Help reading name on death certificate
Friends, can anyone read the mother's maiden name on the attached death certificate? I'm posting in this group because this is research related to an archeology project in Baltimore described here: https://anth.umd.edu/feature/archaeological-dig-urban-baltimore-reveals-forgotten-past-0. Archeologist Dr. Fracchia has been my stalwart ally in moving forward assessment and conservation of an abandoned 19th century cemetery now located in a Baltimore city park that I described in a discussion about 8 months ago. I'm helping research residents of the addresses he's studying in a Baltimore neighborhood where several notable people such as Thurgood Marshall, the first African American US Supreme Court Justice, once lived.
I can read all the other vital info on the certificate. It says:
City of Baltimore: No 1925 Etting
Full name: Joshua Morsell
Residence no: 1925 Etting
Sex: Male; Color or Race: Color; Marital status: Single
Date of death: Mar 12, 1927
Date of birth: 1854; Age 72
Occupation: Porter
Nature of industry: Stone
Name of employer: Berger's Stone
Birthplace: MD
Name of father: Joshua Morsell
Birth place of father: Md
Maiden name of mother: Eliza ?
Birth place of mother: Md
Informant: Sarah McGill (decedent's sister so a good source for the mother's name if we only we can read it!)
Address: 1905 Etting St
Thanks for any help!
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@DanaChou I just saw this. If you can give me some time, let me see what I can figure out. Thank you for posting here! I am sure that there are others that are quite good at this that can help too.
I found the same records on My Heritage that you found and put into FamilySearch. You have done a lot of work.
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@DanaChou Do you have the before and after documents? I want to see if they were filled out by the same person - for handwriting recognition.
I am going to tag @Melissa S Himes into this conversation. She isn't in this group, but she has a plethora of ideas of resources.
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I am also going to tag @Cindy Kay Cheney as well. She has been working on a similar project as yourself and may be familiar with other ways to find the name, or possibly other way names were written.
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@DanaChou I am finding interesting links in Ancestry. They may or may not mean anything but I did a reference to Eliza Jane when looking up Joshua Morsell and slave owner petitions. I am going to give you the link, but you will need to go back and forth a few images to get some of the whole story.
From what I am seeing in the FamilySearch page, you are saying that Joshua's mother is Betsey. Correct? Well Eliza has many nicknames with Betsey being one of them. I think you will find this record rather interesting.
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@DanaChou The surname looks like Givens to me.
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Thank you Heather and Cindy for responding. I didn't get notifications of your responses by email or in my regular FamilySearch page, though I see that my community page lists notifications. I really miss some of the features of the old community platform.
I paid to obtain Sarah's death certificate from the MD state archive, because it has been closed to the public for awhile. So I don't have images of adjacent certificates. The census record for Joshua Morsell Sr in 1840 says he was a free Black person in Calvert county. I don't think the Morsell slave owners in the Ancestry source are connected because the Calvert county Morsell's were already free before Jane Chester wrote her will; also the slave owners lived in Anne Arundel county and DC. I have barely begun to put all the sources I've collected into the Morsell and McGill pages yet. This has been such a fascinating puzzle in which there are 3 different Sarah McGill's. The Sarah of 1905 Etting St never appears in the census with her birth family or her husband. Also, in FamilySearch there is a duplicate Sarah Morsell that I have yet to merge with the one to whom I have attached sources. The duplicate Sarah was made by FamilySearch from the marriage record of her daughter, and it lists the wrong name for Sarah's husband.
As to Sarah Morsell's mother, this is not quite clear. In the 1840 census the unnamed wife is age 24-36 and there are 4 children under 10 that match the oldest 4 children listed in 1850. Eliza is the wife in 1850, and Betsey is the wife in 1860 and 1870. By 1880 Joshua Sr was a widower. Eliza/Betsey's calculated birth year ranges from about 1812 to 1820, and Sarah's ranges from 1869 to 1876. Best case Betsey was 49 when Sarah, the last child, was born; in every other case she would have been over 50. There are two trees in Genealogies for Joshua Sr, one of which lists two wives, Betsey Freeland and Elizabeth Reid. The sources are the census records. I messaged the person whose tree included Elizabeth Reid to ask if there is a source for that name; no response yet. His tree indicates that Elizabeth Reid was mother of the children born before 1850, and Betsey was the mother of those born after 1850. On Sarah's death certificate the mother is listed as Unknown, unfortunately. The reporter was a niece, daughter of Sarah's brother (or half-brother) John. That the niece didn't know the name of Sarah's mother may support the theory that John and Sarah had different mothers.
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About the Freeland surname, Eliza/Betsey's surname on Joshua Jr's death certificate clearly is not Freeland. The Freeland name comes from the 1870 and 1880 census in which 23 y/o Susan Freeland lives with Joshua Sr and Betsey. Susan is 23 in both censuses, though in 1870 her inferred daughter Virginia is 1, and in 1880 inferred daughter Jinnie is 12. In 1880 Susan is identified as "wife's daughter", or Betsey's daughter. If Susan was 23 in 1870 then she was born before 1850. If she was in fact Joshua Sr's stepdaughter this lends more support to the idea that he had two marriages, and also suggests that Eliza/Betsey's had two marriages and her maiden name was not Freeland.
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@DanaChou I have love your trail! Thank you for explaining this.
For the email issue - that is coming in a few months and I agree that it will be very welcomed. Right now you can be notified if you are tagged, or if there is activity on a something you were involved in (post, comment, etc). However, you need to activate it. ✔
Click on your Avatar in the top right corner.
Click "Edit Profile"
Click "Notification Preferences"
Click what choices are given you that you would like (I clicked them all but that is just me)
Click "Save Preferences"
Now you should get notifications in your email about discussions you are involved in.
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Not about this effort, but just calling out what you are doing - I love how when we connect to others and find where our paths cross, we tend to find ways to help each other and engage in each others' work. He's helping you with the cemetery project, you are helping him with his research project....
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An update to the cemetery project - more community members are connecting to the project with support or seeking input for related projects. An officer of the community association for the historic village in which many of the cemetery inter-ees lived just loaned me 4 binders of information on the local Methodist congregations that existed when the cemetery was in active use. He lives in the village within 2 miles of the cemetery but has never seen it. He'd like a tour, which I'm happy to provide.
Later this week I'm meeting at the cemetery with researchers who are preparing to write a history of this area. They've already met with other local people that I consulted in my cemetery research. Now I'm one of the people being consulted! Not something I expected.
I could use help again reading a mother's maiden name on a death certificate for my archeologist friend's other project. John, the deceased, is a half-sibling of Joshua Morsell, whose death cert I asked about at the top of this thread. (I've been able to confirm through other sources that Joshua's mother was Eliza Gross.)
John Morsell's mother was Hanna A J-something? The other harder to read bits say:
Place of death: 548 W Lanvale
Occupation: Sehman (he was a scowman and seaman is censuses preceding his death)
John and parents all born in MD
Father's name: Jashua Morsell (it was Joshua)
Informant: Joseph A Morsell (John's son)
Thank you for any help!
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@DanaChou That is absolutely fantastic! I am not surprised that you are being called in as a consultant. As you continue to become more involved (which you have been for so long), people will look to you for advice. Thank you so much for the update!
So glad that you are confirming Joshua's mother. That is so helpful! For Hannah's last name, I am seeing "Jones". I wonder if the binders of information you received will help as well.
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