I’ve been searching for Christopher Wilson’s death certificate.  It is not easy.  Ireland have civil records dating back to 1864, and also have non-Catholic marriages recorded from 1845 onwards.   Records are stored by the Public Records Office Northern Ireland (PRONI). So I should be able to type in Christopher’s name with a range of years for his death (I don’t know what date or year he died), and his name should pop up with a year of death and age.  I understand 1800s records are not completely accurate, but a record of Christopher’s death should be stored somewhere?

Well, I’ve tried typing in ‘Wilson’ ‘Christopher’ and various date ranges up until 1891 (When Catherine, Abraham and Robert left Ireland to emigrate to Australia).  Nothing has turned up so far.  I’ve found just three ‘Christopher Wilsons’ who died between 1880 and 1891.  I’ve also searched on ‘Chris’, ‘Christy’, ‘Christie’, ‘Kris’ and I’ve left the forename blank altogether.  I’ve also looked at various entries for other names which might be his middle name eg. ‘Robert’, ‘James’, ‘William’. And some odd looking names like ‘Reid’ (just in case the transcriber read the name wrong) and ‘Charles’ (just in case the transcriber thought the name read ‘Chas’).  No luck.

Curious, I thought I’d also look up the dates of death for three of his children who probably died in childhood, and before Catherine emigrated (as I couldn’t imagine she would leave children behind in Ireland).  None of the children came up in the search for date of death.  The three children are:  Edward (b. 1869), Emily (b. 1871) and Mary (b. 1875).  I also checked if perhaps Emily and Mary might have got married before Catherine left Ireland (as I don’t think she would leave them behind as young single women).  No marriages.  So why are there no records of death for Christopher, Emily, Mary and Edward?  No idea.

Perhaps Catherine left the reporting of death to her local Church – all the births were recorded, but none of the deaths.  Why?