On June 1, 1870, a census taker in Brooklyn, New York, recorded the death of John A. “Robeling,” a 63-year-old white male, from tetanus. The enumerator neglected to fill in the “Profession, Occupation, or Trade” field, possibly because the deceased’s name had appeared so frequently in New York newspapers in the three years before his death that a description seemed unnecessary. Or perhaps the census taker couldn’t think of a one-word label — along the lines of “tailor” or “shoemaker” — for the guy who was crazy enough to try to build a suspension bridge across the East River.

An 1870 mortality schedule records the death of John A. Roebling, the German-born engineer who designed the Brooklyn Bridge. While overseeing preparations at the construction site, Roebling was standing on the edge of a dock when a ferry smashed his foot. He died of tetanus 24 days later.

Maybe the census taker was simply in a hurry. He misspelled John Roebling’s name, but duly noted that Roebling was married, that he had been born in Germany, that his father and mother were of foreign birth and that he had died the previous July.

Ancestry.com recently released a complete set of New York mortality schedules for the years 1850, 1870 and 1880 and a partial set of schedules for 1860 (we’re still working on the counties near the end of the alphabet: New York through Yates). In each of those census years, the census taker asked each family he visited whether any member of the household had died during the previous 12-month period. Since the state of New York didn’t systemically issue death certificates until 1880, mortality schedules are often the only record of an individual’s death. 

Having recently read David McCullough’s The Great Bridge, I went hunting in the mortality schedules for a record of Roebling’s death. Roebling designed the Brooklyn Bridge but died before construction had begun. I found his name on a page listing 11 adults and 24 children — including 16 infants under the age of one year — who died between May 31, 1869 and June 1, 1870. The page provides a fascinating glimpse of life and death in late 19th century New York.

The most common cause of death among the infants and toddlers was “cholera infantium” — a label applied to a variety of symptoms that often appeared around the time of teething. In fact, teething was erroneously assumed to cause numerous life-threatening ailments, and is frequently listed as a cause of death in mortality schedules from this period. The other babies died of diarrhea, measles, marasmus (a protein-energy deficiency), convulsions, pneumonia, “suffocations,” encephalitis and ascites (a liver disease).

Only one of adults died of old age: 94-year-old Christian Kohlmann. Kate Asch, age 50, died of “apoplexy” (stroke). Maria Van Kremska and Maria Schultz, both 26, died of cancer of the uterus. John Hannon, a 50-year-old stone cutter, died of dysentery and Caspar Dichterig, a 43-year-old tailor, died of heart failure.

For me, browsing the mortality schedules provoked a sequence of reactions: first, a voyeuristic curiosity; next, a meditation on the fragility and preciousness of life (prompting a resolution to stop sweating the small stuff…until my Zen moment was interrupted by a small army of ants parading across my dining room table); and finally, the realization that my heart is only a few years younger than the unfortunate tailor’s and could probably benefit from a brisk walk.

Aside from any philosophical insights you might glean from these records, mortality schedules can be a rich source of family history information. If you know or suspect that an ancestor died in or around a census year, a mortality schedule may hold clues to unanswered questions about the person’s race, country of origin, birth and death years, migration patterns and more. And of course your ancestor’s cause of death and age at death can be invaluable information if you’re compiling a family medical history. In 1880 several new fields were added, including where the deceased person’s parents were born, where the fatal illness was contracted and how long the person had lived in the area.

People who died away from home should still be recorded in mortality schedules for their home state and district. For example, abolitionist John Brown was executed in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), on December 2, 1859 — 10 weeks after his raid on the Federal armory there. The raid, which Brown hoped would spur a spontaneous slave uprising, was promptly squashed by U.S. marines under Colonel Robert E. Lee’s leadership. The marines killed nine of Brown’s men, including two of his sons, and arrested Brown.

The mortality schedule for North Elba, New York, where Brown’s farm was located, lists Brown, age 62 (cause of death: “Hung”); his sons Watson, 22, and Oliver, 19; and two other young men who were killed in the raid, William Thompson, 24, and Dauphin Thompson, 21. Compounding the family tragedy, the page also records the deaths of Brown’s daughter-in-law Martha (from childbirth) and her 3-month-old daughter, Olive.

This 1860 mortality schedule shows that seven members of John Brown’s household died between May 31, 1859 and June 1, 1860. Five of the deaths were related to Brown’s ill-fated Harper’s Ferry raid on October 16, 1859. Historians believe the raid helped trigger the outbreak of the Civil War.

Search New York Mortality Schedules on Ancestry.com

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