Excerpt from An Alphabetical Abstract of the Record of Deaths, in the Town of Dedham, Massachusetts: 1844 1890

IN accordance with the vote passed by the Town at its last annual Town Meeting, I have compiled an Abstract of the Deaths recorded in Dedham from the middle of 1844 to the close of 1890, which is here with submitted. The first seven entries in 1844 were made by Richard: Ellis, the Town Clerk; then follows the record of his successor, Jonathan H. Cobb, which closes with 1874, except that Mr. Cobb 'records two deaths in January, 1875. Charles -h. Farrington, the next Clerk, continues the record through 1879 and records ten deaths at the beginning of 1880. The rest of the records covered by this volume have been made by me, except fifteen deaths recorded by Mr. Farrington, from March to April 27, 1882, the time of his sudden death.

The same general plan has been adopted here as in the Abstract of Births, to give as much as possible in the most compact form. The figures at the left indicate the number of each death in the record of the year in which it appears; if a married woman, the maiden name is given in parenthesis immediately after the christian name, followed by the name of the husband; then comes the date of death, first the month in figures, then the day and year; following this are the cause of death, age, birthplace, names of parents with maiden name of mother in! Parenthesis, and finally the birthplaces of the parents. Of course many entries do not contain all these facts, and therefore not all could be given. Names which appear in brackets have been supplied by the, Editor from information outside the record. In a few instances we have discovered that the record did not correspond with the original returns on file. Words and figures printed from the files rather than the record have been marked with an asterisk.

All errors which are discovered in the printed record of births and deaths should be reported in writing to the Town Clerk, so that they may be properly corrected upon the record.

With the assistance of Dr. Francis L. Babcock of the Board of 'health, a table has been constructed which shows the diseases from year to year, and the number who have died of each disease. We have also constructed a table showing the number of persons who have died -at each age, from stillborn up to 102 years. It is believed that these two tables will be not only interesting, but valuable as statistics. In the table of diseases it did not seem necessary to take each year sepa rately, and we have divided the first twenty years into five periods of four years each, and the balance of the time into periods of three years each, thus being able to show the whole number for each disease on one page. In most cases the diseases are called in this table by the names as they appear on the record, in order to show the changes in nomenclature, from time to time. At the end of the book is given an index of the cities and towns in the United States, also an index of the names which appear as maiden names, together with a list of the men who are recorded as soldiers.

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