MyIndianaHome.net

Until 1906, death certificates for deaths occuring in Madison were prepared by the attending physician and then were submitted to the city clerk who endorsed the certificate and issued a burial permit. At the same time, the Jefferson County Health Department kept record books of these deaths and also issued burial permits. In 1906, this process was finally transferred to the Health Department and the City Clerk of Madison was no longer responsible for keeping death records

The Jefferson County Historical Society has over 4,000 Death Certificates, Burial Permits, Body Transit Permits, and related items on file; most were issued during the 1880 to 1904 time period. The majority of these deaths occured in Madison, while some deaths are county and out of state residents. It must be noted that this collection is not a complete account of all deaths occuring during this time period.

Ron Grimes, Jefferson County Historical Society Archivist, generously agreed to share these records with Internet researchers. Preparation of these records for the Internet was made easier by Ron's excellent organization of this collection.

The Historical Society filed these records chronologically by date of death, and then extracted the names and death dates. This information was then saved to a disk and also printed out and placed in a notebook in order to have a searchable index to the original records. This data disk and notebook were the sources of which I worked. In addition, I extracted the same type of information from records which were found after the initial extraction. However, I have also included the ages of the individuals. This is why you will find some individuals with ages, but most without.

Some of the names and dates on these records were difficult to read and best guesses were made. If you find a mistake, send me an email and I will make a foot note. I would rather not change the information which I did not do. Also, many of the individuals have more than one type of record, and because of either the name or date not having been written exactly the same from one record to the next, or because of transcription error, there appear to be duplicates of individuals with different information.

- Ruth Hoggatt