Oklahoma obituaries
Link - https://www.familysearch.org/indexing/batch/fb86a92e-784f-4b99-ad28-692a76af7fa3
I would appreciate feed back on this batch. Particularly I question if place of death and death dates are correct. Any other help is welcomed.
Best Answers
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Hi Karen. One thing I noticed from the first few obituaries is that you don’t seem to be indexing the person (Nonrelative) officiating over the services.
From the “What to Remember” section of the Instructions:
- Index the name of the deceased first, by selecting the "Deceased" entry type. Then index all of the other names that were mentioned in the obituary or death notice, each as a separate entry, in the order that they appear in the document by selecting "Other" as the entry type.
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- Be sure to index all of the names recorded on an image except those that are included as part of a mortuary or cemetery name.
I know that there are other places in the Instructions that emphasize relatives, but the non-relatives need to be indexed too, with their Prefixes.
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Personally, I wouldn't index the handwritten dates as anything other than an obituary date. In the example, Nov 11 1980 was a Tuesday. The deceased died on Tuesday, the funeral is on Thursday. But, in the example, they index the handwritten date as the obituary date.
In the next example the obituary date is written after the sentence about when they got married. April 27, 1980 was a Sunday. The deceased died on Sunday.
We can't look up every one of these dates to decide if it might be a death date. We also don't know which Tuesday the person in the example died. Tuesday, Nov 11th, or Tuesday Nov. 4th? We just know from the actual printed obituary, he died on a Tuesday. I'd follow the examples and if it is a handwritten date, it goes in the Obituary date fields.
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Thank you. I don't know how I missed the non-relatives. I appreciate the help with the dates.
Sorry, I have other questions -
If it says "died in an Enid hospital" can I put Enid as the place of death?
Is there any significance to the city in bold type at the beginning of each obituary?
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Answers
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Thank you for yo
The examples are using the handwritten dates as the Obituary dates, however some of these on this particular batch have the date just after the announcement of the death while others have this date written after the burial information.
I think in this case, it would be appropriate for the Death dates fields to be used when the written date is just after the death notice; but use other handwritten dates as the Obituary dates. The locales are stated in these obituaries. Thank you for your indexing diligence.
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You can use Enid as the death place if it says "in an Enid hospital". You would not if it said died in Enid Hospital.
There usually is a significance of the lead word. Sometimes it is the place of death or the residence. So if an obit says something like "he died in this city", or "died at his home here", then you could use the city in bold as the death place. The same would apply if it said "she lived in this city for the last 60 years".
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Yes to Enid as death place from “an Enid hospital.” However, if it had said “died in Enid Hospital” then no - we wouldn’t know whether Enid Hospital is in Enid or just some nearby place.
As for the bolded names, they are likely the name of the town where the reporting originated. It might be exploitable if in the body of the obituary you saw “Joe Smith died here.”
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Thanks to all of you for your helpful answers.
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