On the surface the place of birth looks incorrect for the mother on this death certificate. Astoria, Ohio, is relatively near to Cincinnati–a significant distance from Coshocton County where the Rampley family lived.
Elizabeth (Rampley) Pierce was born around 1820 and this death certificate for her daughter Lida provides secondary information on Elizabeth’s birth.
That does not mean it is incorrect. The reference could be to a place named Astoria that is no longer named Astoria, a township or other political unit other than a “town” that is named Astoria, a place name that sounded like “Astoria” to the informant or the person completing the certificate.
I should not just ignore the reference because a quick initial search suggests it is wrong. That may not be the case.
4 Responses
Thank you for teaching me to pay attention to who the informant was on records and not to assume the information is correct. I finally untangled one death record where the bereaved son listed his own mother’s name on the line where his deceased father’s mother was to be listed.
Glad it helped. Errors like that can easily happen when the informant is under stress or dealing with a death that just happened a few days or a few hours ago.
Or as in this case Astoria says it’s in Ohio. I do know there is an Astoria , Washington /Oregon. When I have been searching family history I came across 21 Springfields either, county or township, or city. Not much better 4 Chilicothi either.
The informant on my grandfather’s death certificate was his brother. On the line where the date of birth is asked for, he wrote “January 5, 1887”, then crossed out the preprinted “19”, replaced it with “18” and filled in the blank with “77.” The next question was age in years, months, days and it was filled out “42 years, 8 months, 23 days” (est. birth year 1881). The months and days agree with a January 5 birthdate but the years given are all over the place!