Death Certificate
A death certificate
Once the certificate you’ve ordered has arrived, it’s important to understand how to interpret the information it carries to enable to progress to the next step in your family history search…
It’s not always necessary to order death certificates to trace your family history back any further, but they can reveal surprises. Griff Rhys Jones’ 3x great grandmother, Catherine Evans, was described as a widow on the 1861 census, so we knew her husband Griffith had died since the 1851 census was taken. Unfortunately, death indexes prior to 1866 do not list the deceased’s age, but there were four deaths registered for men named Griffith Evans in Merthyr Tydfil, which covered the area where his family lived between 1851 and 1861. When the certificates arrived only one man matched the age and address we had for Catherine’s husband. The cause of death revealed that 36-year-old miner Griffith Evans died on 22 January 1854 in a pit explosion caused by fire damp.