Death certificates are one of the most accurate sources of information and are official government documents. But is the information on those documents always correct? Human error can happen. The informant for the death certificate may not know the information or may give information that is not accurate even though they think it is.
Recently, I came across a name on a death certificate that had me wondering how accurate the name was--even though at first I was really excited to have finally found the name of the father of one of the persons I had been researching for a few years. This is what I came across:
For the past several months, I have been busy writing a family history for my Butcher ancestry of Kent County, England. One of my great, great aunts was Eliza Butcher born in 1854. She worked as a house servant in Maidstone, Kent, England during the 1870's. All of her siblings with the exception of my great grandmother, her older sister, had left England for Canada or New York state. In September of 1877. at the age of twenty-three, Eliza gave birth to a son in Maidstone, England. The digitized index record registered his name as "Ernest William A Butcher." Sometime after his birth, Eliza next shows up in 1880 in Ontario County, New York using the name of Eliza Anderson, although no record of a marriage was found in England. Family records kept by a great aunt state that Eliza married a "Mr. Andrews" [sic] " and I am assuming the A in her son's name was an abbreviated version for his last name of Anderson. Ernest Anderson was listed in the Seneca, Ontario, New York living with his grandparents and was listed as a grandson. Later census records in Canada state his last name as Anderson as well.
When Eliza Butcher aka "Anderson" married Charles Draper in 1885, the marriage record indicated that she was a spinster. Looking up the term spinster, I learned that it meant that she had never married. The 1880 Census also stated that she was single not widowed or divorced. She probably used the surname Anderson to protect her son and to avoid embarrassment to herself and her parents.
For a few years, I have tried to find out the name of the father of Ernest Anderson. Recently, Canaddian death records were indexed and digitized on ancestry.com and I discovered his death certificate which indicated that his father's name was Charles Anderson. Finally, I had found his father's name and I was pretty excited.
Then, the more I thought, the more I began to doubt the accuracy of the name. For this reason, it is better to have more than one record to verify information. I had tried to verify his father's name on the birth record or a marriage record for his parents, but could not find either. The informant on the death certificate was Ernest's daughter Rhoda Anderson Evans. The only grandparents on her father's side that Rhoda, born in 1903, knew were Charles and Eliza Butcher Draper, although Charles Draper would have been her step grandfather.. Could she have given the name of Charles for Ernest's father and confused his biological father's name with his stepfather's name? Or was Charles Anderson really the name of Ernest's father? Taking it a step further, I tried to find a "Charles Anderson" in the vicinity of Maidstone, England but nothing turned up during the 1871 time period when Eliza lived in Maidstone. That doesn't necessarily mean that he would have been from Maidstone or could not have lived there during the 1870's.
Anyone who could shed some light on the subject has long since passed away. Ernest himself probably never knew or even remembered his father, although it is quite possible he may have told his children his father's name However, I hesitate to assume that is the case because of the circumstances and the coincidence of the name Charles for both his father and his stepfather, Charles Draper. Eliza Butcher Draper could also answer this question but she died in 1916. Does the father of Ernest even know that Eliza had a son illegitimately by him?
Sometimes, no matter how accurate something may seem, we still need to question the information and find as many sources as we can to verify information. Sometimes we may never know the truth.
