Didn't mean to abandon this blog. I'm still interested in the heritages, curious about the individuals, wanting to know the stories. Life got in the way for quite a little while.
My husband, Rex Allen Collins, born 8/23/1955 passed from this life on October 16, 2013. He left behind three daughters and three grandsons and one granddaughter. He was born in West Virginia and died in Cincinnati Ohio.
So, I have a real time death certificate. A genealogical document I would gladly have done without.
But, as a time or timely piece of officialdom, it has some interest.
On the death certificate, it asks, naturally enough, about cause of death. In his case, it was COPD. There are other details about that, but that doesn't matter here. The curiosity, to me, is that it goes on to ask if tobacco use contributed to death. The answer, of course (all things considered) was yes.
It -- the certificate also has places to be marked "if female" concerning pregnancy. 5 different options to choose from there. But it doesn't ask anything about pregnancy as a contributing factor.
It asks about on-the-job injury, with a block (address, time, etc) of blanks to be filled in on that subject.
It has a place for transportation injury. I thought that section had asked about seat belt use, but I don't see that now.
Interesting way of collecting data, don't you think? Imagine if death certificates had always offered all of that type of information. We'd know a lot more about how our ancestors died, and probably about how they lived.
But even those minimal death certificates are an improvement on the information usually available from a tombstone.
And tombstones are an improvement over wooden markers that decayed, or piles of rocks that had no information.
Still, I wonder about the evolution of the death certificate. How will digitizing change official documentation, as information storage becomes increasingly electronic? Will there be a long lust of checkboxes about the cause and course of illness, accident, or general process of dying? Will an ordered (someday historical) death certificate print off the complete document, or only the parts relevant to the individual death? What will future death certificates offer our descendants about our lives beyond dates and locations?
No one knows the future, of course.
But how many of us worry over the documentation of that unknown future?
Is it even worth worrying over?
But, you gotta admit,for document junkies, it's intriguing speculation,
My husband, Rex Allen Collins, born 8/23/1955 passed from this life on October 16, 2013. He left behind three daughters and three grandsons and one granddaughter. He was born in West Virginia and died in Cincinnati Ohio.
So, I have a real time death certificate. A genealogical document I would gladly have done without.
But, as a time or timely piece of officialdom, it has some interest.
On the death certificate, it asks, naturally enough, about cause of death. In his case, it was COPD. There are other details about that, but that doesn't matter here. The curiosity, to me, is that it goes on to ask if tobacco use contributed to death. The answer, of course (all things considered) was yes.
It -- the certificate also has places to be marked "if female" concerning pregnancy. 5 different options to choose from there. But it doesn't ask anything about pregnancy as a contributing factor.
It asks about on-the-job injury, with a block (address, time, etc) of blanks to be filled in on that subject.
It has a place for transportation injury. I thought that section had asked about seat belt use, but I don't see that now.
Interesting way of collecting data, don't you think? Imagine if death certificates had always offered all of that type of information. We'd know a lot more about how our ancestors died, and probably about how they lived.
But even those minimal death certificates are an improvement on the information usually available from a tombstone.
And tombstones are an improvement over wooden markers that decayed, or piles of rocks that had no information.
Still, I wonder about the evolution of the death certificate. How will digitizing change official documentation, as information storage becomes increasingly electronic? Will there be a long lust of checkboxes about the cause and course of illness, accident, or general process of dying? Will an ordered (someday historical) death certificate print off the complete document, or only the parts relevant to the individual death? What will future death certificates offer our descendants about our lives beyond dates and locations?
No one knows the future, of course.
But how many of us worry over the documentation of that unknown future?
Is it even worth worrying over?
But, you gotta admit,for document junkies, it's intriguing speculation,
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