I recently had an email from a lady who I had been in contact with many years ago, asking me to assist her with a new family history query. At first it seemed quite straight forward, she knew that her cousin died in 1943 and she had the full date of death, and the place of death, which was the Meekatharra Hospital. She said she had searched my site and she wasn’t listed on the Meekatharra Cemetery list. She asked if I could find where she was buried.
Daily Telegraph and North Murchison and Pilbarra Gazette 19 June 1943
I thought this would be quite straight forward, it is quite unusual for a young child (she was 4yrs) to be buried very far from where she died. This is what I tried:-
I first concentrated on the Meekatharra and Wiluna Cemeteries (because of attached notice) and then to the surrounding cemeteries. I then searched all the Perth cemeteries and Kalgoorlie- Boulder, also with no luck. I also tried AGCI The ‘Australasian Genealogical Computer Index’ Find a Grave and Ancestry.com, also nothing. I have some of the East Murchison and Mt Margaret death certificates, so looked through these for the appropriate dates, no luck again. So I presumed that her death had been registered in the Murchison, which turned out to be the case. With Mt Margaret, East Murchison and Murchison registry districts, they seem to have been a bit relaxed in where you registered the death. You are supposed to be registered in the nearest office to where the death occurs, but you can be buried anywhere at all. I have found people who died in Leonora registered in all three places. I also searched all the Patricia’s who died in 1943. All with no results.
My records online and on my own computer were all transcribed from various sources many years ago such as, the cemetery lists, burial records, which in turn were made available on microfiche. For those of you that have been researching for a long time you will know what these are.
I had checked on my computer, as well as what is online on my web site. I was just about to reply that I was unable to find any record of the burial place when I decided to look through my hard copy file (which is huge) just to make sure.
I came across some print outs from the microfiche from the Meekatharra Cemetery register in date order. I went right through the deaths for 1943 and, as you may have guessed, I found what was defiantly her.
She was listed as P Simm. Then I found a printed copy of the register that had been typed and photocopied and the entry on this list was Patrick Simms. You will see that the difference between Patricia and Patrick is only two letters so perhaps it was a very old typo. When documents and records are transcribed, especially if they are from handwritten records, there is always lots of room for errors. I’m not sure how the entry in either form was missed in the transcription of the ones I have on my computer, who knows.
The lady has been in touch again and has had another relative give details of the same cemetery but a different grave number and denomination. I have directed her to contact the Meekatharra Shire for a location map which should clear up this last point.
So, the moral of the story is ‘Don’t always believe what is online (or what isn’t for that matter)’. !!!!
Moya Sharp
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I completely agree. My great great grandmother was buried in Rookwood Cemetery in Sydney in August 1918 according to her death certificate. I also had a photo of the grave as it was back then. When trying to locate it, I was advised by their office that there was no burial for her. After producing copies of my evidence, they advised me that she was buried there. However, her burial record had her transcribed with the surname GRANT, when in actual fact her surname was GAM.
I have now been able to have their records corrected in their online search facility
Hi Helene Good job you were persistent. I think that you just need to think what the transcriber may have thought the name was. It is especially difficult with Italian/Slav or other European names. They were often spelled phonetically of the person couldn’t speak English. We personally have a Woinar who is listed and Wogno. Its was a case of searching all the names starting with Wo. You are lucky that they agreed to change the details. Our cemetery here wont change records at all no matter how much evidence you provide.
Hi Moya, I was lucky that I had a copy of her death certificate and a photo of her grave. They had found that the grave was owned by her eldest surviving son, Mr J Gamm – again a misspelling as their name is Gam.
They have only agreed to change it since the cemetery went online and that was just recently.
Hi Moya,
The “385-Mile” referred to in the story of the young child who died there in 1943 is obviously the 385-Mile fettlers camp on the Meekatharra – Wiluna railway. Four sidings on this section were given names but there were a couple of “locations” in between that were given mileages only to identify them.
Why it was said to be “via Wiluna” is confusing because with mail, etc, coming from the opposite direction it would have been more proper to have said via Meekatharra.
Bernie Morris.