Beyond the Obituaries

I’m so honored to be a new columnist at The In-Depth Genealogist. I hope you will enjoy and learn from my column, Beyond the Obituaries. Based on my lecture, Talking to the Dead, the column will be about the many alternative resources that can be used when you can’t find an obituary or death certificate, when they don’t exist, or don’t contain the information you need. 

I have found nearly 100 other resources that you can search for as alternatives to obits and death certificates or use in addition to them for extra information. Each of these resources will be discussed in-depth in an individual article. Of course, obituaries and death certificates will be discussed, too.

Not only, will I share the various types of resources but I’ll tell you what kind of information each record type may contain. For some of the resources, I’ll discuss who created them, when it was created, and why. Knowing the historical background of a resource can help you draw more logical conclusions and help you better understand the society your ancestors lived in.

You may be surprised by all of the different resources and what may be found in each. Not only can you find a person’s birth and death date in records pertaining to death but you can learn a lot about his or her life and identify other family members.

I hope my column will teach you to think outside the box and search for these alternative resources when you can’t find the most commonly used sources or information you need in them.

Follow me on the The In-Depth Genealogist and at my blog, Rambling Along the Ancestral Trail. Happy reading!