Researching People: Death Records

Death certificate 696, San Francisco Department of Public Health, Aug. 1, 1904. Reel #9.

Keeping archival records is one way that San Francisco as a city remembers its dead. People use them every day to discover details and then piece together the big picture about their relatives, the famous, the infamous, and the obscure. In particular, archival records that document death as a life event hold a certain fascination and utility for researchers.

The San Francisco History Center has two large paper archival collections of death records, already fairly well-known, well-used, and featured on our blog: the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner’s Records, 1902-1956 (bulk 1906-1956) document deaths due to accident, suicide, or other "unnatural" causes. Halsted N. Gray – Carew & English Funeral Home Records, 1835-1931 (bulk 1850-1921) document the deaths, funeral arrangements, and sometimes burials handled by a handful of local mortuaries that were later absorbed into what is now Halsted N. Gray-Carew & English Funeral Directors.

There are two smaller collections of death records on microfilm that seem to be lesser-known by the general public, but they can be just as useful.

Death register, San Francisco Department of Public Health. Book "M," Aug. 1, 1894-June 30, 1896. Reel #3.

The first collection is a set of death registers and death certificates from the Department of Public Health, one of the few sets of city records to survive the 1906 earthquake and fire. The original ledgers are still held at the DPH, but the San Francisco History Center has them on microfilm: six reels of registers and nine reels of death certificates. The registers date from 1865-1905; the death certificates span just five months, July 1-Dec.1, 1904. The registers list name, sex, age, race, occupation, birthplace, marital status, burial place, physician, undertaker, and place, date, and cause of death. The death certificates--a sample of which is pictured at the head of this post-- have been scanned and are now available on the Internet Archive.

To help you search these records, Barbara Ross Close and Vernon Deubler have alphabetized and abstracted them in San Francisco Deaths, 1865-1905: Abstracts from Surviving Civil Records, published by the California Genealogical Society and available in the San Francisco History Center's reading room.

The second collection is a set of undertaker's registers and datebooks from the firm of J.C. O'Connor, 1882-1919. This sample page shows the names of the deceased, along with their places of burial and itemized list of funeral and burial accoutrements.

J.C. O'Connor undertaker's register, Nov. 9, 1882-Feb. 16, 1896. Reel #1.

 If you'd like to use these collections in person, or if you'd like to explore additional materials on people who have passed, please visit the San Francisco History Center in person during our open hours. For Medical Examiner's and funeral home records, please contact us 24 hours in advance so that we can pull the right books for you from off-site storage.

The blog team wishes our readers a safe, sound, and memorable Day of the Dead.

All images courtesy of the San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.