Insights Into Our Future And Our Past

Yesterday a friend of mine, Sharon, told me a great family history research story. Sharon’s  research goal was to document the death dates for her ancestors who either died or were buried in Utah. My friend discovered that FamilySearch Record Search had a collection of death certificates, so she wanted to use the resource to improve her documentation. She started by creating a focused list of individuals who either died or were buried in Utah between 1850 and 1957. With the list in hand, Sharon began her search for the death certificates.

Finding the certificates in Record Search was simple. She typed in the names on her list and browsed through the possible matches. When she found a match she quickly entered the details on the certificate as documentation.

During the process of reviewing the list of possible matches, Sharon noticed that her grandfather’s name was listed as the father of a female child whose name she didn’t recognized. “Who was this child?” she thought because the name was not one that she had in her records. Sharon’s interest was piqued because the child had died when she was eight months old and her father never mentioned that he had a sibling.

Sharon printed the little girls death certificate and studied the details in comparision to her own records. The details on the record made the conclusion easy: There was no question that this little girl was her father’s half-sister. The little girl was never mentioned by her father in his life-time and never recorded on any other family records. Thanks to the Utah death certificates on Record Search, a lost and forgotten little girl was linked into her Family Tree.

I love to hear stories like this one. Stories like this one encourage me to keep searching and never give up. Now it’s time to go check Record Search again…