In 1915, deaths were required to be
reported by the County to the State.
- For death certificates prior to 1915,
write to the County
Clerk.
- For death certificates after 1915,
write to Dept
of Health - Vital Records.
- Include the following information:
Modern death certificates contain:
- Name and last residence of the
deceased.
- Date, place, and cause of death.
- Marital status and spouse's name.
- Parents names, including mother's
maiden name.
- Burial place and funeral director.
- Informant - the person, most often a
spouse or family member, who provided the
personal information.
Be aware that the much of the information
on a death certificate is given by a third party,
usually the spouse or a child who may not know it
accurately to begin with. And the information is
reported long after the event, as with the birth
date.
The South Carolina Dept of
Archives and Historyy
has many early vital records.
If you know the location where your
ancestor died, try to locate the cemetery
where they were buried. Once located, there are
several ways to get the date of death.
- If possible, visit the cemetery or
locate an individual than can do so for you.
Going there in person will not only provide
us access to the information for that
individual but will also provide you
information on others than may be buried in
the surrounding plots.
- If the cemetery is still maintained,
you may be able to locate the records of the
cemetery or funeral
home.
- Libraries
and Genealogical/Historical
Societies often maintain
cemetery listings for the older cemeteries.
There may even be indexes that make it
possible to locate the individual if the
exact cemetery is not known.
Finally, keep in mind that in older
cemeteries, the stones may be broken or worn away
from weather.
Obviously, wills and the many records
generated during disposition of an estate, often
point to a date of death. But you will also find key
information within wills such as family relationsips,
birth order, which children are minors at the time,
and the married names of daughters.
Probate records are
available from the Clerk
of Court.
When a person dies leaving an estate, the
county government is reponsible for seeing that it is
distributed according to law. How that is done
depends on whether or not the deceased left a will.
If the deceased leaves a will, it will be recorded
and filed with the local court This process is called
probate. The executor named in the will is charged
with carrying out the distribution of the estate
under the supervision of the court.
If, on the other hand, the deceased dies
without leaving a will, then he or she has died
intestate, and the government must appoint an
administrator to distribute the estate according the
law. In either case, several types of records are
generated through the court and may be of interest to
the genealogist.
Obituaries are good places to find vital
statistic information and to uncover family
relationships. Modern day obituaries are usually
submitted to local
newspapers, or newspapers
covering the general area where a person spent a
significant part of their life, by the funeral
director handling the funeral and burial. The
information is collected by them from the family
member arranging the funeral.
Of course, the key information in an
obituary are the name of the deceased, their death
date and place, often their spouse's name, frequently
their birth date and place, and commonly their place
of burial.
A second bit of key data obtained from
obituaries is the place of residence of surviving
family members, and, in the case of women, their
married names. Third, you can find the name of the
cemetery a person is buried in from his or her
obituary. This can often lead to the discovery of
unknown family members who were buried in the same
lot.
Because much of the information in
obituaries is reported second-hand, you should always
try corroborate it with other sources.
The Social Security death index can be
used to determine a month/year of death and a
probable location. They are usually available at the LDS
Family History Centers and they
are also available for searching on-line at www.infobases.com.
These indexes contain the following:
- The name of the person as it appears
in the Social Security records. This is the
name they gave when applying for their social
security card and often corresponds to the
name as it appeared on their birth
certificate which was frequently used in
obtaining a card. Note that most women have
the name on their Social Security records
changed when they marry.
- The individual's Social Security
number.
- The date of birth as it appeared on
the documents used when registering for
Social Security.
- City, county, and state (there can be
several entries) to which Social Security
benefits were mailed. This location
frequently corresponds to the last residence.
However, in many cases it corresponds to the
address of the relative to which a final
death benefit was mailed.
- The date of death. This is most often
the date as appeared on the death certificate
of the person in question.
Funeral home and mortuary records often
contain at least the date of burial, but often the
date of death, age at death, and family
relationships. These records are kept at the funeral
home, and frequently pass to the descendants when a
funeral home ceases business. If the business is sold
to another owner, the records are frequently passed
on to the new owners.
click
here for access to the funeral
home information.
Birth Records