Death in the Valley - N.W. Brenan Funeral Records

I'm rather busy this week filming a documentary film on the history of the Oakalla prison, but sometimes a guy just needs a break. On Sunday I decided to treat myself to an easy two hour zip through the N.W. Brenan Funeral Home database. As you Blog lurkers know, I consider Brenan's to be the "official" funeral director for the Lost Valley. I mention Brenan's often because many of my ancestors were laid out at Brenan's, including recently two of my uncles.

To save the genealogy bugs some time, (they hunger for data, not stories) you can skitter directly over to the Provincial Archives and use the Alphabetized Search Index by clicking this link: N.W. Brenan

This is a sample of a N.W. Brenan client record, from 1903, which illustrates the makeup of the original source material from which the digital record was compiled. The good folks at the N.B.P.A. chose wisely, because this entry reveals a great deal - not only about the death of Catherine Daley, and her family, but of the reliability of the records compiled by Brenan staff of that era. We need to compare it very carefully to the extracted information which is provided by Provincial Archives staff. The record tells us that Catherine was 69 years old at death, died at her residence - 69 Dorchester Street, Saint John, and was born in Dorchester, N.B. I for one would need to cross-index Catherine with other sources, to verify all that. It's neat to see Dr. McInerny show up... good old Mac! He was an indispensable gift to the poor folks of the Lost Valley. And what to make of the pencil scrawl "Warddon", which the Archives has rendered "Widow". Which newspaper should we check for Catherine's death and funeral notice? The SUN was scratched out, and what remains is rendered "Gazette". (Perhaps someone in S.J. could check for us?)

Now here is the extracted information for Catherine Daley. Not bad, but note that her husband, Peter Daley, gets left out. The original entry did not say that her mother was born in England, nor did it indicate that the son ordered the funeral. That must derive from a further record. All in all though, an N.W. Brenan search is a boon to quick searching Saint John families and it will become a very active meeting place on the N.B. Archives website.

MORE ON THE BESSIE CURTIS MURDER

I just couldn't help looking up Bessie Curtis in the N.W. Brenan database because I'm not satisfied that I yet understand the case. In January I wrote an article about her killing on Main Street, and you can still read it here.

I was hoping that the N.W. Brenan data for Bessie Curtis would confirm what I had already disclosed in the article - and something which her living family had forgotten... that Bessie was married to her killer. But as you see, Brenan's did not record the name of the spouse John Netcoff, the Bulgarian immigrant who was twice her age. Still we do learn something of her family roots in Blackville, N.B.