The Pre-1920 Oklahoma Death Index is now at 424,116 entries.
• Just finished extracting death information from Blaine County probate records, about 850 entries in all.
• Working through the Dawes Enrollment Cards for Cherokees. It will probably take most of this year to finish all the Cherokee cards. I'm including those with death dates AND the deaths of parents and spouses listed as dead (their death listed as pre1900-08, for example).
* About half way through deaths recorded at the Sequoyah County Court House. These were periodically recorded by doctors and cover time period of about 1908 to 1917.
• Finished reading through the Beaver Herald, 1895 through end of 1919.
• Started reading through the Langston City Herald (up to Feb 1896).
My computer is a several years old Mac laptop. Apparently the operating system is not compatible with any of the current browsers, so I lose ability to post on this blog most of the time. Soon, I will inherit my daughters 2 year old PC laptop, so should be back to normal abilities and displays. Hopefully I will be able to get back to weekly postings! Until then...Good Hunting!
22 April 2013
31 January 2013
Oklahoma Probate Records Now On-Line!!!
Familysearch.org has now scanned and made available on-line early probate records for most of Oklahoma. The amount and types of probate records vary by county depending on what records the LDS Church microfilm crews were allowed to film. Several counties have indexes included in scanned files!
When looking for death dates, don't limit your searches to just estate and will files. I have found death dates of parents in guardianship files. A death date can also be roughly determined from the Appearance Docket (death before the filing date, but close to that filing date).
Nearly all counties have SOME scanned files. So below are those counties for which NO files are accessible:
Coal Grady Love Sequoyah
Craig Johnston Murray
Creek Kiowa Osage
Garfield Lincoln Pawnee
There is also one county that no longer exists that had files: Day County. This county covered all or parts of Ellis, Roger Mills and Dewey counties before statehood.
To access these files go to Family Search at this URL:
https://familysearch.org/search/image/index#uri=https%3A//familysearch.org/records/collection/2063710/waypoints
When looking for death dates, don't limit your searches to just estate and will files. I have found death dates of parents in guardianship files. A death date can also be roughly determined from the Appearance Docket (death before the filing date, but close to that filing date).
Nearly all counties have SOME scanned files. So below are those counties for which NO files are accessible:
Coal Grady Love Sequoyah
Craig Johnston Murray
Creek Kiowa Osage
Garfield Lincoln Pawnee
There is also one county that no longer exists that had files: Day County. This county covered all or parts of Ellis, Roger Mills and Dewey counties before statehood.
To access these files go to Family Search at this URL:
https://familysearch.org/search/image/index#uri=https%3A//familysearch.org/records/collection/2063710/waypoints
27 January 2013
Oklahoma City Death Record Books
Several years ago two volumes of OKC death records were donated to the Oklahoma History Center. The OHS has finally ironed out the problems with digitizing the oversized volumes and have put the two volumes covering 1908 through 1924 onto a single CD. Work is in progress to extract information into a searchable database with basic information from the two volumes.
The information in records is amazing. Included are:
• Name
• Death location
• Gender and race
• Birth date and/or age (usually age)
• Marital status
• Birth place (usually just the state)
• Names of parents and their birth places (states)
• Occupation (usually left blank)
• Death date
• Cause of death
• Contributing cause of death
• Place of burial (cemetery if local, city if elsewhere)
• Funeral Home
• Date record was filed
• Comments column (usually for homicide, auto death, suicide, or WWI service info)
As you can see, there is a wealth of information in these death volumes. I have extracted information for the 11,638 deaths that occurred before 1920. These records will soon be incorporated into my Pre-1920 Oklahoma Death Index.
Suprisingly, 40 records were recorded after 1 Jan 1920! Most of these were WWI reburials (disinterred in France for burial in OKC) or disinterments from elsewhere to Fairlawn Cemetery or Rose Hill Cemetery in OKC. Even though entries start on 17 Feb 1908, there are 12 deaths recorded for people who died before 1908. The earliest recorded death is for L.C. Hubbell aged 17y who died 14 June 1893 at Monroe City LA and was disinterred to Fairlawn Cemetery in May 1921.
Keep a look out for these records to be available at the OHS in the not too distant future. Also, for the time being I am doing free look ups from my Pre-1920 Oklahoma Death Index which now has over 410,000 entries.
The information in records is amazing. Included are:
• Name
• Death location
• Gender and race
• Birth date and/or age (usually age)
• Marital status
• Birth place (usually just the state)
• Names of parents and their birth places (states)
• Occupation (usually left blank)
• Death date
• Cause of death
• Contributing cause of death
• Place of burial (cemetery if local, city if elsewhere)
• Funeral Home
• Date record was filed
• Comments column (usually for homicide, auto death, suicide, or WWI service info)
As you can see, there is a wealth of information in these death volumes. I have extracted information for the 11,638 deaths that occurred before 1920. These records will soon be incorporated into my Pre-1920 Oklahoma Death Index.
Suprisingly, 40 records were recorded after 1 Jan 1920! Most of these were WWI reburials (disinterred in France for burial in OKC) or disinterments from elsewhere to Fairlawn Cemetery or Rose Hill Cemetery in OKC. Even though entries start on 17 Feb 1908, there are 12 deaths recorded for people who died before 1908. The earliest recorded death is for L.C. Hubbell aged 17y who died 14 June 1893 at Monroe City LA and was disinterred to Fairlawn Cemetery in May 1921.
Keep a look out for these records to be available at the OHS in the not too distant future. Also, for the time being I am doing free look ups from my Pre-1920 Oklahoma Death Index which now has over 410,000 entries.
31 December 2012
Progress at end of 2012
The year 2012 is at an end tonight. I have not made any posts for several months and for that I apologize. No resolutions for 2013, but I do have a few goals for the pre-1920 Oklahoma Death Index:
• Add at least 50,000 more entries.
• Ideally, I'd like to hit 500,000 entries by the end of the year, but 450,000 seems more realistic.
• Blog at least once a week, if not twice a week.
• Post more information on sources of pre-1920 deaths in Oklahoma.
Here are a few highlights from 2012:
• Ended the year with 402,442 entries.
• Finished Dawes Enrollment Cards for Choctaw, Creek and Seminole Tribes.
• Finished all cemeteries I have been able to track down on-line and at OHS Library.
• Added thousands from death notice/obit info, mainly from Ardmore, Antlers, and Beaver newspapers.
• Added 8200+ records from the OKC Death Record Volume 1. Only 3100 more records to go!
• Added thousands of records from County Probate Record Indices (available on Familysearch.org).
Sources I will "attack" in 2013:
• The rest of the County Probate Record Indices at Familysearch.org.
• Finish the OKC Death Record Volume 1.
• Tulsa Funeral Home records.
• Rose Hill Burial Park (in OKC) sexton's records.
• Finish obits in the Beaver Herald (1915-1920).
• Continue extracting obit/death info from the Daily Ardmoreite (in 1902 currently).
• Find records for or visit missing cemeteries.
• Probate records for counties that do not have indices with years included.
Let me know what you think of the blog and of the death index! Happy New Year!!!
• Add at least 50,000 more entries.
• Ideally, I'd like to hit 500,000 entries by the end of the year, but 450,000 seems more realistic.
• Blog at least once a week, if not twice a week.
• Post more information on sources of pre-1920 deaths in Oklahoma.
Here are a few highlights from 2012:
• Ended the year with 402,442 entries.
• Finished Dawes Enrollment Cards for Choctaw, Creek and Seminole Tribes.
• Finished all cemeteries I have been able to track down on-line and at OHS Library.
• Added thousands from death notice/obit info, mainly from Ardmore, Antlers, and Beaver newspapers.
• Added 8200+ records from the OKC Death Record Volume 1. Only 3100 more records to go!
• Added thousands of records from County Probate Record Indices (available on Familysearch.org).
Sources I will "attack" in 2013:
• The rest of the County Probate Record Indices at Familysearch.org.
• Finish the OKC Death Record Volume 1.
• Tulsa Funeral Home records.
• Rose Hill Burial Park (in OKC) sexton's records.
• Finish obits in the Beaver Herald (1915-1920).
• Continue extracting obit/death info from the Daily Ardmoreite (in 1902 currently).
• Find records for or visit missing cemeteries.
• Probate records for counties that do not have indices with years included.
Let me know what you think of the blog and of the death index! Happy New Year!!!
29 August 2012
What's In a Name?
I once heard a quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson:
"I won't trust a man who can't spell his name at least three different ways."
I guess that kind of sums up most of the problems in genealogy and not being able to find our ancestors. I hear so many people claim that their family was "missed" on the census. I guess they never head this quote!
In going through the Dawes Rolls Creek packets, I came across an interesting transcript. One of the "chiefs" of a village gave an explanation, under oath, of how names were dealt with. Children were given their father's name if they lived in the father's village and mother's name if in her village. To complicate things more, there were separate rules if the husband or wife was Cherokee living in the Creek nation or vice/versa.
The most interesting statement I read was the "chief's" identification of a child's father. He gave the father's name he was known by. And then he also gave the dad's Creek name. AND he went on to identify the man's Warrior name. So each Creek male had a "White" name, a "Creek" name, and a "Warrior" name. A genealogist unaware of this naming system is doomed!
Perhaps the Creeks took Thomas Jefferson's supposed quote too seriously :)
"I won't trust a man who can't spell his name at least three different ways."
I guess that kind of sums up most of the problems in genealogy and not being able to find our ancestors. I hear so many people claim that their family was "missed" on the census. I guess they never head this quote!
In going through the Dawes Rolls Creek packets, I came across an interesting transcript. One of the "chiefs" of a village gave an explanation, under oath, of how names were dealt with. Children were given their father's name if they lived in the father's village and mother's name if in her village. To complicate things more, there were separate rules if the husband or wife was Cherokee living in the Creek nation or vice/versa.
The most interesting statement I read was the "chief's" identification of a child's father. He gave the father's name he was known by. And then he also gave the dad's Creek name. AND he went on to identify the man's Warrior name. So each Creek male had a "White" name, a "Creek" name, and a "Warrior" name. A genealogist unaware of this naming system is doomed!
Perhaps the Creeks took Thomas Jefferson's supposed quote too seriously :)
26 August 2012
Duplication of Records???...So What!!!
My purpose for the Pre-1920 Oklahoma Death Index database is to accumulate as many references to pre-1920 Oklahoma deaths as I can find. I have been chastised for having duplicate entries, for wasting my time, etc. One person thought it was "stupid" to extract information from a published cemetery book and then go walk the cemetery, including deaths from both sources, most being duplicates. What that person doesn't realize is that although many of the entries are duplicates, many entries have slightly different name spellings or death dates. Often I see new stones for previously unmarked graves and the published book has old stones that have disappeared or become unreadable over time. In Tyner's "Our People and Where They Rest" 12 volume set, most entries have only birth and death year. A reading of the actual tombstone will often add month and day to those years.
To illustrate what I see as the great value to my database, here are two entries. One entry was added last year from a findagrave.com. The other is from a newspaper article extract:
Hughes, George Vaughan 32 years buried Coalgate Cemetery (no death date on old stone)
Hughes, George V. died Saturday at Weston TX. Buried Coalgate Cemetery [from the Wayne OK Gazette 26 Nov 1909 p1 c6]
Neither source provides the same information. from the tombstone we have an age with no reference point since there is no death date or death year. From the death notice, we have a death date (I would need to look up the paper and see the publication date to determine the death day), death location and burial location. Combine the two and we now have a good idea of the life span of George V. Hughes and a better idea of what records would available on him and which ones to search.
With my alphabetical death index, I can easily find and match multiple references for one individual. The more sources, the more information and better the information is substantiated.
To illustrate what I see as the great value to my database, here are two entries. One entry was added last year from a findagrave.com. The other is from a newspaper article extract:
Hughes, George Vaughan 32 years buried Coalgate Cemetery (no death date on old stone)
Hughes, George V. died Saturday at Weston TX. Buried Coalgate Cemetery [from the Wayne OK Gazette 26 Nov 1909 p1 c6]
Neither source provides the same information. from the tombstone we have an age with no reference point since there is no death date or death year. From the death notice, we have a death date (I would need to look up the paper and see the publication date to determine the death day), death location and burial location. Combine the two and we now have a good idea of the life span of George V. Hughes and a better idea of what records would available on him and which ones to search.
With my alphabetical death index, I can easily find and match multiple references for one individual. The more sources, the more information and better the information is substantiated.
13 July 2012
I just added 14,249 new records:
- 1200 death notices/obits from the Beaver Herald
(still have 1910 through 1919 to extract)
- 1400 death notices/obits from the Daily Ardmoreite
(still have 1903 through 1919 to extract)
- 6000+ deaths from Creek by Blood Dawes Enrollment cards
(still have 1100 cards to go through)
- 4000+ deaths from Creek Freedmen Dawes Enrollment cards
(still have 100 cards to go through)
-1000+ deaths from Chaney Funeral Home of McAlester OK books
(still have vols 1-3, 9B and 10 to go through)
These are my current ongoing projects. As smaller sources become available, I take time off to do through those sources.
After I finish the Creek records, I will still have Choctaw, Chickasaw and Cherokee card to go through.
*** Current Total: 353,507 pre-1920 Oklahoma deaths!! ***
- 1200 death notices/obits from the Beaver Herald
(still have 1910 through 1919 to extract)
- 1400 death notices/obits from the Daily Ardmoreite
(still have 1903 through 1919 to extract)
- 6000+ deaths from Creek by Blood Dawes Enrollment cards
(still have 1100 cards to go through)
- 4000+ deaths from Creek Freedmen Dawes Enrollment cards
(still have 100 cards to go through)
-1000+ deaths from Chaney Funeral Home of McAlester OK books
(still have vols 1-3, 9B and 10 to go through)
These are my current ongoing projects. As smaller sources become available, I take time off to do through those sources.
After I finish the Creek records, I will still have Choctaw, Chickasaw and Cherokee card to go through.
*** Current Total: 353,507 pre-1920 Oklahoma deaths!! ***
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