 |
Hamilton County Genealogical Society Record Index - Data Base |
Index of death notices appearing in the Cincinnati Volksblatt, 1846-1918
|
Title: Index of death notices appearing in the Cincinnati Volksblatt, 1846-1918 indexed by: Herbert, Jeffrey G., Hamilton County Chapter, Ohio Genealogical Society, Cincinnati, 1997.
Introduction from published book:
Tägliches Cincinnatier Volksblatt was a newspaper published in German from May 1836 until December 1919 for German speaking immigrants of Cincinnati, and during the late 19th century was the largest German newspaper west of the Alleghenies. Tägliches Cincinnatier Volksblatt. which means "people's daily news" was published six days a week, and contained local and national news, as well as news from Europe. The paper contained many advertisements of local merchants and announcements that were of interest to the local German community. One of these items that was published on a daily basis were death notices of some of the members of the community. These death notices are of great use to the family history researcher since before 1908 death certificates were not required by the State of Ohio. Even if the death was recorded, the information contained in the certificate was usually minimal (e.g. name, age, address, place of burial, and country of birth). Death notices, on the other hand, frequently contained much more vital information about the deceased and their survivors. Typically for an adult, a death notice would contain the person's full name, the name of the surviving spouse, the maiden name of the deceased or surviving spouse, the person's age, the date of death, and sometimes the city of birth and surviving children. If the deceased was a child or minor, the notice always listed the names of both parents and the mother's maiden name and occasionally other brothers and sisters. In some cases, other valuable information may be contained in the notice if the person was wealthy or met with an unusual death. Since not all this vital information can be contained in this index, the date(s) of the death notice is supplied after the person's name so that the reader may look for this additional information in the original notice if desired. This index contains the full name of the deceased, sorted alphabetically by last name, the dates that the death notice appeared in the newspaper, and the actual date of death, if published. Also listed is the age of the person in (YY-MM-DD) format, the page on which the notice was printed, the maiden name of the woman, if married, and if the city of birth was mentioned in the notice, an '*' appears before the page number. In the case where a death notice is published for more than two days, only the first two days are listed, or the two days which contain the most information about the deceased and their family. The issues of Tägliches Cincinnatier Volksblatt covered by this index are the issues that are still in existence from July 1846 until March 1918. These issues are located in the Magazines and Newspapers Department of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County located at 8th and Vine Street. There are several large gaps in the collection. These include:
January 1847 - July 1847 February 1881 - June 1881 January 1855 - December 1857 June 1890 - November 1890 January 1859 - February 1866 September 1894 - January 1895 February, August and October 1868 July 1907 - September 1907 January 1870-July 1872 The death notices that were published in the paper can be identified rather easily since they were typically enclosed in a thick lined box surrounding the notice, and had any of the following words in bold large print at the top of the notice: TODES ANZEIGE', 'STARB', 'GESTORBEN', or 'BEGRABNIS ANZEIGE'; which mean respectively: 'DEATH NOTICE', 'DIED', 'HAS DIED', or 'BURIAL NOTICE'. This index contains the names of over 33,000 people who died between 1846 and 1918. In many cases, the names of the deceased were recorded in the original German spellings, however, sometimes they were also spelled using their English equivalents. To be certain that a particular name is not overlooked or missed, both spelling variations should be checked. There may be additional spelling variations to watch for, such as the frequent interchangeability of the letters 'C' and 'K' (e.g. Carl/Karl) and the use of double final letters in German (e.g. Herman/Hermann). The unique German letters and their usual English equivalents are listed below as an aid to the reader. ' ä ' translated into English as 'ae' ' ö ' translated into English as 'oe' ' ü ' translated into English as 'ue' ' ß ' translated into English as 'sz' or 'ss' Some examples are as follows: (Schäfer = Schaefer), (Schröder = Schroeder) , (Müller = Mueller) , (Bußmann = Bussmann) . Letters with an umlaut are sorted alphabetically* as if they came after the letter 'Z' (i.e. ... u,v,w,x,y,z,ä,ö,ü,ß).
* Note: in the online index, the German letters are sorted with the English. |