Henry Whittington and the Genealogy Hat Trick: Obituaries, Cemetery Records and Death Certificates

Newspaper Obituaries, Cemetery Records and Death Certificates are among a genealogist's best resources.  With more and more newspapers digitizing their past issues and making them searchable, it has become much easier to find obituaries.  These records can provide not only the date of death, but frequently mention the names of relatives and the cemetery where the person was buried, and these in turn open up further avenues of research. But if no newspaper obit shows up, Cemetery Records and/or Death Certificates can still lead to genealogical gold. 

Take the case of Henry L.Whittington. He's been a dead end for quite a while with no known date of death and conflicting reports about his parentage and about his wife's family.  I knew that he lived in Baltimore and he did show up in city directories up until 1904. So, I assumed that he died in Baltimore sometime around 1904.  But I had no luck finding a death notice or obituary for him in the online issues of the Baltimore Sun and published indexes for the Sun did not cover past 1896.  I also tried checking the clippings file at the Maryland Historical Society, but Henry was not to be found there either.

My next attempt was to search in Find-A-Grave for Whittingtons buried in Baltimore.  That did turn up Henry's son Joseph who was buried in Loudon Park Cemetery.  A little research on Loudon Park informed me that their records were available on microfilm at one of the local Family History Centers. So I took myself there hoping that perhaps Henry had been buried in his son's plot.  I did find several other family members listed in the Whittington plot (who were not shown in Find-a-Grave, probably because they didn't have headstones), but, alas, neither Henry nor either of his wives were there. 

The best chance of finding a death certificate in Maryland is knowing when the person died, but the Maryland Archives has been digitizing death records, so I decided to take a shot at browsing the records in hopes of spotting Henry.  I started with 1903, since the city directories are often a year or so behind death records.  That is, if he died in 1903, he might still show up in the 1904 directory.  The 1903 records are arranged by date, so it was a slog to check them and I didn't find Henry.  Fortunately for me, in 1904, Baltimore started arranging alphabetically by date, and I found Henry pretty easily in the 1904 index.  I could then go down the Archives and pull up the death certificate.  Voila, I had his address, his parents' names, his (second) wife's name, Matilda, the cause of death and the cemetery where he was buried.  I haven't yet discovered the records for the Baltimore Cemetery, where Henry was interred, but I hope to find them and see if there are other Whittingtons buried with Henry, such as perhaps his first wife. (Update: I did check the cemetery records and no other Whittingtons buried with Henry.)

Unfortunately, Henry's first wife died before Baltimore started recording death certificates, so I couldn't use that trick for her.  But with the name of his second wife, I did another newspaper search and I did turn up an obituary for Matilda Whittington that included, besides her date of death and the fact that she was the widow of Henry,  the name of her granddaughter, with whom she was living and the cemetery where she was buried. A visit to the Archives produced her death certificate with the names of her parents.  And while I was there, I found death certificates for Joseph, which listed his mother, Henry's first wife, and Henry and Matilda's daughter, Florence.

I entered the new information into Find-A-Grave so I could create links with Henry and his wife and children.  I'm grateful to all those folks who have built Find-A-Grave memorials that have helped me fill out some of my research, so I always try to create a record there when I do find burial information.