Not MY Rachel Jacobs

Wonder of wonders, the NYC authorities turned my death cert request around in only one week, a new speed record. And now I know that I was wrong about my g-g-grandma Rachel Jacobs being buried in the cemetery plot devoted to patients from the Montefiore Home for Incurables in NYC.

The death cert I received shows a Rachel Jacobs dying in 1904 and being buried in that plot. It can't be my family's Rachel Jacobs because this one was just 56 yrs old, married, and born in US. None of that fits the profile of MY Rachel Jacobs.

I feel sorry for this Rachel Jacobs, however, because she had a cerebral hemorrhage in 1902 and finally died in 1904, having been at the Montefiore Home for 21 months, according to the death cert.

Lessons learned: (1) just because someone with the same name as an ancestor is buried within walking distance in the same cemetery as a known relative, doesn't mean he or she is in my family; (2) if the known relatives have expensive headstones and paid $ for perpetual care, but the mother of one of those relatives has a nearly impossible-to-see, insignificant headstone in a charity plot, chances are that mother is not a relative.

I'm going to have to take a different approach to finding my Rachel.

2022 update: I finally did find Rachel Shuham Jacobs in Mt. Zion Cemetery, Queens, NY. Her Find a Grave memorial is here.