives website and search your ancestor’s name. You can download the will for £3.50.

The National Archives in Kew, England

PCY wills are available from a less commonly known source, the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York, but the search and ordering is done through this link at FindMyPast. PCY wills cost £7.50 and are delivered electronically within a few days.

Finding Wills Means Finding Your Ancestors’ Lives

So as you can see, the hardest part is working out where the will is. Once you know that, it’s generally easy to get a copy. Then the hardest part is reading it, but with practice, you will find that gets easier too. If you need assistance, you can always call on a professional genealogist for help.

Invest some time and effort into finding your ancestors’ (or their FAN Club’s) wills, and I really believe it will pay off for you! Your tree will be better verified, and you will know a lot more about your ancestors’ lives.

Posted on

Your Ancestors’ Wills – Part 1 – Where There’s A Will, There’s Information Galore!

old wills

I had a wonderful stroke of luck this week! I broke through a longstanding brick wall on my Field line, confirmed using my ancestors’ wills. As suspected, the middle name Palmer used across several generations was a massive clue. However, the partnership that brought it about was back at the turn of the eighteenth century and in a different place. Therefore, it’s taken a while to find it.

Because the find was not where I expected it to be, I was extra-specially careful to ensure I had all my ducks lined up evidence-wise. I couldn’t claim this Edward Field as my own just because he was born at the right time and married a Palmer. These are both common names, and extremely common at the time in the parish where I found them. They were both prominent families in the area, and both had many branches. Using ancestors’ wills and wills of others in these local families allowed me to pinpoint where they fit in, and why the name Francis popped up as the eldest son’s forename for several generations too! Now I’ve untangled all the Field and Palmer lines I can sense a couple of one-name studies in the wind. I know how I’m wired…

I spent all this week burying my head in wills, so I was reminded why it would be a good topic for this week’s blog. They are sadly often under-utilised as a resource, and often so rich with detail.

Why You Should Look For Your Ancestors’ Wills

Wills are a treasure trove of information. Some of the uses you can put them to are:

  • Confirming your research
  • Untangling family branches
    • Very useful when the same names are appearing over and over in different branches. Wills will often make it clear who is who.
  • Determining not only family relationships but often their quality
    • Who did they leave out that was still alive or who did they leave an insultingly trivial amount of money? (A caveat, a child ‘cut off with only a shilling’ may have received their inheritance already. Their parent may have set them up in a business or home, and the ‘shilling’ is just to prevent them arguing that they were left out of the will as an oversight).
    • Sometimes they used very blunt and/or revealing comments to explain why certain bequests were made. (See the snippet of another of my ancestor’s wills below as an example!)
  • Discovering the married names of the daughters
    • The testator would often list their children’s names. The daughters were listed using their married surnames. Possibly the husband’s name and the names of their children would appear too.
  • Finding an unexpected place of origin
    • The testator would usually give instructions regarding their burial preferences. Many just specified the local churchyard. However, if they had moved to the vicinity during their life they may have asked to be buried in a family vault in their original village’s church for example.
  • Hearing the voice of your ancestor
    • Not literally of course! But this is one of the few common documents where you will get a feel for your ancestor’s personality. It’s a lot more freeform than certificates for example. Unless your ancestor left a journal, diary or memoir this may be as close as you get to reading their thoughts and opinions in their own voice.
old wills charles girling
A snippet of Charles Girling’s will, naming his housekeeper’s five children (plus one on the way!) as his own. He clearly showed a will to live, rather poignantly also covering any further children he may have by her in this will.

What Is Contained In Your Ancestors’ Wills?

This can vary a little, but a formal will often follows this fairly standard pattern:

  • Their name, occupation and location
  • A statement that they are of sound mind
  • Their burial request
  • Who they appoint as their executor
    • Often a spouse or adult child if widowed
    • Sometimes a brother, brother in law or close friend
  • Instructions for distribution of their property, listing their beneficiaries
  • The date the will was prepared
    • This could be very close to the death date, or years before if they were organised!
  • The signature (or ‘cross’ if they were illiterate) of the testator and the witnesses.
  • The date probate was granted
    • This could also be very close to the death date if straightforward, or years afterwards if it was complicated or contested!

What Won’t You (Usually) Find?

  • Wills of married women
    • these are rare before 1882 as up till then, women did not have their own property. Anything they brought into the marriage became the property of their husband. Therefore she had no legal right to leave anything to anyone.
    • Wills of spinsters, on the other hand, can be gold, especially if there were a lot of nieces and nephews!
    • Once a woman was widowed, she may have had a will drawn up if she did not intend to get remarried.
  • A list of every possession
    • This is called an ‘inventory’ and is a separate document to the will. If it survives, it will be located in the probate file.
    • The inventory is well worth looking for, as literally EVERYTHING got listed. It provides a fascinating snapshot into your ancestor’s life. My ancestor John Girling (father of the Charles named above) made his own inventory. This was quite unusual and slightly OCD, as he also repeatedly updated it over the years. He went into excruciating detail which was great, as it revealed his previously unknown military life, but sadly not the identity of his mother. He noted the subject, artist and value of every painting he owned except her portrait, about which he was irritatingly vague.
  • Dates of births, marriages and deaths
    • This is not the document for finding these details. You may find out from the will that marriages have happened, or children are still minors, or other family members are deceased, but the dates will not appear. However, using the date the will was signed can help narrow down a timeframe for those events and help you locate them in the appropriate sources.

Stay tuned for the next gripping episode…

Next week I will be looking at and dismantling some of the reasons why wills are so commonly ignored, as well as how to find and use them.

In the meantime, has anyone found anything in wills that they never would have known without seeing their will? For me, finding out Charles Girling’s ‘wife’ was actually his housekeeper was an eye-opener, and has saved me countless hours of continuing searches for their marriage! Leave your comments below…

Posted on

Cluster Research in Genealogy – Let’s Go FAN Clubbing!

Cluster research is a fantastic methodology to use when you’re stuck. You’ve sucked the well dry in terms of finding records for your direct ancestors. Or perhaps there are too many records for people of similar names and you can’t differentiate between which are your ancestor and which are not. Maybe a female ancestor has got ‘lost’ and you can’t find her maiden name. It’s time for some lateral thinking.

What is a FAN Club?

Cluster research in genealogy refers to utilising the FAN club (Family, Associates and Neighbours) of your direct ancestors to access information that you can’t find simply by researching them alone. The term ‘FAN club’ was coined by respected genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills many years ago. It’s a great way to remind yourself of what other sources of potential information to look for.

Your ancestors did not live in a bubble. They lived in a community, and probably several subgroups of that larger community such as their immediate neighbourhood, extended family, church, sporting or social clubs, workplaces, and political groups. Therefore they were coming into contact with other people every day and probably left their footprints across some of those peoples’ documents and stories in one way or another. Every cluster that they were a part of provides context about their life at the very least.

FAN Club Cluster research
The FAN Club consists of Family, Associates and Neighbours.

When we research our family trees, we often stick to direct ancestors. Indeed, people can be very critical of those who go down the rabbit hole of researching collateral lines, calling them ‘name collectors’ and casting aspersions on the larger size of their family tree. Do not be put off by this. Those people don’t know what they are missing!

Family Cluster Research

Collateral lines (or ‘extended family’) can provide gold when you’ve hit a brick wall. Was your direct ancestor not registered at birth or baptised, did he have no knowledgeable informant of his death, you can’t find his marriage certificate and there was no obituary published? You could be up the proverbial creek. But wait! He had siblings! Suddenly you have several potential sources for his parents’ names via each sibling’s records. For males, military records often contained parents’ names too.

Collateral family members can also help confirm which similarly-named person in a community is yours. Is a known brother with a less common name following the same occupation as your ancestor? Is the naming pattern of their children similar?

Extended family often lived close by, especially when families migrated somewhere together, so check censuses for them. They often witnessed each other’s weddings, were sponsors at their children’s baptisms and mentioned in each other’s wills – their lives frequently intersected. They often appeared in each other’s family photos, especially of large events. If you ‘lose’ a child from your direct ancestor’s family in a census, check that they weren’t actually in the home of their grandparents or aunts and uncles for the night! It can be very helpful when this happens. Sometimes the aunt was a previously lost sister of the child’s father whose married name wasn’t known!

Associates Cluster Research

Associates include people who were part of the same school/university, church/religion, workplace, professional association/union, sporting clubs, political associations or military units. They may have been business partners, their lawyer, doctor or any other sub-unit of the community. These people’s or group’s stories can often give a broader background to, and understanding of your ancestor’s life. If you are lucky your ancestor may be directly mentioned in surviving records or newspaper reports of these groups or workplaces, or journals of an associate’s life.

Cluster research Sports club
Many young men in particular were involved in local sports clubs.

I was able to find an account of an ancestor’s funeral in the newspaper because the only photo I had of him showed some masonic-looking regalia. This regalia turned out to be of the Ancient Order of Foresters who had put a notice in the paper. There were no notices from family as he’d left the state alone after his wife died and moved 2000km west!

cluster research freemasons
The masonic regalia on this ancestor helped to find a newspaper announcement of his funeral across the other side of the continent!

Neighbours Cluster Research

Find neighbours using resources such as directories, censuses and electoral rolls. These are the people that were often interacted with most frequently outside of the immediate family. The bonds could be very tight, especially among immigrant families. You will often find in these cases that the families immigrated together, either knowing each other before the journey or meeting aboard the ship. If you are looking for a town of origin and your family records aren’t providing it, you may possibly discover it via the neighbours they came into the country with!

cluster research neighbours
Neighbours’ lives were closely intertwined.

Neighbouring families commonly intermarried. ‘Marrying the boy next door’ was not just a myth. Of course not every romance ended up as a marriage. It’s probably a good idea to check close to home for potential fathers of illegitimate ancestors. If there are bastardy bonds available check those. If there aren’t, all is not lost however…DNA is beginning to uncover these dalliances by matching descendants of both families as cousins!

Neighbours can also be useful for finding a commonly named ancestor in subsequent censuses. If they had more unusual names than your ancestor and were still living in the surrounding premises, you’ve found him! If journals, memoirs or group photos from neighbouring families survive, you may well find that your ancestors are mentioned, so keep an eye out for those!

cluster research neighbours

FANning Out…

Now you know a little about cluster research, I hope you take advantage of using some of these connections to your ancestors. You may break down a brick wall completely. You may find supporting evidence for a hypothesis or a clue for another direction to go in. At the very least you will add context to your family’s story – a little more flesh on the bones. That’s always a good thing.

Remember, family, associates and neighbours weren’t mutually exclusive – some people may fit in all three categories. If they do, I advise focussing on these ones first. They overlap your ancestor in so many aspects of their life they stand a really good chance of bearing information you can utilise!