Death records can often prove to be a precious source of information in genealogy research. They usually provide the researcher with interesting information about the deceased individual, such as her/his name, age, place of birth and residence, the names of her/his parents, the name of the spouse, and of course the date, place and cause of death. At the same time, they create a terminus ante quem, for one to expand research backwards. In Greek genealogy research, death records are equally precious, but nevertheless they are very rare.
Civil Death Records
In Greece, civil death records started to be systematically kept by the State only after 1925, when the Registry Offices (Lixiarcheio, Ληξιαρχείο) of Municipalities became properly organized.[1] Such records are kept at town halls and include lots of valuable information:
- Date and place of death
- Name of the person who informed the Registry Office about the death
- Given name
- Surname
- Marital status
- Place of residence
- Birth place
- Age
- Occupation
- Religion
- His/her parents’ names, and
- Name of the doctor and cause of death
While “civil death records after 1925” is the rule, there are some fortunate exceptions, in those cases where the Municipality has offered its Registry Office Archives to the local General State Archives. Such is the case of Corfu, Kefalonia, Lefkada, Samos and a few other places around Greece. In Athens and Thessaloniki, town halls have older -though not necessarily complete- records, however, these are not open to researchers.
Corfu death records
The death records of Corfu constitute a rather complete collection dating as far back as 1841 and covering all the years up to 1932. In total, the collection, which encompasses the entire island of Corfu, numbers almost 140,000 death certificates, not only for the Greek community of the island, but also for those of different faith, such as the numerous Jewish inhabitants, and different ethnicity (British, Italians, Maltese, etc.). Thanks to the special interest of MyHeritage’s founder Gilad Japhet, this indexing project was organized by Gregory Kontos of Greek Ancestry, and the records were made available on MyHeritage in May 2020. They include very useful information, such as: the given name, surname, age and occupation of the deceased, the place of birth, the names of the parents, the place, date and sometimes the cause of death, as well as the name of the priest officiating at the funeral. The death records of Corfu are available on MyHeritage, while those of Lefkada are available on Greek Ancestry.
Church death records
For the years before 1925, the main keeper of death records was the Greek Orthodox Church, and specifically its local agents, the parish priests. Because the records were kept by the local priest, they were also passed down from one priest to the next, which in many cases caused loss or destruction of records. In most cases, church death records start from the last decades of the 19th century or from the first of the 20th century. These records do not come in the form of certificates, but rather in that of indexes. Index templates were provided by the Patriarchate of the Greek Orthodox Church in Athens to ensure that parish church books followed a specific structure. Church death records of the 19th century may include the following information items:
- Date and place of death
- Name and age of the deceased
- Her/his marital status
- Her/his occupation
- Her/his parents’ names (in most cases, the father’s name only), and
- The name of the spouse (if applicable)
The introduction of a new official template around 1912-1913, brought two additional information items:
- Place of birth
- Date of funeral
Occasionally, the cause of death is also included. Nonetheless, it should be noted that the reason why the priests kept death records were the funerals that they conducted. Therefore, the cause of death as well as other details, such as the information of the informant, were not considered relevant. Moreover, in many cases, the death records of deceased married women included the name of the husband alone, and not that of the woman’s parents.
See also
Explore more about Death records in Greece
- Greece, Corfu Vital Records, 1841-1932 record collection at MyHeritage
- MyHeritage Adds Three Historical Record Collections From Greece on the MyHeritage blog
- Ask The Expert – New Greek Records on MyHeritage, a webinar by Gregory Kontos and Carol Kostakos Petranek on the MyHeritage Knowledge Base
- Death records of Lefkada at Greek Ancestry
- Greek Genealogy Guidebook by Greek Ancestry