Body Transit Records
In an effort to stem the spread of communicable diseases, local governments in many states required that bodies arriving in their jurisdiction be registered. The resulting records cover a large number of individuals.

As B-Ann Moorhouse, CG, FGBS, suggested in an article in The NYG&B Newsletter (Moorhouse, 1992), "The Board of Health of the City of New York required that any body arriving in Manhattan via ship, train, or even local ferry be registered. Thus, the vacationer who died out West and whose body was being shipped back for burial in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, the New Jersey resident or Staten Island housewife whose body was being shipped across the river for burial in upstate New York, the Civil War soldier and sailor whose bodies were being shipped back to New England for burial, all were registered with the City." Moorhouse also notes that the registrations also applied to bodies being shipped in the opposite direction. An example given in this article is that of the transit of Abraham Lincoln, whose body passed through New York City on 24 April 1865. Biographical information included in the Lincoln record includes his age (52 years, 2 months), nativity (Kentucky), place of death (Washington, DC), date of death (15 April 1865), disease (pistol shot), place of interment (Springfield, Ill.), and name and address of person having charge of the body (P. Relyea).

Bodies in Transit, the records for New York City covering the years 1859 to 1894, have been microfilmed and are available at the Municipal Archives of the City of New York, and through the Family History Library. Body transit records are also available for a number of other locations. Transit permits may also be interfiled with death records in the place where the burial took place.

Selected Reading
Moorehouse, B-Ann. "Little-Publicized New York City Sources." The NYG& B Newsletter. New York: New York Genealogical and Biographical Society (Summer 1992, p. 11).

[For more on burial and transit permits, see George Morgan's article "Using Burial Permits as Resources" in the Ancestry.com Library.]

Coroner's Inquests
Although coroners are often associated with murder, their records should not be overlooked. A coroner may have been called in to investigate deaths occurring under the following circumstances: accident, suicide, sudden death when in apparent good health, unattended by a licensed physician at time of death, suspicious or unusual causes, poisoning or adverse reaction to drugs or alcohol, disease constituting a threat to public health, employment related illness or injury, during medical diagnostic or therapeutic procedures, in any prison or penal institution or while in police custody, dead on arrival at hospital, unclaimed bodies, any body brought into a new medico-legal jurisdiction without proper medical certification, or any body to be cremated, dissected, or buried at sea.

As with most records, the contents and condition of an individual's inquest file may vary greatly from county to county, and even from year to year.

Many inquest files contain sworn statements made by family and friends of the deceased and any other witnesses present at the time of death or when a body was discovered. A 1935 Chicago inquest, for example, included a form requesting the full name of the deceased along with the person's address, age, sex, marital status, color, birthplace, length of residence in the United States, length of residence in the city, occupation, employer, past occupation, wages or salary due, amount of life insurance and to whom it was payable, value of personal and real estate property, level of education, number of dependents, and 10 questions regarding the decedent's physical and mental health at the time of death.

Personnel in the county coroner's office should be able to provide information on the location of files.

Selected Reading
Naanes, Ted, and Loretto Dennis Szucs. "Dead Men Do Tell Tales." Ancestry Magazine 12 (2) (Mar-Apr 1994): 6.

Roebuck, Haywood. "North Carolina Colonial Coroners' Inquests, 1738-75." North Carolina Genealogical Society Journal 1 (1975): 11-37.

Scott, Kenneth. Coroners' Reports, New York City, 1843-49. New York: New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, 1991.

Laura Szucs Pfeiffer, author of the book Hidden Sources: Family History in Unlikely Places, has been actively involved in researching her own family history for 10 years and is also currently working on her husband's family. Laura was also involved in the compilation of Family History Made Easy (Ancestry, 1998), They Became Americans: Finding Naturalization Records and Ethnic Origins (Ancestry, 1997), and The Ancestry Family Historian's Address Book (Ancestry, 1997).