Canada, Newspaper Obituaries (National Institute)

The reference to the church and the cemetery provide hints for sources which might provide the date of death, aside from the civil registration record, that is, the church registers and the cemetery burial records.

This splendid obituary is for a politician, hence rather longer than usual, but the detail it contains will be valuable for any family historian. It includes:


 * birthdate and place
 * date of emigration
 * places of residence § occupation
 * full name of wife and her original residence (possibly birthplace)
 * public offices, with some dates
 * wife’s death year
 * names of two of his five children (the omission of the dead sons is typical of the time)
 * details of the funeral and pallbearers

Birthplaces given in obituaries, especially of the very old, should always be treated skeptically until proven. It is interesting that Mr. Horsey continued to be Police Magistrate in Bowmanville until he was 94 years old.

Obituaries are a good possibility for information about emigration and about other residences, which might answer the question ‘Why can’t I find this person where I expect him to be?’ In Horsey’s case, he went back and forth between Bowmanville and Kingston at least three times. Knowing he had left Frontenac county for Durham in 1858 might lead us to expect to find him there in the 1861 and 1871 censuses, if we did not know he had returned to Frontenac for a time.

This obituary and that of Mr. Kime were published in the same day’s newspaper, but on different pages. Horsey’s appeared on the local news page (‘Oshawa and District’) while Kime’s was on the ‘Women’s Daily Interests’ page, along with another obit, for Mrs. John Timlin of Centreton, some distance to the east. Obituaries often appear in unusual locations in the newspaper as they were used to help fill space. Mrs. Timlin’s notice had been sent to Oshawa by the Cobourg reporter for the paper and is short and uninformative. It is probably a truncated version of the original submission, added simply to fit a blank spot. Researchers might find a more detailed notice in a Cobourg newspaper.

Never assume that the BMDs you are searching for will be found in a BMD column, or that the column will appear on the same page in every issue. While this may be the case most of the time, there are bound to be exceptions, and you don’t want to miss a vital record.

One of the earliest obituaries to appear in the pioneer Edmonton Bulletincomes on 26 November 1881, almost a year after the newspaper began. It was published on page one:

This short notice poses several questions and answers some others. Touchwood Hills is in Saskatchewan, far from Edmonton, and Alexander Peacock has no clear connections with Edmonton, except for his brother living there. This notice was published for the benefit of John Peacock’s friends, as news. Alexander’s cause of death is mysterious, and would need referral to a book of Victorian medical terms to determine what was meant. There are several of these published specifically for genealogical work. A Canadian publication is Before modern medicine: diseases and yesterday’s remedies, by Elizabeth Briggs and Colin J. Briggs (Westgarth, 1998).

The researcher will be glad to know that Alexander was working at Burrows’ survey camp, that he came from Ottawa (as did John, presumably) and that he is buried at Qu’Appelle. It might be possible to find the grave, if needed. Information about the survey camp might be in government records. Earlier records about the Peacocks could be found in Ottawa.

This is a fine example of a death notice found in an unexpected place, but it is unlikely that a Peacock researcher would have looked for, or found it, without an index reference. It was published far from the event, in a newspaper which did not normally publish obituaries, and long after the event it describes. This illustrates the value of newspaper indexes as pointers to the unexpected.

This fulsome notice for ‘the wife of Mr. Wm. Klippert’ (her own name is not given) is typical of the flowery nature of some Victorian writing, especially in obituaries. It says very little. Although it might be included in a family history, too much of this sort of thing wears out its welcome quickly to the modern ear. It can serve as a reminder that no one is under oath in a eulogy.

Contrasting to this, and a most unusual death notice, is that of ‘Dr. Geo. Verzy’ [actually Verey] in the Edmonton Bulletin of 21 November 1881. It gives details of the doctor’s medical background as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, England and service as a military physician in the China War. He had served in the American army at Benton, Montana, as medical officer and signal observer.

It then goes on to say he was ‘of a somewhat wandering and melancholy disposition’ with ‘a craving for ardent spirits’. He died of an overdose of chloral while delirious.

Very vivid detail is included: “The funeral was to have taken place on Monday at one o’clock, but owing to decomposition having set in it was not thought advisable to delay it until that hour. It took place at eleven o’clock.” It ends with the note that ‘He had made a will but it had not been found up to the present.’

The sensational nature of this notice is in direct opposition to that of Mrs. Klippert, and provides a genealogist with much more useful information. Aside from his military service and professional qualification, which could be checked in reliable sources in Britain and the United States, the information about his personality is probably something which has not been handed down in family tradition. Certainly the physical detail about his funeral would have been forgotten and it once again takes the researcher directly back as a first-hand observer of the ancestral event. Wills, a matter of some delicacy because of their connection with money, were not usually referred to in death notices.

The fact that the doctor’s name is misspelled so badly in the heading (but corrected later in the notice) probably means it would turn up only under ‘Verzy’ in any index made of the Bulletin. This could serve as a reminder to researchers to search widely in any indexes you find, keeping in mind old newspapers’ predilection for misspelt names.

Other death-related notices in newspapers are accounts of funerals, cards of thanks, in memoriam notices and inquests.

Accounts of funerals
Accounts of funerals, as distinct from obituaries which include funeral information, appeared in the past, not only for grand personages but even for quite ordinary people. In places where weekly newspapers were the rule, or if the notice of death appeared some time after the event, the obituary would often include the funeral information.

Material in a funeral account in addition to the usual obituary information includes:


 * names of pallbearers
 * names of those sending ‘floral tributes’
 * attendees from out of town
 * details of the service (who read, who sang)
 * place of burial (often also in the obituary)

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