The Joys of Old Documents

 One of the “joys” of historical research is deciphering old documents. Forget issues like Latin or ancient languages, just the vagaries of time on writing materials, coupled with a hit and miss approach by scanners, can create unwanted puzzles.

To illustrate, below is a document where the puzzle has been solved, but it still illustrates the problem when, for example, you don’t have newspaper confirmation of events.

This register of deaths from Washington State is from 1905.

Homing in on one entry, can you make out whose name this is?

To put you out of your misery, this is Barbour, Nelson H. Yes, it is THAT Nelson Barbour, dying away from home on August 30, 1905.

The date can be worked out from other more legible dates on the page.

Travelling along the line we find more information. So what do you make of this?

Deciphering the columns, Nelson was 81 when he died.

He was M – i.e. male

He was widowed.

Where did the death happen? Do – i.e. ditto from the name Tacoma higher up the page.

And Nelson died from?

By a comparison with other entries on the page, Nelson died from “exhaustion.”  The word is more clearly seen for other deceased persons on the page. It seems to be a fairly common event for the time and area. Its vagueness is similar to descriptions often given of people dying from “heart failure.” (CTR is an example of this). It is a sort of catch-all; everyone dies from heart failure, but the real question is, what caused it? What caused Nelson to die from “exhaustion?”

The continuing line goes onto the next page, asking where from, names of parents, etc. but this is all blank for Nelson. The information was not available or at least was not recorded, although they obviously knew where he was from because his body was sent nearly three thousand miles back home to be buried alongside his late wife, Emeline.

Headstone in Throopville Rural Cemetery, Auburn, New York.