Death Records Quotes

The southern colonists were not preoccupied with their own historical significance and mostly did not bother even to make the records of births, marriages, and deaths that they required of themselves by law. Nor did they write accounts of what they were up to for the benefit of posterity.

I'm so concerned with morgues and libraries of the newspapers.

Gravestones tell truth scarce forty years.

The trouble with dead people often begins with something called the Death Master File, which is kept by the Social Security Administration. Every day, new reports are added, provided by relatives, funeral homes, and the state agencies that issue official death certificates. The list contains 90 million reports.

He looked at the book, took my name, and consulted his records. Then he informed me I had been lost at sea and was dead. Under the circumstances, he could not possibly give me any money... Even the fact that he was dealing with someone who had been dead for several days failed to awaken interest in his official heart.

The starting point for the new history, both in Europe and America, has been the record of births, marriages, and deaths, which most literate societies preserve in one form or another. In colonial America, surviving records of this kind - as of every other kind - are most abundant for New England.

Nearly two and a half million people die every year that are on the voter rolls. So it takes time to get dead people off the voter rolls.

The task of tracking deaths for the federal bureaucracy is an enormous one; about 2.5 million Americans die each year. Federal officials say the vast majority of these cases are handled correctly: The death is recorded. Government money is no longer sent to that person. But not always.

Because of a jury-rigged and outdated system meant to track deaths, the government has trouble determining exactly which Americans are deceased.

The war memorial has two separate columns of names – the white and the colored dead.