Deep Roots Family Tree Blog

Cause of death

There is a morbid curiosity that drives me to find the cause of death of someone. Most people could continue on with their tree, only concerned about when they died, not how. That’s definitely not me. Sometimes knowing the cause of death of your ancestors can tell you what to look out for in your own health. You can track illnesses that are passed down genetically such as dementia, diabetes, cardiac issues, and mental health diagnoses.

Above is my second great-grandmother, Selma Waldo (Gullickson). This is the only picture I’ve ever seen of her, which was always weird to me because my grandparents had tons of old family photos. No one really talked about her. She died at 22, and no one could tell me how. I’ve talked about her before in previous posts, but after she passed, her two children ended up being raised by their grandparents and eventually an aunt.

I was consumed by this need to find out how she died. Was she murdered? Was she in an accident? Had she been sick?

I needed to get my hands on her death certificate. I found that requesting a North Dakota death certificate was incredibly easy. Unfortunately, the first one I got had the cause of death redacted. I reached out to them again to request the full death certificate. Here’s what I got, which is what I expected…

The tuberculosis epidemic in the early 1900s found her. The death certificate suggests that she had been living with TB for two years, so 20 years old. By that time, she had already had both children and I struggle to think that she may not have spent any time with her children before she died because they new that TB was easily transmitted from human to human. I don’t think she ever had a chance to be a mother.

So that was my mom’s paternal side of the family. Now we look at her maternal side, the Amerman’s. Rozair Joseph “Joe” Amerman was 50 when he died. If I look back through that side of the family, most of the men died at a fairly young age, whether it be accident or natural causes. Joe was working alone on the farm in the middle of winter and got his arm caught in some machinery and bled to death.

His daughter was having some complications in childbirth and they were rushed to the closest major city. The accident happened the day after his grandchild was born while everyone was in Fargo. He wasn’t supposed to be alone on the farm that day…

If you think of someone’s cause of death as an end to their story, it feels a little less morbid.