Family Historian User Group

I wonder if anyone can give me advice on how to trace an ancestor.
Thomas was born in 1847 in Staffordshire, I have him pictured on a Wedding Photograph in 1905.
I have discovered his marriage, but I am having a great problem finding his death information.
The Family surname is uncommon so have trailed though all deaths (GRO) from 1905 -1947 and beyond! and now come to a full stop.
Any help would be appreciated

ID:2858

Look for any information you can get at, not just information pertaining to deaths. Searching for siblings, children, and associates may lead you to other information.

For example, the obituaries of other family members may list him as a survivor and say where he is living.

I found the death date of my husband's great-grandfather in a passport application -- one of the daughters was going back to England and listed as the reason 'to care for her orphaned sister' -- which confirmed my suspicion that my husband's great-grandother had died earlier.

I found one living relative by looking in the records of her city for property owners. (Her family is associated with that address in other records.)

Remember, 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence' but if you find a reference that someone is living at such-and-such a place and date, then he might not be dead yet. [wink]

Jan

Just an observation... The more uncommon a surname, the more likely it is to be mis-transcribed.

But deaths are often the hardest thing to find if you don't know where or when. There are lots of reasons for not being in the GRO indexes. In times when people didn't habitually carry identification, just being away from home and dying unidentified would do it, not to mention a host of more elaborate excuses.