Index To Forester Members Death Claims 1880-1935

This is an early index only covering deaths from 1880 – 1935.  For deaths beyond 1935, see the search page on the UMass Boston website http://blogs.umb.edu/archives/collections/foresters/

The UMass Boston website has over 37,000 entries for deaths from 1880 – 1944 and beyond.  Forester Project volunteers are continuing to add additional entries

The TIARA index contains in excess of 20,000 records, so please check the explanation below to help you find what you are looking for.

Explanation of Index Columns

Names: Some MCOF members may have multiple entries in the index. A woman may have entries for both maiden name and married name. There may be more than one spelling of the surname. Be sure to check for variants such as Kelly and Kelley, Mc and Mac, and O’.

Courts: MCOF members changed Courts if they moved to a new parish. An entry in the index for each Court location is included.

Age at Init(iation): This is the age of a member upon joining the MCOF, from which the birth year can be inferred. The same initiation age and date appear in any Court change.

Claim number: Each MCOF policy was given a Death Claim number according to the date the claim was paid. Claims were made soon after death and usually paid in a timely fashion.  MCOF created a Mortuary Record for each death claim with information on the member who died.

MMR: missing mortuary record. We may have minimal information about such a claim. 

How Can You Request a Record?

As of August 13, 2011, requests for mortuary records between 1880 and 1935 will be fulfilled by the University Archives and Special Collections staff at UMass Boston. To make a request:

  1. Search the Index pages for your relatives. Be sure to try all possible spellings. Many women are listed under both their maiden names and their married names.
  2. For each person you are researching, you must supply the name, date of death and claim number from the Index.
  3. Refer to Umass Boston Archives instructions here

Explanation of Index Tables

The index is separated into parts by first letter of the surname.  In the list below, each bar opens a table for the surnames with first letter as indicated on the bar. Click the bar for the surname you want and the table will open. Each row is the information for one Mortuary Record.

Each table is active and will allow you to search & filter, sort rows (by column), and set number of rows to display. At the bottom, you will see the number of pages in the table and be able to select any one of them.

Actions span the table and will not access the other tables in the index, so to find records that may be associated with various surnames, you may need to access several different tables.

The last table is an index of all the records with a missing (MMR) or unknown (UNK) Mortuary Record.

Surnames beginning with:

A

B

C

D

G