Been reading a lot of death certificates and records lately. You can find a lot of information in them that isn't necessarily in other records ... like parents' names (including mother's maiden name), birth & death dates, spouses, children ... and if it's from a list in a death registration book you can also see who lived nearby, since they usually list by area. Often they also list the person's middle name, which is also very helpful to help discern from others born around the same time.
I'm getting used to the way they list cause of death, sometimes what they call it isn't always what we would call it now. Like "consumption" was tuberculosis, "dropsy" was encephalitis, "phthisis" was wasting away due to tuberculosis, "dyspepsia" was often misdiagnosed as bad heartburn but was actually heart attack symptoms.
It's very sad when I'm going down a list and I see a whole family wiped out due to typhoid fever, tuberculosis, small pox ..... makes me grateful that I live in a world where many of these old diseases are either extinct or very very rare.
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