DEATH CERTIFICATES and BURIAL RECORDS : WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

In modern times the burial record is usually spawned from the mortuary that prepared the body for burial or cremated it.  The burial record will usually give information such as what cemetery, the name of a minister or priest or rabbi who conducted a ritual, and some other basic information. It is not a governmental civil records but the burial record and the death certificate seem to lean on each other. 

A death certificate is a governmental - civil report on what the person died of, the name of a doctor who had been treating that person or if an autopsy was performed.  It will often include the name of a spouse or next of kin, and don't be shocked but some people did not know the maiden name of their own mother!

Step one is to find a death certificate, as possible. Depending on location you might have to swear you are the spouse or child of the person who died.  But privacy laws vary and these records are being loaded into databases based on those privacy laws.

Yes, go ahead and check a TOMBSTONE PROJECT.

Step two is to contact the cemetery named and ask them for the burial record.  You might start by asking them for the plot location in advance of a visit.

Remember : Find A Grave TM and other such projects are TOMBSTONE PROJECTS.  There are more burials in that cemetery than the tombstones. Consider that:

There was never a tombstone or the cemetery is one that does not allow them.

That family members may have been buried in with an earlier burial that the tombstone does not include.

That family plots may not include the names of all the people buried in the plot.

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THE PRESIDENTS OFFICIAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE

FactCheck.org is here with the jpeg files you can see yourself, to decide if President Barach Obama's birth certificate is official. For about a year there have been rumors and "proofs" that he was actually born in Kenya or that something was amiss on the certificate from Hawaii.

Though being born an American Citizen is a requirement to run for the Presidency, and some famous immigrants have wished to change this, BIRTH CERTIFICATES WERE NOT A REQUIREMENT IN ALL STATES OF THE UNITED STATES all at once or even all that long ago. Applicants for Social Security, who were born in other countries, often proved their age by the baptismal records in church records, of their children, for instance. Our ancestors often kept their own accounting of their growing families by writing in the family's Holy Bible.

SUNDAY JUNE 21st 2009 IS FATHERS DAY - TODAY!

In genealogy we often find much more information - documents - for the males than the females, and the fathers more than the mothers. Reading through microfilms of Catholic Church records for small towns in Hungary, for instance, I found that baptismal records (which usually closely followed births) did not always even mention the mother's name. When the surname is common, and the given names are repetitive, this represents a research block that can be impossible to get around. Jewish records for about the same time and place however not only gave the names of the parents but the midwife and the rabbi who circumcised the male child!

This emphasizes the importance of keeping family records NOW for generations in the future!