Washboard: Death of CHB

Months ago, I requested two death certificates from New York State, having a hunch I might not find them in local jurisdictions. I had begun to despair that the state was a black hole for archive searches. Then, at last, my SASE appeared, and it wasn’t flat. Inside, a form indicated that one search—for the record of Jannette Quimby Burger—was fruitless, but a second had yielded a document: the death certificate of Cornelius H. Burger.

He died in New Paltz, in the home of Moses Schoon, his son-in-law, on February 23, 1899. This indicates that, at the end, at least, he had returned from Fallsburg, where, in 1880, he had lived on the Darius Depuy farm as a laborer, and that he had been reunited with Hannah, his second wife. The 1900 census puts her in the home of her daughter Mary and husband Moses in New Paltz.

The chief cause of death is listed as exhaustion; the contributing cause is senility. Cornelius was 86 years, 10 months, 29 days, putting his birthday at April 25, 1812. The certificate also reports some well-known facts: he was a stonemason and was born in Esopus. His parents are listed as unknown. I would have enjoyed a verification of Zachariah and Elizabeth as his parents, but presumably Moses was the informant, and he didn’t have a clue.

The undertaker is T. J. Pine and Son, of New Paltz.