Deceased Estates: more than just the Death Notice

The Death Notice is not the only significant document among South African estate papers. There would also be a Will (if one was made), Final Liquidation and Distribution Accounts, correspondence generated either before or after the death occurred, invoices etc.

All these are potential sources of information. To stop at the Death Notice – or to allow your local researcher to do so – is a grave mistake. Surprising facts emerge in apparently unlikely pieces of paper.

Undertaker's Invoice 1911 mentions 2 carriages &
a special tram car for mourners

Although many wills aren’t particularly informative, they generally name beneficiaries and sometimes give instructions as to burial or cremation which can be helpful when trying to find the ancestor’s last resting-place. Specific bequests – sometimes of unexpected items to unlikely people - can be intriguing. Inventories give us an intimate glimpse into the ancestor’s daily life. Invoices from tradesmen claiming settlement from an estate are worth a look, especially one from the undertaker which may offer the name of the cemetery where burial took place as well as the style and cost of the obsequies considered appropriate for the deceased.

Milliner's Invoice 1869

A fairly nondescript invoice listed items of clothing which turned out to be my great great grandmother’s mourning clothes ordered from the Silk Mercer, Milliner & Straw Bonnet Manufacturer for my great great grandfather’s funeral in 1869.

Letterheads among the estate correspondence may give snippets about a family business, its street address, who the directors were, or a picture of the building where the deceased lived, worked and died. How much more interesting, relevant and memorable it would be, rather than baldly stating the company name, to include a decorative engraved letterhead as an illustration when publishing the family’s story whether on the printed page or online.

Engraved letterhead 1911

Archival documents require interpretation, digging beyond the stated facts to unearth choice nuggets of detail to enliven the family history. This makes all the difference to a narrative which, no matter how accurate the names and dates might be, reads like a bland chronology of births, marriages and deaths.

Other contents of a South African Deceased Estate file

The Liquidation and Distribution Account gives details of all the assets in the estate, including movable and immovable property, and also lists claims which have been paid out of the estate such as advertisements in newspapers, funeral expenses etc.

The distribution part refers to how the assets were divided amongst the beneficiaries. One of its uses for family history can be providing names of grandchildren who may not have been mentioned at the time the will was made. This information could take the family historian forward to living descendants.

An inventory of the deceased’s belongings can offer various important facts. The full legal description of a piece of land, given under immovable assets, may come in handy for searches at the Deeds Office. (For more on inventories, see my post of 30 January 2010 entitled ‘Getting the best out of NAAIRS’.)

It’s really worthwhile looking at any miscellaneous correspondence in the estate file e.g. invoices from tradesmen claiming settlement of accounts. An undertaker’s invoice may note the burial place, even a plot number of a grave. It will also give an idea of the scale of the funeral – and who paid for it (there were often arguments among relatives as to who should foot the bill for the tombstone).

A simple list of garments turned out to be my great great grandmother’s mourning clothes, as well as some for her daughters, ordered from the ‘Silk Mercer, Milliner and Straw Bonnet Manufacturer’ – hats, gloves, ribbons, braid, lace tuckers and (a vital accessory for the occasion) handkerchiefs - so that the family would be correctly attired for my great great grandfather’s funeral in 1869.

Tradeplates and engraved letterheads on correspondence can make decorative illustrations for a family history narrative.

All the above points emphasise that you'd miss out on a great deal of information if you were to access only the Death Notice in a Deceased Estate file.