 |
Hamilton County Genealogical Society Record Index - Data Base |
Index of Death & Marriage notices appearing in the Cincinnati Volksfreund, 1850-1908
|
Title: Index of death notices and marriage notices appearing in Cincinnati Volksfreund, 1850-1908 Indexed by Jeffrey G. Herbert, Hamilton County Chapter, Ohio Genealogical Society, Cincinnati, Ohio 1991. Introduction from published book: Cincinnati Volksfreund was a newspaper published in German in the 1800's and early 1900's for German speaking immigrants of Cincinnati. The Volksfreund, which means "the people's friend" was a daily paper, published Monday thru Saturday, and for some periods on Sundays, 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 1865 the City of Cincinnati did not keep any record of deaths, and until 1908 death certificates were not required by the State of Ohio. Between the years 1865 and 1908 the City of Cincinnati did keep records of persons who died within the city limits (mostly the immediate downtown area during this time) and then only if the family or undertaker reported it to the office. Even if the death was recorded, the information contained in the certificate was minimal (e.g. name, age, address, place of burial, and country of birth). Death notices, on the other hand, frequently contained a wealth of 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. Some examples of this include: the number of years the person lived in Cincinnati or America, other places of residence, an important business or shop that was owned or operated by the deceased, or the disease by which they died. 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. In the case where the deceased was a soldier (i.e. during the Civil War), died in another county or state, or even back in Europe, the date of the notice might be several weeks or months after the event occurred. At this time, news from far away traveled very slowly. 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 maiden name of the woman, if married, and if the city of birth was mentioned in the notice, an '*' appears after the age in the 'Remarks' column. 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. In some cases for the death of an infant, the age was given in weeks instead of months and days. In the index, this is listed as a number followed 'w' (e.g. 4w = 4 weeks old). The issues of Cincinnati Volksfreund covered by this index are the issues that are still in existence and have been microfilmed* These issues are located in the History Department of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County located at 8th and Vine Street, and begin in October 1850 and run through June 1908. There is a two year gap from 1863 to 1864 where the issues are missing. During the 58 years covered by this index, the death rate in Cincinnati typically ran between 100 and 200 deaths per week. There were usually around 15 to 20 notices published in a week, so this represents about 10 - 20% of the total deaths that occured in Cincinnati. However, since most of the readers of the Cincinnati Volksfreund were usually German immigrants and Roman Catholic, then the chance of finding a published notice increases greatly if the deceased belonged to the Roman Catholic church and was of German descent. 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', 'STARS', 'GESTORBEN', or 'BEGRÄBNIS ANZEIGE'; which mean respectively: 'DEATH NOTICE', 'DIED', 'HAS DIED', or 'BURIAL NOTICE'. Words and phrases typically found in a death notice are listed following this introduction. During the time covered by this index, a few marriage notices were also published, most of these were during the 1860's and 1870's, and all were before 1890. Since the marriage records from 1859 to 1884 at the Hamilton County Courthouse were destroyed in the fire of 1884, these notices can be a valuable resource if a name is found. The marriage notices are indexed both by groom name and bride name, and contain the date that the notice was published in the paper. This is NOT the date that the couple were married. The notice typically was enclosed in a box with the title 'VERHEIRATET', or 'GETRAUT' above it, which mean 'MARRIED', and in many cases had a picture of two hands coming together above it also. A marriage notice always contained the bride and groom's full name, the date of marriage, and usually the church they were married in, the name of the minister who performed the ceremony, and the town were the bride and groom were from. 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 Germann (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. |