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“White or Mexican(White)” is what I saw in a death record on Ancestry.com back in 2010 while researching my great grandmother Josephine Nelson, née St. Louis. This came as quite a surprise to me especially since I was new to genealogy and assumed that all of my ancestors were rich shade of brown like me and also from Louisiana, not Mexico! Needless to say, this label has left me and other family researchers perplexed. Based on the queries and information that I have seen, this label appears to have been given to deceased individuals throughout Louisiana regardless of their ethnicity or whether they identified as Creole or not. Their families were probably unaware of how they had been recorded in this index and in other government records that tracked race, including census records. What also confused me was that around the same time that I discovered this death index record,…

Lately, it seems as if barely a week goes by without an elder in the family or community passing on. Last month it was Uncle Johnny, last week it was Mr. Jackson, this week, Uncle Buddy. Our elders, especially the 80 and 90 somethings have really been bidding us adieu, like the carbonation bubbles that sit at the bottom of my glass and then suddenly release themselves , float to the top, and dissipate ,so these elders seem to be flying away at a rapid clip! With advances in medicine and improvement in overall quality of living , maybe there’s just more elders making it to 80 and beyond, and then dying. On the other hand, perhaps this feeling of “lots more people dying” is just a naturally occurring phenomena for all of us as we ourselves age, as we continue on our own slow march toward death. I feel a…

Tag: death

Race and Identity in The Louisiana Statewide Death Index

May 19, 2018May 31, 2018| Karen Galloway|10 Comments

Opportunity Mourned, Life Celebrated – Our Elders

April 29, 2017January 27, 2018| Karen Galloway|7 Comments