Levitt in Pennsylvania Death Certificates at Ancestry.com

I previously blogged about obtaining Pennsylvania Death Certificates via the Pennsylvania Department of Health website. Ancestry.com has been working on digitizing Pennsylvania Death Certificates and have just made death certificates from 1906-1924 available.

I had previously ordered and received quite a few PA death certificates, including for my husband's great-grandmother, Goldie Levitt. Today, I filtered the names in Family Tree Maker to show those who could possibly have a Pennsylvania death certificate in this time period. This way, I could more easily search Ancestry's indexed records if I didn't know a death date.

Also, although I have over 4,700 individuals in Family Tree Maker (mostly for my family, but a couple hundred for my husband's family), I had no record that anyone had died during the 1918 Influenza Epidemic...until now.

My husband's grandmother, Rose Levitt, had four older half-siblings (David, Manuel (?), Minnie, and Rebecca). David was married to Becky (last name unknown) according to my mother-in-law, and had three children: Adele (b. 1913), and twins: Aida and Pauline (b. Nov. 1914), who are (half-) first cousins to my mother-in-law.

I had found David living on Morris Street in Philadelphia in the 1920 U.S. Census.

With the unique family names of Adele, Pauline, and Ida (Aida), I knew I had found the right family. I'm not sure who Rebecca Cooper and Catharine Cooper are, but I had assumed they were relatives. (I know...I shouldn't assume.)

Because these are older cousins, my mother-in-law didn't know when their mother died, but I knew it had to be between 1915-1920. Searching for Rebecca Levitt, died in 1918 +/- 2 years in this record set, I immediately found her death certificate:

Ancestry.com, Pennsylvania, Death Certificates, 1906-1924 (Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014), Ancestry.com, Death Certificate No. 146360 / 27263. Record for Rebecca Levitt, died 7 Oct 1918.

Looking at the cause of death at the right side, Rebecca Levitt died of Lobar Pneumonia, which she had suffered from for five days, with contributory cause of Epidemic Influenza, which she had suffered from for three days.

David Levitt continued to live at 1332 Morris Street in Philadelphia, where I find him in the 1930 and 1940 U.S. Censuses.

I think Rebecca's parents' names are Ralph Neminroff and Rebecca Weintrop. I was hoping that the burial location would be where I would find many more Levitts, but I have not had luck finding any information on "Son Judah" Cemetery in the Philadelphia area; perhaps this is an inactive cemetery? [Correction, thanks to Lara, this is Har Jehuda in Philadelphia and I shared her gravestone at Tombstone Tuesday ~ Rebecca Levitt.]

Ultimately Ancestry.com should have death certificates up through 1964, fifty years ago, which will help me find details on more Philadelphia relatives of my mother-in-law.