Organize Your Family History

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Revisit: Reading hard-to-read gravestones

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This article, which I published almost exactly 11 years ago, on July 1, 2014, is easily my most-read blog post. I looked at the stats today and saw that it has had almost 61,000 views in the past 11 years. That’s a lot of views for my little blog. I thought I’d re-run it today for readers who may not have seen it before.

My family reunion was last weekend and I had a great time. Family members were so warm and welcoming to my husband and me despite the fact that my branch of the family had not been represented at that reunion in a couple of generations. I was given family pictures (some of which I’ll probably scan and share here) and well as a painting that my grandmother had painted. It was a great weekend.

On Saturday, my husband and I paid a visit to the cemetery where my grandmother’s ancestors were buried. (This was a reunion of people from my grandfather’s side of the family, so it was an adjunct activity.) I had visited that cemetery, Meyer Cemetery, last year when I traveled to western Missouri.  Three generations of Jeffries are buried in that cemetery:  my great grandfather, James Earl Jeffries;  his parents, John D. Jeffries and Susan Price Jeffries; his in-laws, John Price and Mary Puffenbarger Price; and his grandparents, Richard Anderson Jeffries and Harriet McKinley Jeffries. I wanted to capture some more photos of the gravestones, as well as find the graves of the Prices, which I hadn’t seen on my first visit.

Fortunately for me, I’d learned just the prior week about using aluminum foil to make reading hard-to-read gravestones much easier. I’d seen a link to a blog post called safe solutions for hard to read tombstones on the fabulous Organized Genealogist Facebook page. That post described how you can cover a gravestone with foil and gently rub it to make the hidden words on a gravestone almost magically appear. The post linked above suggested using a clean makeup brush. I didn’t have one so I dug around a bit more on the web and found a post on Save a Grave that suggested using a damp sponge.

So I went to the dollar store and bought some cheap aluminum foil. I grabbed a sponge from under the sink and was ready to head to the cemetery the next day. The method really felt like magic.

This is the stone of the Mary Ann Price, my great great great grandmother.

Foil can make hard-to-read gravestones legible

Cover it in foil and rub and voila, the writing emerges.

Foil can make hard-to-read gravestones legible

There’s a gravestone  right next to my great great grandfather’s grave. The top of that same stone was so worn and dirty you couldn’t really tell that there was a name on it. But when I covered it in foil and rubbed it with a damp sponge, the name “Harriett” appeared. Amazing!

aluminum foil can make hard-to-read gravestones legible againI love this method! The downside is that, unlike gravestone rubbings–which I learned are harmful to the gravestone–it’s not easy to keep and store foil rubbings. I consider them temporary and my digital photo of the rubbed stone to be my permanent record. I can’t quite get myself to throw away the foil (it’s driving around in the back of my SUV), but soon I expect I’ll put it in the recycling bin. [ETA in 2025: I recycled it shortly thereafter!]

Revisit: Exploring ICD codes on death certificates

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Today, I was processing a death certificate for a collateral relative (thank you, 30 x 30 challenge!) and as I squinted at the cause of death I thought it said pneumonia. But I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know if I should risk a wrong assumption and decided to check the ICD code. I did a quick google search to see if I could find what that ICD code 92 would have represented in 1929 and didn’t come up with an easy answer. And then I remembered I’d blogged about it. So I looked on my blog and found the post, from May 1, 2020, which contains a link to the International Classifications of Diseases page at Wolfbane. That got me thinking that re-running my 2020 post about ICD codes might help my readers. So here it is again, in its entirety. P.S. 92 did indicate pneumonia in 1929!

Death certificates can provide such great information, which is why I always try to track them down. Often my eye makes a bee-line for the names of the parents of the deceased, but of course there’s much more information to be found. One area, cause of death, is always of interest. Unfortunately, that information seems to often be the most illegible. In the past, if I could make out the words I would add them to my database. But if I couldn’t, I’d just move along.

But I’ve learned that with a little more effort you can decipher the cause of death and learn more about your ancestor. Often, in addition to the written-out words describing cause of death, there’s a ICD (International Classification of Diseases) code as well. If you can’t read the words, you can look up the ICD code to get more information. Just visit the International Classification of Diseases page at Wolfbane.com to track down the meaning of the code.

Let’s use a death certificate from my great grandfather’s brother, Jesse Wiley Rasco (1978-1957), to illustrate this.

Here’s his 1945 death certificate. I’ve put a red border around the ICD codes.

Death certificate for Jesse Wiley Rasco

 

As you can see, the ICD code for the primary cause of death is 94a. And the ICD code for the secondary cause of death is 83d. I could read the words for the primary cause of death. To me, it looks like Coronary Arteriosclerosis. Ordinarily, I would have stopped there. But the secondary cause of death was hard to decipher and I was curious.

I went to the International Classification of Disease page at Wolfbane.com and clicked on ILCD Revision 5 (1938), which would have been the version in use in 1945, since the next revision came out in 1948. The codes are listed in numerical order, so it was easy for me to find 94a, “diseases of the coronary arteries.” The secondary cause of death, 83d, is “hemiplegia and other paralyses of unstated origin.” Once I read that, I could see the word hemiplegia in the handwriting. It’s hard to make out the word after, but it looks to me like it could be “stroke.” I looked up the word hemiplegia and learned that it means “Paralysis on one side of the body.” [Edited to add: I received a note from reader Dennis Young suggesting that the handwriting says “Rt. side.” That makes complete sense and now seems obvious! The plot thickened a little when I received a note from reader Brad Pierce suggesting that the words say Lt. side, not Rt. side. Brad’s a physician himself so is probably good at deciphering doctor’s handwriting! I can’t tell whether it’s left or right, but I’m so glad to accept the “side” part. Thank you Dennis and Brad!]

Knowing that this 76-year-old farmer was living with paralysis on one side of his body at the time of his death gives me a bigger picture of what his life experience (or least the end of his life) was like.

As you can see, taking time to look up ICD codes when you see them might provide you with more information about your ancestor or might even solve a mystery. Just be sure you’re looking at the pertinent Revision!