Genealogy Chat

Here's another suggestion, especially for uncommon surnames: I had no idea when one of my "brick wall" ancestors died, nor where he was buried. I wrote to one of the oldest cemeteries in Toronto (where he had lived for 50+ years) and asked if they had any James Mumford's on their computers (I also included other information). Don't know if she so kindly looked up the name on the computer, or sorted through cards, but she wrote back with not only his date of death and additional information I didn't have -- she also included who he was buried with and all of their information. Found out about one of his grandson's that way, and also a possible mother-in-law.

thanks for the tip, I have never bothered to obtain death certificates but now I will. Liz

This will be obvious to some of you but I felt it worth sharing. My great grand aunt, Elizabeth COOK married Robert CHAPMAN, and produced a string of children. Predictably enough, these children had names such as Jane, Ann, Robert, John, Hannah, etc... I managed to trace a couple of these children but could not find the rest and by the time of the 1881 census, all the children had moved out of the family home. Elizabeth died first but Robert died a couple of years later in 1895 at the ripe old age of 86. I ordered his death certificate and just as I hoped, it gave me an informant/witness name that would prove helpful to me. A son-in-law, Aaron WARD was the informant and when I looked him up on the census, I was able to tell that Robert's daughter, Ann CHAPMAN had married Aaron. This gave me a handful of children and grandchildren. This is how death certificates can be particularly useful as I would never have found Ann CHAPMAN otherwise due to the countless numbers of them.