WHAT DOES "LONG ILLNESS" MEAN on OLD FRENCH DEATH RECORD : SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS : QUESTIONS FROM READERS of ANCESTRY WORSHIP - GENEALOGY

Question for Ancestry Worship Genealogy

I've been reading old records from a parish in or near Paris from the 1800's and the priest keeps writing in "Long Illness" in the death records.  What does this mean?

Alice

Answer from Ancestry Worship Genealogy

"Long Illness" can mean anything from cancer to TB to any other illness that takes a long time to kill a person.  It can also simply mean Old Age, and all the debilitations through the years; that a person just wasn't themselves or feeling good for a long time.  A Long Time itself is subjective.  To me a Long Illness is years on end, but to some people six months is a long time to suffer.

It's therefore a mystery illness, particularly one that was not well understood at that time and place.  You may have to be satisfied with that.  However, here are things you could check into before you write it up.

1) At that time and place were death records only kept in the village or town or only at the church?  Were the records duplicated or also kept in the Dioceses archives or perhaps sent to a larger administrative center, and kept as a civil record?  See if both records agree or one has more to say about the death.

2) Where is the person buried?  Does the cemetery have any records that might not only give you a grave location but also testify to the reason for death?  (In the USA the death certificate and burial/cemetery record usually back each other up.)

3) Was the death covered in a newspaper article or other published account, for instance if the person was a member of a club, university, team, or union, or employed with a large company, or notable as a dignitary or politician, lawyer or doctor ? Possibly their obituary will give more information.

4) At the time and place of their death were there any prevailing illnesses or plagues?  For instance, you say that the priest keeps writing "Long Illness" and that makes me think that maybe there was TB in that town.  Knowing this would not prove that your ancestry died the same way,  but it would be OK to add a paragraph about diseases of that time and place for the purposes of historical interest!

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BEN FRANKLIN'S BONES : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

BEN FRANKLIN's BONES : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

 

The Benjamin Franklin connection is exploited for the title of this PBS video that is part of the Secrets of the Dead series. His 18th century residence in London, which was the home of a family at 36 Craven Street was also the home of Dr. Huston, a doctor who was probably more or totally responsible for the burial of human bones in the basement. Though Ben Franklin's experimental and scientific nature is well known, there is no way to prove he ever had anything to do with them. 

This film is about the state of the art of medical science in that era. It is about the "body snatchers," people who would sell dead bodies to doctors (science) so that autopsies and dissections could be performed. Check your gag reflexes because this is a time honored practice to learn about the human body and expected in medical schools. The "body snatchers" were not always the most moral and ethical people, however, and so by modern day standards they may be thought of as criminals.

But what else did those who wanted to understand and some day cure diseases that killed people like typhus and cholera have to work with if not the bodies of the dead?  Methods then were primitive compared to now, as were the tools to saw a skull in half.  In this society there was no concept of virus or germs and people were dying of kidney stones and gall stones, which we well understand today, as well as broken bones.  Today many people donate part or all of their bodies for organ transplants and skin grafts and there is huge debate over the ownership of sperm and eggs that are frozen for later use once the people who donated them don't want to or can't pay for them to be kept.

In the 18th century, men who were sentenced to death wrote begging letters to their families to claim their bodies before they were sold or given away, fearing the desecration even though they'd be dead.

So though Benjamin Franklin is one of my favorite most fascinating historical personages, perhaps what was more interesting was that when he returned to America, this "Second Family" he had lived with in London was brought here to live and their family tree is full of doctors, including a woman who will show you some of the family documents that link Ben Franklin and their family.

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THE MANY LIVES OF MARILYN MONROE by SARAH CHURCHWELL

The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe: the title has nothing to do with past lives. Instead the author, Sarah Churchwell examines all the different ways that various authors of biographies of Marilyn have constructed or reconstructed her life from research, often dependent on each other's books. What really is true?

The mystery of who Marilyn really was and what her life - and death - were really like continues to intrigue many years past her death in 1962. Perhaps we are all projecting upon her and maybe she was the one who started telling stories on herself that were exaggerations or blatantly untrue as groomed by Hollywood and to enhance publicity.

What I as a genealogist want to look at here is how well the author(s) used resources that we would use as well to bring any ancestor back to life. In this book we see a copy of her birth certificate (and the uncertainty of her patriarchal lineage is sorted through). We also learn that someone unearthened her admission to the orphanage on September 13, 1935. (Just how many foster homes did she have?) Needless to say, a good researcher would find evidence of any and all rumored and known marriages. (As for Marilyn's medical records, I've learned that her shrink unethnically recorded her therapy, but that's another book.)

Then, to fight the rumors - or perhaps studio smearing - that Monroe was unable to act in the end, an addled mess, we find that the archives of Fox Studio, which shows that she had just negotiated the most lucrative contracts of her life for future films and that she was actually very in control of herself on the sets. THIS IS IMPORTANT!

Last but not least, Marilyn Monroe's FBI file was used for research... and we are linking to that here.

The book was published by Metropolitan Books - a Henry Holt Company - New York and is C 2004 by Sarah Churchwell