St. Louis city officials maintained registers in which they recorded a person’s date of death, along with age, place of birth and death, marital and racial status, occupation, cause of death, and name of cemetery. Separate registers for the races were not kept – names of whites and blacks appear together in the same books. These registers were used prior to state-wide requirements for filing such records. Have you found similar records?
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Some hospital records are available to the public. For instance, patient registers from a St. Louis city hospital may show names of patients (white and black), sex, color, place of birth, length of residence, occupation, place of residence, marital status, dates of admission and discharge, condition, and illness.
Probate records are among the most important to family historians. Wills contain a variety of information, including relationships. Here are two examples of wills written by free women of color: Charlotte, also known as Charlotte Davis of St. Louis, Missouri, and Margaret Trouillet of Mobile, Alabama.
Many sources are available to locate a person’s date of death for residents of the city of St. Louis. Newspapers published obituaries, cemeteries maintained burial records, and church officials recorded funeral information. St. Louis city officials not only recorded deaths in registers (and later in certificate form) but also they recorded similar information on burial certificates. For additional information about these certificates, see the guide on the St. Louis County Library website http://www.slcl.org/content/guide-researching-saint-louis-city-burial-certificates-jan-1882-oct-1908-microfilm. Here are examples of such certificates, both for 1900, one for Percy Smith, an African American, the other for Thomas Nicholson from Scotland.
Voting records are another important type of genealogical records. These valuable lists vary widely over time and place and may show one’s racial status. For instance, Alabama maintained a list of qualified voters in 1867, and these lists are available online at http://www.archives.alabama.gov/voterreg/index.cfm (bottom left image.) A 1904 St. Louis register of voters may show the voter’s name, residence, birthplace, color, age, occupation, length of residence in the city, naturalization data, and signature (top image). Also in St. Louis, canceled voter affidavits may show, for example, name of voter, race, address, and date of birth (bottom right image).
Newspapers are an excellent source for historical and genealogical information. They may contain notices about birth, marriage, death, delinquent taxes, runaway slaves, manumissions, and lists of free people of color. Here are examples of emancipations as they appeared in a St. Louis newspaper. What types of information have you found in newspapers?
Census enumerators sometimes made “errors” that actually were beneficial to researchers. For instance, they entered more information than they were instructed to write down. One such example shows that an enumerator in St. Louis apparently recorded the names of slaves in the slave schedule (as well as some data on the slave owners)! For similar cases, see Alycon Trubey Pierce, "In Praise of Errors Made by Census Enumerators," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 81 (March 1993): 51-55. Have you found “errors” in your census research?
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AuthorI am a professional genealogist specializing in St. Louis area genealogical and historical research and tracing the lives of African Americans. I earned my Ph.D. in history from the University of Alabama. Please see my other website Finding African American Ancestors http://findingafricanamericanancestors.weebly.com/. Archives
June 2015
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