Hi again--
I am the one who posed this question, and several have asked that I post
what I found. Well there was no really definitive answer that we may have
been looking for. It seems that starting somewhere in the 1880's this
information was added to the death records. Exactly what year it started I
have not been able to determine, nor whether this information was optional
or required if known. But I do know myself from looking through the old
death records books here in Michigan that the parents names started being
added somewhere in the 1880's as well. And I just received a response from
someone in Illinois that they had the same thing in Illinois. But no one
has an exact date where the transition was made. I guess to find this you
would have to examine a death record from each year.
What I have found myself here in Michigan, and what many of you have told
me, was that there is a wide range of practice in filling this information
out, and then too of the accuracy of that information. Often the spouse and
children had to provide this information, perhaps as executors or
administrators, and they sometimes came into the family circle after the
parents of the deceased were themselves deceased. I know that quite a few
will list "unknown" for parents, but that seems to show that the question as
to parents had to be filled in by a certain date.
--Richard
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