Death records with widows and multiple names
I'm indexing death records. Sometimes the recorder entered the deceased as "widow Patt McDermott" which is fine and straight forward. But then there are times where he entered "wid Dr Flenagan (Honora Plover)". How should I enter this? Do I ignore the Honora Plover? Do I ignore all stuff in parentheses or do I include it? This recorder seemed to like his parentheses.
Ireland, Roscommon—Church Records, 1740–1880 [Part B] [MQCT-TTN]
Answers
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In the Hungarian civil registrations, the equivalent of "wid Dr Flenagan (Honora Plover)" would be indexed as given name = Honora, surname = Plover, and the "Dr Flenagan" would technically be skipped entirely (except nearly everyone — me included — puts it in the spouse field, even if the spouse isn't otherwise mentioned).
The only instruction I'm seeing in this Irish project about married versus maiden names is the standard Anglo-centric bit in the Deceased's Surname field help: "Maiden names should be typed in this field before the current or former surnames." This makes the significant underlying assumption that all of these people followed the 20th century standard American practice of changing the wife's surname — but only her surname — to the husband's.
The instructions do include the possibility of the principal's name not being recorded; for an entry like "Mrs Patrick McDermott", I'd be tempted to follow that — enter the Mrs., mark the deceased's given and surnames blank, and enter Patrick McDermott in the spouse fields.
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Thank you for your help. That is what I was going to do but in reading the PI I was very confused. They always give the best case scenario as the example and don't include instructions for variations.
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