In genealogy, small details often lead to big discoveries. Genealogists are naturally passionate, and I’ve also found myself, in my enthusiasm, chasing the next lead and overlooking what seemed like minor details. Yet, it is precisely these details that can prove to be crucial in research.
Why Is Translating Records Important?
I’ve found that it’s essential to translate baptism, marriage, or death records as I come across them. Once I’ve written them out, I often notice significant pieces of information. These might include a relative listed as a godparent, a note about one parent belonging to a different denomination, or the marital status of a deceased person.
A Discovery in a Death Record
This week, I continued compiling the results of a genealogical study into a family book. I reviewed the text, checked the data, compared it with the information in the family tree, and searched for errors or new leads.
As I looked at a death record, I was puzzled—a man who should have been listed as a widower was recorded as married. Could this be a mistake? I knew that his wife had passed away several years earlier.
Errors in church records do happen, but in cases of doubt, it’s always important to verify. I checked the marriage records, and sure enough, there was a marriage entry from the same year his wife had died. This wasn’t unusual, especially if a wife had died in childbirth and the young husband was left with small children.
It’s also fairly common to see widowers remarry at an older age—over 50 or even 60 years old—though typically to much younger women. For farm managers in particular, having a young, strong wife to help manage the household and supervise workers often seemed crucial.
In this case, however, not only was the widower over 50, but his new wife was 40 years old. While this is hardly considered "old" today, it was likely viewed differently in the 19th century. Why would someone marry an "older woman" so soon after his wife’s death?
The explanation was found in the baptism records—a child was born just a few months after the marriage. Most likely, this circumstance necessitated the quick wedding.
Whatever the circumstances, the fact remained that this discovery added an entirely new line of descendants to the family tree—one that no one had been aware of before. And it all came to light thanks to a small detail in a death record.
About Death Records
Death records usually lack alphabetical indexes in genealogy databases like Ciltskoki and are often considered less critical for tracing direct ancestors. However, they can provide valuable additional information:
Details about a person’s birthplace,
Cause of death,
Last residence,
And marital status.
When it comes to death records, one common issue is inaccuracies in the recorded age. It seems that the age of the deceased was rarely cross-checked against baptism records. Instead, it was likely based on what relatives reported. If the deceased had been frail or sickly, they may have been thought to be older than they actually were. Generally, the recorded age is often higher than the actual age found in baptism records.
For clarity, I will include here images of the most common marital status notations found in death records:
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