Maine Death Record with Possible Errors?
I have found a Maine Death Record with a name that doesn't seem to match any other historical records, though some of the information is consistent with one of the people in my tree (town of birth and parent names). The name does not show up on any Maine cemetery records. Are the cards in these databases the original records, or were they transcribed from other documents? Is there another way to look at the Augusta Maine death records?
So curious
"Maine, Vital Records, 1670-1921", FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VZQ5-DNL : Tue Jan 14 19:21:57 UTC 2025), Entry for Olive R Legraph and Berry Stevens, 05 Mar 1895.
Answers
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If I recall correctly, some of the New England vital records on FamilySearch are copies made by the local town clerks. They would not permit microfilming of the originals and created manual copies.
I am writing from a possibly fallible recall of something I read many years ago.
You might contact the local town clerk.
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@ils1063 These are images of original records created by the Maine Division of Vital Statistics and signed by the Augusta Town Clerk. I would call them derivative sources as they were likely not created at the time of the event, but compiled from the original sources.
You may have already noticed the errors in the indexing. The father's name is not Berry but Benj. (Benjamin) Stevens. Mother's surname is also probably not Donner, but something that ends in an s—possibly Downes. Doing a quick search in the tree, this looks like the correct person:
To answer your question about other resources for Augusta, Maine death or cemetery records, I did not find any. I also did not find her on any lists of people buried at Bolton Hill Cemetery. I wish you luck.
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@ils1063 You might check out the wiki article for Kennebec County, Maine. It has links for death and cemetery records for the county—some from FamilySearch, some from other websites: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Kennebec_County,_Maine_Genealogy
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