I have several relatives whose dates of death are long forgotten. Burial locations and stories about why they died young? That information has been lost. Except for census, land or military records, an outside researcher would question their existence. Good research demands proof. Because some of my living relatives once spoke to older family who had either known the missing kin or recalled stories told them by parents, I can assume The Missing Kin did actually exist. (An assumption also made because they are my great-greats.)
When a mother of eight children loses her husband, she may only rarely discuss his death. When a marriage is not approved by parents, the orphaned child of the young couple may later find the subject of his dad a closed one. My paternal grandfather was the youngest of nine. He knew little about his father who had died before he was born. Do you know?
Aaron Holt, archives technician at the National Archives Fort Worth:
For example, if a parent died three generations ago, the person to most accurately pass on the correct information about the death would be the surviving parent, who would tell the children. If the children are young when their parent died, they will not have accurate information unless the living parent repeatedly and accurately tells the children the story until it is engrained in them.
When they become adults, they must do the same thing for their children. If none of this is ever written down, it is increasingly difficult to get the story right through the generations.”
Holt said that in generations past, people did not talk about death and that makes it more difficult for a genealogist to sort out fact from fiction today.
“Until not too long ago, people didn’t talk about death, especially to their children,” Holt said. “There was a superstition that if you talked about it, you were calling it, and no one wanted to do that.”
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