Sunday's Obituary - Ohio County Death Record for James E. Creeden

Images for some Ohio County Death probate records are available on FamilySearch.org. These records don't have an index, so you have to navigate to the county you're interested in and browse the images. The Mercer County books for 1867-1902 are arranged alphabetically by last name and then by year of death. They jump around a bit in years of death and they appear to be very sparse for some years. I wasn't able to find an entry for my 2x great-grandfather Timothy Creeden who died in 1899, but I found an entry for his son James E. Creeden from 1889.

James was the oldest child of Timothy Creeden and Mary Matson and was only 17 years old when he died of typhoid fever. He is buried in the Old Buck cemetery next to Mary's brother John Matson.

The first part of the index record shows that Jas E Creedon, a male, died on Oct 13, 1889. The ditto in the last box indicates that James was single. For some entries, there was a checkbox in the box to the left of the gender, but there was no indication as to what that meant.

The next part shows that James was 17 years, 11 months, and 2 days old at the time of his death in Hopewell Township in Mercer County. He was born in Clinton County, Ohio. Based on his age at death, he was born on Saturday, November 11, 1871.

The entry spans over two pages in the ledger book. On the second page, it gives James' occupation as Farmer and the ditto indicates that he was white. The two empty spaces are for his parent's names, so I'm glad I already know who they are! James' tombstone says that he was the son of T.C. and M.A. Creeden and it appears that his age was 17 years, 11 months, and 3 days old instead of 2.

The last part of the entry shows the cause of death as typhus fever and place of death as Hopewell. The ditto indicates that the death was reported by the assessor.

Source: "Ohio, County Death Records, 1840-2001," images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1951-36769-11375-88?cc=2128172&wc=S95G-3TY:1296150095,1296041902 : accessed 14 Sep 2014), Mercer > Death records, 1867-1908, vol 1-2 > image 198 of 326; county courthouses, Ohio.

Sunday's Obituary is an ongoing series developed by Leslie Ann at Ancestors Live Here.