Have you added your relatives' funeral cards to your family tree?
In my small collection of paper family tree documents is a small stack of funerals cards. Each is a little bigger than a business card. They have a religious image on one side and a prayer on the other. Some are laminated. One folds out to double its size.
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| These keepsakes provide some important information about my relatives. |
Did you know that a funeral home can tell you where you ancestor is buried? They can check their records for the burial place.
I had no luck finding my great grandfather Pasquale Iamarino's Ohio death record. Then I contacted the funeral home from his 1969 funeral card. They sent me a copy of the death record. It had been impossible for me to find because of a bad typewriter. A dirty O key looked like an E.
The crown jewel of my card collection is the fold-out card for my other great grandfather, Giovanni Sarracino. It lists the names of his wife and five children. And while all the names but one are Americanized, it's still pretty awesome. It even has enough room to include his photograph.
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| This unusual funeral card format includes a photo, family names, and a prayer, plus 2 religious images on the other side. |
If you don't have funeral cards for your relatives, other members of your family probably do. Ask them to photograph them for you.
I've scanned my funeral card collection, and I'm attaching them to my family tree. Each one is a highly unique item that deserves to be in your family history collection.
And since we're genealogists who see the upside of death:
Be wary of these. While they have lots of important facts, there may be some typos. I have one for my aunt (aged 89 when she died) that stated the date of her death was the same year as the date of her birth. Oops.
ReplyDeleteThat's true. Even gravemarkers can be wrong.
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