Ancestry.com announced that “Kentucky, Death Records, 1852-1963” was recently updated so I decided to search for a few members of the Sledd family that I’ve put off looking for. The death certificates do not completely cover the entire 1852-1963 time frame. Registration of deaths was done in the 1850s and statewide registration started up again in 1911. Readers are encouraged to determine when deaths were recorded for their specific areas of interest.
The death certificate for William Sledd in Montgomery County, Kentucky, also reminded me of the importance of not requiring exact dates of birth when searching. There is no date of birth at all for William Sledd on the certificate, although his age is listed as eighty-six.
I’m not certain what the stamped “P” reference indicates, but I’m assuming it’s a clerical notation.
The certificate indicated that William was a former county officer, including sheriff and assessor. There may be some additional information in other county records, county histories, etc.
William’s father, Nelson, was a brother to Melinda (Sledd) Newman who died in 1867 in Linn County, Iowa.
5 Responses
Perhaps Provisional. This gives lots of info: http://chfs.ky.gov/nr/rdonlyres/8c9672a5-c25c-4c13-9e66-298d55c5fbaf/0/registrarguidelinesrevised_022013docx.pdf
Thanks. A great deal of interesting information in that document.
Terrible, isn’t it when the very information you want has been left off. I’ve been searching for my paternal great-grandfather’s parents for 30 or 40 years. I found his death certificate–no parents. Later, I found his brother’s death certificate, but still no parents. I know that there were people that knew what their parents names were.
In this case, I was glad to have the names of the parents and the age. The exact date of birth isn’t always crucial–at least for me. And in Kentucky during this time period, it’s not always possible to know precise dates of birth.
In my case P is in place of M or F, from a Commonwealth of Kentucky birth certificate dated 1953. What on earth?