WHAT ARE ICD CODES ON DEATH CERTIFICATES? Can they be helpful to you?

 

What if you finally located a death certificate online, or received one that you’d ordered, only to find out the cause of death has been redacted (obscured)?

While it isn’t “necessary” that we know the cause of death for all of our ancestors, it’s certainly a piece of the person’s life that we’d like to have.

Here’s one that I located online for the 2^nd husband of my maternal Great Grandaunt, Edna Mabel Bowden.  The man’s name is Elmer Wilbur Cunningham.

You can click on the image to enlarge it

As you can see, the image is very clear, it’s typed and it contains a lot of information.  HOWEVER, there are two areas that have been obscured/redacted.  An area in 3b that pertains to, perhaps, war service.  And the entire area which would state the Cause of Death. 

A couple of other things jumped out at me.  There was an autopsy performed and the onset of whatever killed this man had only just happened.  The date of death and the onset of the cause of death are the same.  He was only 54 yrs. old so this leads me to believe his death was sudden, which usually precipitates an autopsy.

IS THERE ANY WAY FOR ME TO ASCERTAIN WHAT CAUSED HIS DEATH?

YES, there is.  It’s called an ICD code which stands for International Classification of Diseases.  Note - these codes do not appear on all death certificates.

Here are a couple of links I found that explain what code 94a stands for:

·       Exploring ICD codes on death certificates

·       International List of Causes of Death, Revision 5 (1938)

According to the lists I located, code 94a is defined as Diseases of the Coronary Arteries. 

Generally we think of coronary artery disease as something that goes on for some time.  Why would it have been a sudden death, as I believe it to be?

Well, there could be a secondary cause of death listed, such as stroke, which would, of course have been sudden.  I can’t see behind the redacted area, therefore I cannot determine if there is a secondary cause listed.

Will I find out more about this death?  Probably not.  This man was married to my grandaunt for only 3 years and they had no children together.  I go down rabbit holes, like everyone else, but this is not one I will chase.

Did you know about ICD codes before reading this? 

If not, will you be looking for them now?

If you have used these codes to find information, I’d love to hear about it.

If you are related to or connected to anyone in this blog post, please get in touch.  Let’s exchange information.

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl
Copyright ©  2010-2022   Diane Gould Hall
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

 

REMEMBERING THE VICTIM OF A DRUNK DRIVER - Paul Abrahams 1909-1936

Paul Abrahams Senior Photo

This post is a bit of a change from my regular posts. In this case I am writing about a young man, not a member of my family, killed by a drunk driver.

That drunk driver, Hubert L. Pepper, is connected to my family by marriage. He was the husband of a 2nd cousin, once removed.

I thought I would honor the memory of the young man he killed.

I’ve done what research I can about Paul Abrahams and this is what I found out.

Paul Abrahams was born 15 Jun 1909 in Hancock, Michigan. It appears he was the youngest of four or five sons. His parents were immigrants. Morris Abrahams¹, born in London, England and Rebecca Gold¹, also born in London, England, according to Paul’s death certificate. 

However, in reviewing census records and the passport application for Morris Abrahams, I believe both he and his wife were born in Europe (Morris in Poland and Rebecca in Germany). Both spoke Hebrew leading me to believe they were possibly of Jewish descent. Morris applied for a passport renewal in 1920, to return to Poland to be with his sisters.²

• In the 1910 census Paul is living with his parents in Hancock, Houghton, Michigan.³
• In the 1920 census Paul is 10 years old and living with his parents & siblings in Hancock, Houghton, Michigan. His siblings were: William H., Samuel R. and Harold.⁴
• In the 1930 census Paul is still living with his parents and one sibling, Harold.⁵

I also located Paul Abrahams name in the Hancock Central High School Yearbook for 1925, page 68. He was listed as a junior.

In 1926 we find Paul Abrahams listed as a senior at Hancock High School, page 101, titled Senior ROASTER. It’s pretty cute what they had to say about those listed here. The list gives Name, Occupation, Wants and Might Be. For Paul they listed the following:⁶

Name: Paul Abrahams

Occupation: Kidding ability

Wants: His own way

Might be: Bachelor

Here is the death certificate and FindAGrave memorial for Paul Abrahams. 

Cause of death listed on certificate – Broken neck, struck by auto while crossing street, car driven by drunk driver 

 

I’m sure the sudden death of Paul was a shock to his family and friends. May he rest in peace.

Drunk driving penalties have certainly changed (for the most part) in our country, since 1936. The driver in this case was only given 9 months in jail and 3 years probation. 

That driver was the same age as his victim, only 27. I hope he made something of the rest of his life. Such a tragic story.

Sources:

1. Michigan death certificate for Paul Abrahams

2. U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925

3. U.S. Federal census 1910

4. U.S. Federal census 1920

5. U.S. Federal census 1930

6. U.S. School Yearbooks, 1880-2012

7. Newspaper articles courtesy of newspapers.com

8. Death certificate located on seekingmichigan.org (update Oct 2019 - the new website for Michigan death records is michiganology.org

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright © 2010-2017 Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

MADNESS MONDAY ~ The sad story of Albert Charles Hungler 1860-1893

In researching my great grandaunt’s family, I discovered the sad story of Albert Charles Hungler.

My great grandaunt, Myra Hunter (1859-1938) married on 6 Oct 1880 Johan Jacob Seigle (1849-1930).  Johan had a sister named Rosina Seigle born about 1835 in Germany and died 18 May 1903 in Ohio.  She married John Richard Hungler.  To this couple was born 3 boys and 4 girls; Teresia about 1855, Albert Charles 1880, Elizabeth about 1862, Anna about 1865, Charles about 1868 and William H. 1869, Margaret about 1877.

Albert Charles Hungler became a minor league baseball player.  It looks like he played from 1887 at age 27 to 1890, age 30 for eight different teams.
 

I found reference to him on these websites.

Baseball Reference.com – statistics for Al Hunger
Vintage Card Prices.com – Al Hungler baseball cards

Here’s a image of one of the baseball cards, used with permission from my cousin.



Here’s the obituary for Al.



Al Hungler was only 33 years old when he died.  His cause of death is listed on a cemetery/burial card, as Marasmus.  According the the dictionary this is a lack of nutrition associated with infants. “severe undernourishment causing an infant's or child's weight to be significantly low for their age (e.g., below 60 percent of normal).”
 
Here is the cemetery card.


NOTE: What could cause Marasmus in an adult?  I have my own thoughts on this.  During my research I have found that syphilis was not uncommon in our ancestors.  This disease often affected the brain.  I actually have one ancestor whose cause of death was “brain syphilis.”  Could this be what caused the mental deterioration and eventual death of Al Hungler?
  
Albert Charles Hungler is buried at Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, Hamilton, Ohio.  You can visit his memorial here.

FAMILY NOTE:  This must have been a horrible time for Al Hungler’s family.  His father, John Richard Hungler had passed away at age 47, in 1880, of Typhoid Fever.   A few months prior to Al’s death had been the death of his younger brother William H. at age 23 due to Disease of lungs.

If you are related to this family I’d love to hear from you.

OTHER POSTS THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST

SIBLING SATURDAY - The Hunter Sisters

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2016   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

FRIDAY FINDS ~ Gordon W. Flower, dead, only 3 days after his marriage to Lovina McNinch–What was the cause of death?

This is a follow up post from yesterday.  I wrote a post about finding potential problems in my Legacy 8 database.  This problems list helps identify various issues in your family tree, that may have gone unnoticed. You can read that post here.

There were two problems on my list.  I’ve cleared up the first one.  The second one had to do with Gordon W. Flower.  His marriage date is listed as being after his death date.  Yup!  I’d say that’s a problem. 

• Do I have the correct dates for the date of death and the marriage?
• If so, where did I get these dates?
• What other records might I locate that would give me more information?

(CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT)


First I went to the sources I have listed for the death of Gordon W. Flower.  It seems I have only one.

• Michigan Deaths, 1867-1897 showing his death date as 4 Oct 1896

TIP:  I have a one page death record for Gordon, which I located on familysearch.org.  In the several years since I researched this individual, I have learned an excellent lesson.  ALWAYS look at the page before and after any record.  Had I done that at the time, I wouldn’t have been so surprised by his cause of death in my findings today.  I went back and found the 2nd page of the death record, today.

Now let’s see sources I show for his marriage to Lovina McNinch?

• Michigan Marriages, 1868-1925, showing they were married on 5 Oct 1896 in Hastings, Barry, Michigan.  His parents names are correct on the marriage record, as is his age & place of birth.

Here are the images of those records:

The death record below clearly indicates date of death as October 4th


The marriage record below also clearly gives the same date for the license and the date of the marriage, October 5th.



So, what I entered in my Legacy database wasn’t wrong, then, based on these records.  I may have located the records at different times, not noting the discrepancy it created.  OR, was Gordon married posthumously?  That’s always a possiblity.  However, what I found today, will refute that theory.

I also had located a FindAGrave memorial for Gordon W. Flower with his year of birth and death clearly visible on the headstone.  You can visit that memorial here.
 
The next step I took was to go to the online newspapers and try to locate an obituary, funeral notice or some other article that would give me further information about Gordon W. Flower.  I was not disappointed.

Here are the articles I located:





So, Gordon died by an overdose of morphine.  Only the one article mentions him being kicked by a horse.  Was that true?  Or was it said to protect the family?  Why was his father against his marriage to Lovina McNinch? (her name is spelled various ways) Lovina was only 16 yrs. old at the time of the marriage. I have not been able to follow her forward to see what became of her.  I’ve not located any children born to Gordon and Lovina.

Sadly, Gordon was the only son born to David Preston Flower and his wife Mary “Polly” J. Thorp, who are my 2nd great grandaunt & uncle.  Making Gordon W. Flower, my 1st cousin 3 times removed.  Gordon had four sisters.  How sad they must have been at the news of his death.

I have changed Gordon’s death date in my database, to October 8, 1896 based on the newspaper articles.  This is consistent with him dying 3 days after his marriage.  One article names the 8th specifically and the other states “thursday” which based on the date of the newspaper article, would have been Oct. 8th.
 
I’ve certainly cleared up the “problem” in my database.  In doing so I learned a very sad fact about this particular ancestor.
 
Is using the Potential Problems report a good idea?  I would certainly say YES.  It’s allowed me to complete Gordon’s story, as difficult as it is to find such stories about our family.

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2016   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

FRIDAY FINDS–Death certificates for my husband’s grandparents

Henry & Freada Fink in the early 1950's

I have been going through my own “Do Over” and trying to make sure I have as many vital records as possible for each person in my tree.  No easy task to be sure.  But, slow and steady is the key and a little work each day will get the job done.

I was working on my husband’s side of the family and noticed that I didn’t have death certificates for his grandparents.  They both died right here in San Diego, where I live.  Several cousins also live here in the area.  Maybe one of them have the death certificates?

NOTE:  Sometimes it is the family closest to us for whom we don’t have complete records.  Like my siblings marriage records (still need to obtain those), these death records for Ron’s grandparents etc.  How about our own birth certificate or school records?  Have you recorded and scanned those?

I did contact the cousin who has provided me with all of the records I have for Ron’s family and she directed me to her daughter.  I made the request yesterday and this morning there they were, in my email.



Genie happy dance for sure.  Now I have a cause of death, more evidence of parent’s names etc.




Now instead of a blank space under “death cause” on my family view in Legacy, I have this:



Another find today was a probate record for Ron’s great grandfather.  More on that in another post.

Suffice to say, it’s been a great morning here in the genealogy cave.

OTHER POSTS THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST

SURNAME SATURDAY – Fink

MICHIGAN DEATH RECORDS ONLINE - Where can you find them?

Happy hunting,

Copyright ©  2015   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

THE FORGOTTEN PLAGUE–KILLED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE FOR CENTURIES

Courtesy of public domain, painting by Cristobal Rojas

WHAT WAS THIS PLAGUE?

It was Tuberculosis.  Also known for many years as consumption, phthisis, pulmonalis and the wasting disease.

There was a program that recently aired on PBS called “The Forgotten Plague.” You can go to this link http://video.pbs.org/video/2365409222/ and scroll down to watch this show online.  It also may be repeating on your local PBS station.

I watched this episode because I knew that we had family members who had died of this disease.  I knew for sure that my own maternal great grandfather, Andrew Charles Milne, died of it at age 36 and that my husband’s paternal great grandfather, Ellmer E. Bright, had died of it at age 30. Both men died in the late 1800’s.

 

There was no cure for this horrible disease until 1946 when the antibiotic streptomycin was discovered.  Until then people suffered for years and sometimes decades, or died quite quickly.

   

The Mayo Clinic gives this definition of Tuberculosis

“Tuberculosis (TB) is a potentially serious infectious disease that mainly affects your lungs. The bacteria that cause tuberculosis are spread from one person to another through tiny droplets released into the air via coughs and sneezes.

Once rare in developed countries, tuberculosis infections began increasing in 1985, partly because of the emergence of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. HIV weakens a person's immune system so it can't fight the TB germs. In the United States, because of stronger control programs, tuberculosis began to decrease again in 1993, but remains a concern.
Many strains of tuberculosis resist the drugs most used to treat the disease. People with active tuberculosis must take several types of medications for many months to eradicate the infection and prevent development of antibiotic resistance.”

Another definition can be found on Wikipedia at this link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberculosis

There has been a recent resurgence of this disease throughout the world and some strains are becoming resistant to treatment.

I wondered how many people in our family, that I was aware of, had died of this disease?
I ran a report in Legacy 8 for “cause of death” equal to “tuberculosis” or “consumption” or “phthisis.”  I would have listed the cause of death based on whatever record I located, so I knew it could be any of those words.

The report produced 12 names from my database.  I’m certain many more of our family must have died of this disease, since it effected so many worldwide.

However, here is the list based on the information I currently have. Click on the image to enlarge it.



The earliest death on this list was 1874 and the latest was 1918.

Who in your family died of this disease?

OTHER POSTS THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST
MEDICAL TERMS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
CORONER'S CASE FILE - AN ANALYSIS

If you think you might be related, even remotely, to anyone mentioned in this blog, please contact me!

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2015   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

MEDICAL TERMS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

CAUSE OF DEATH – That’s one of the things I always want to know when I’m researching my ancestors.

WHY?  Because, to me, it’s very interesting to see the different kinds of things that people died from during different times in history.  Also, because it will give you a good idea of what types of diseases or conditions run in your family.   

Where can we go to find the definitions for the various causes of death we see on all the records we locate?

You can always use your favorite search engine, Google or Bing or Yahoo or whatever you prefer.

I used Google and typed in “Medical terms in the nineteenth century.”

Here is just the first few choices that were listed.

Clicking on the very first one brings up an 11 page report listing medical terms from that time period.  That was easy.

Then I got curious and wondered if I could create a list in Legacy, that would show who died of which disease or ailment?

The answer is YES, I can.  Here are some of the results of my search. 
 (Legacy users please go to the bottom of this post to find specific instructions)

For Typhoid Fever (click on any image to enlarge it)



For Dropsy



And for Consumption



Of course there are many more that I could look up. But, you get the idea.  

How many of our ancestors might have lived longer had they been born in modern times? 

How many of us living today would live longer 100 years from now?  The advances in medicine have been astounding during the past 100-150 years.  

In the 19th century the doctors arrived in buggies or on horseback.  Surgical instruments like the ones below might have been used if needed.
 

       

What kind of unusual causes of death have you found in your family?  

Do you look for the definition of a disease or cause, if you don’t know what it is?

NOTE:  If the cause of death is something that isn’t ordinary by today’s terms, I try to enter a definition.  Now that I’ve typed that statement I realize something.  I should be entering a definition for every cause of death, shouldn’t I?  Because in 50 or 100 years will our descendants know what our definitions were?  Sure, they will be able to look them up, but maybe I will save them the trouble.

Legacy Users – here are the steps I took to create the cause of death list. 
I went to the “search” tab at the top of my screen, then clicked on “find.”
Next, click on the “detailed search” tab.  Here is what I chose for each question:
Look for whom?  Individual
Where to look?  Cause of death
How to look?  Contains
What to look for?  I typed in whatever disease or ailment I wanted to search for
Then click on “Create List” at the bottom of the screen.
If you want to create a list with more information, just use the “Or” option under the second and third condition and repeat the above steps, only enter a different cause of death.

That’s all the fun for today.  Thanks for stopping by.

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2014   Diane Gould Hall