| Any and all items suggesting a death in the
region were indexed. These included not only obituaries and death notices
but also funeral notices, memorials, thank you notices, resolutions of
respect, community items, erection of grave markers, references to
attendance at funerals, accumulative lists of deaths over a period for
members of a particular group (such as veterans or fraternities), decoration
of graves on holidays and legal notices (such as recording of wills, estate
settlements or suits, and appointments of administrators/executors). Persons
who were reported to be near death were also indexed; in these cases a note
was added to the comments explaining. An effort was made to integrate all
items for the same person. New items related to a particular death were not
indexed separately but were added to the first entry made for that person.
The additional items were placed in the “comments” field and appear as “see
also” followed by the particular date and page number. In the old newspapers
occasionally someone will mistakenly be reported as having died and is later
found to be still alive. In these cases I went on and recorded that person
in the index but only added data in the field categories of “name”,
“obituary date”, “age”, and “comments”. In the comments a note was added that he was
reported as having died but was later found to be alive. It is beneficial to
record a misreported death because if someone finds the first report on his
death and not the follow-ups they will mistakenly believe he died at that
time. The “comments” field has been extensively utilized to include almost
all vital or biographical information given about that individual or his
family. Page numbers where item can be found and many cross references to
other articles about that individual have been included in the comments.
Many other articles, both before and after a death, that give biographical
data about that person, have also been added to the comments. Some other
items included in the comments field are: sex of person if not indicated by
name field (or is ambiguous), additional descriptions of age (a more exact
statement of age such as 5 months & 3 days, or other descriptive terms such
as infant, boy, young man, elderly, etc.), race (all Blacks were indicated
by word ‘Black’ enclosed by single quotation marks), occupations, places of
employment, residences, former residences, military service, deceased family
members, any data on family, marriage or when moved to location, offices
held, memberships and accomplishments.
Entries have been meticulously compiled to achieve standardization of
form. In the fields of cemetery, cause of death and comments the use of
keywords for a particular category was used consistently even though that
exact wording may not have appeared in the original article. Many cemeteries
are called by several names and many causes of death or subject categories
found in the comments have multiple synonyms. One keyword for all of these
multiple names or synonyms was selected so all entries for the same entity
could readily be isolated. The use of keywords and standardization of form
has maximized the amount of comprehensive keyword searches and thus has
greatly enhanced the value of the database for other types of historical
research other than name search.
I believe the degree of integration achieved in the database could not
have been done just by anyone. One could not have attempted to do such an
ambitious project without having a large base of knowledge about the local
area and a significant dedication to the cause of historical research. Prior
to beginning this project I had a 12-year period of training. I had long
been a serious student of local history and had worked as a professional
genealogist and researcher, publishing many articles and books about the
local area. My dedication to research and continuing education in the
Kentucky Room I believe has enabled me to compile this database with a high
degree of accuracy and integration.
Like all indexing one should not assume that it is absolutely correct.
From my 24 years of experience of studying newspapers, especially the older
ones, I have found that they have many errors. In fact I would estimate that
as many as half of the older obituaries contain some error. For this index
many gross misspellings of surnames (or multiple spellings reported for the
same name) were changed to what was known or found to be correct or to what
was subsequently proven to be correct by relatives. This was done so that
they could be more readily located. All other information cited in the
obituaries, however, is indexed as is. Occasionally if some error in the
information, such as burial place, was known or proven by some relative, an
accompanying note of explanation has been added to the comments field.
One needs to keep in mind that errors can also be made by the person
doing the indexing. Since a name is not found in the index do not assume
that no item is there. Errors are inevitable especially where the item is
very small and there are very badly faded pages. Great time and care was
done in the indexing of the pre-1920 obituary database. I believe that
because of this my error rate is minimal and not many were missed. Every
entry has been rechecked and some multiple times for errors in spelling and
uniformity. |
