UpFront with NGS: Death

Showing posts with label Death. Show all posts

02 September 2015

FREE Access to Ancestry.com Wills & US Vital Records through 7 September 2015

Ancestry.com will offer FREE access to its new Wills collection and all US birth, death and marriage records this weekend!

Access available starting TODAY September 2nd, at noon Eastern through Monday, September 7th, midnight Eastern. ‪

This link did get me to the image shown above, http://www.ancestry.com/will-probate-records (there is an image that will overlay initially, just hover your mouse in the upper right corner, you will see an X, click on it to close down the overlay) – do recognize that you might have to have a FREE account (not a subscription account) in order to gain access. Do NOT do the free 14 day subscription option!

Good luck! May you find neat records for your ancestors!

Editor’s Note: From what I can see – for each state you will find a Marriages, Deaths, Wills, Court, and Other Records collection or sometimes more than one discrete collection. Just dive in and see what you find!

Editor’s Note: Thanks to Thomas MacEntee for letting us know about this offer!

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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16 September 2014

If your ancestor lived ... well, really died in 1870 ... check out these infographics

I’ve mentioned the Vault on Slate before and posts by Rebecca Onion. Well, she’s shared another neat post of interest to genealogists and family historians. Though we strive to learn as much as we can about our ancestors lives, we also value what we can learn about how they died.

Her most recent post is 19th-Century Infographic Shows American Mortality as a Cluster of Cute Little Charts.

This set of charts shows causes of death in the United States, according to the 1870 census. The page appeared in the Statistical Atlas of the United States, a project spearheaded by Francis Amasa Walker, then the superintendent of the Census. Here, the atlas employs a data visualization technique described by Edward Tufte as “small multiples”—a series of little illustrations presenting bits of a data set.

The article goes on to share some of the results presented along with some thoughts about why certain patterns emerged in certain states for certain age groups and/or causes of death. There is a link to a zoomable version of the original chart either via the blog post or at the Library of Congress’ digital archives (part of the Cultural Landscapes section of the Map Collections in American Memory).

So many neat documents so little time! À la Rebecca Onion have you come across neat infographics that really gave you an informative visual perspective on something related to your ancestors? If so, please share ...

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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Want to learn more about interacting with the blog, please read Hyperlinks, Subscribing and Comments -- How to Interact with Upfront with NGS Blog posts!

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21 December 2012

Moving death certificates to the digital age: Unintended consequences

Google Images

You may have noticed that when you now visit a doctor’s office your prescription is sent electronically to the pharmacy and the doctor enters notes into a tablet computer. I’ve found similar as I recently visited my dentist (no paper file anymore) and my eye doctor.

And, to be honest, I’ve heard a lot of griping about having to use such a system. Mostly having to do with the time needed to accurately enter the information and select the proper procedure codes (to guarantee payment) etc. Though, there are benefits to having such records available electronically, especially to easily see your history or share it as needed.

Well, I recently read an article talking about some of the unintended consequences of death certificates also moving to the digital age! I know that you were wondering when I would get to genealogy and history research! Well, as genealogists, death (and birth and marriage) records are very important records! Future researchers will be impacted by “what” death certificates look like in the future just as we are affected by those we acquire for our research.

The recent article starts out ...

Moving from paper death certificates to an online process called the Washington State Electronic Death Registry System, or EDRS. Sounds like a simple 21st century process that should make the process of completing a death certificate faster and easier right? Oh, the government designed the system. Oops.

I’ve been so frustrated by the unintended consequences of a new state governmental process for completing death certificates...

... All I needed to do was remove the discussion of the trauma from the EDRS form and the computer program could allow it to be accepted.

This is clearly silly. Everyone knew that trauma played a role. In a paper world the medical examiner could have just signed off on the death certificate and all would have been fine. Now as an unintended consequence of the inflexible nature of this EDRS program, it seems we just have to be selective in our choices of contributing factors on the death certificate so that families can bury their dead and the computer programmers can have the answers they want. I had been told that the new electronic form was to insure more accurate and complete death certificates. It seems that the result is that only answers the program likes are acceptable causes and contributing factors to death...

Do read the full article.

What do you think? Will our descendants get a less complete picture of how we died? Or is the level of detail we are talking about just not significant?

Have you come across other “modern” electronic forms whose restrictions have frustrated you with regards to accurately and completely capturing information of interest to descendants?

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

27 October 2012

Learn How Death Records Can Add to Your Family Story

Check out this neat Ancestry.com site on Death Records.

Not only can you learn about various types of records (a nice overview of some of the records you might want to look into) and there is a contest running through 2 November where you can try for prizes!

As Halloween approaches, checking into death records seems to fit!

Did you learn about a “new-to-you” place to search for to find death records? Did you win a prize?

Editor’s Note: You can “read” the information death records for free, though, to participate in the various contest challenges, an Ancestry.com subscription is required.

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog.

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Follow NGS via Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Twitter

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com