Death Comes Calling...Er, Emailing

Monday morning, I received an email from Death.

No, seriously, I did. Monday morning, there it was in my Gmail account, right between a Doubletree hotel confirmation and a Facebook message notification - an email with a sender listed only as 'death'. As it turns out, the auto-confirmation email from the Ohio Historical Society comes from an email address titled, somewhat unfortunately, Death. So, no, I am not communicating with the other side (although it sure would make parts of the family history much easier to find!) and I am not receiving messages from the Grim Reaper. All Death had to tell me was that in five to seven business days, I should be receiving copies of the death certificates for William H. Burnside and Abram Burnside. Still to come in a separate shipment are death certificates for their sister-in-law, Elizabeth M. Burnside, and my great-great grandmother, Sarah Hogan.

William and Abram are, to the best of my knowledge so far, the brothers of Joseph Burnside (b. 1831, d. unknown), my great-great-great grandfather. Now, Joseph is as far back as I go on the Burnside line with any certainty at the moment. I have, however, been rather sternly tasked by several family members with determining what, exactly, our connection to Civil War General Ambrose Burnside is, and to do that, I suspect I need to go back at least two more generations. Joseph disappears from my records between the 1880 and 1900 censuses, which leads me to believe that is when he died - unfortunately, without the 1890 census, I've been having a difficult time narrowing it down any further. So, my next best bet was to turn to his family. As it turns out, I was able to track down exact death dates for these two brothers, which I hope will enable me to locate his father with more certainty. C'mon, Mr. Postman, get here soon!


Next steps: When they arrive, I hope to use these death certificates to establish with relative certainty the parentage of Joseph Burnside. I have also requested (in a separate order) the death certificate for Joseph's wife, Elizabeth, which I hope will provide her maiden name and allow me to trace Joseph's maternal line.