My Relative Married a…Sanatorium??

Hello, fellow family historians!

I want to share a story from my recent research that gave me a good laugh—and a renewed sense of caution about relying solely on indexes.

We all love indexes, right? They help us find that tiny needle in the massive digital haystack. But often they do not fully represent the information contained in a record, and sometimes, they can even be inaccurate or misleading.

Yesterday, I noticed a new person had been added to the FamilySearch Family Tree as the spouse of my distant cousin, Charles Maaske—a woman named “Bee Dozier.”

Naturally, I was curious. Who was this new person?

I clicked on the source attached to her: an indexed record based on Charles Maaske’s death certificate. The index stated the informant was “Bee Dozier.”

But wait… the index also listed Charles’s marital status as “Widowed.”

This immediately felt off. If Charles was widowed, how could his living spouse be listed as the informant on his death certificate?

The Punch Line

I did what every good genealogist would do: I clicked to view the digitized image of the original death certificate. ¹ I zoomed in on the informant line and…

The actual informant listed on the death certificate was “Bee Dozier Sanatorium.”

That’s right! The supposed spouse of my relative was not an individual at all, but an institution! One word was omitted from the index—Sanatorium—and suddenly we were set to believe our relative had married a building!

The Takeaway

Now, “Bee Dozier” the spouse has been removed from the family tree, but this serves as a fantastic, funny reminder:

Never, ever rely solely on an index.

Indexes are tools to help you find the record, but they are not the record itself. Always take the extra step of viewing the original. You might just save your ancestor from a bizarre marriage—or prevent a building from becoming your new distant relative!

Happy hunting! And remember: be wary of the index!

Disclosures:

This blog post was created with the help of AI: “Genealogy Indexing Error Leads to Laughter,” Gemini 2.5 Flash, chat with Kristine Lyon, 13 November 2025, Gemini (https://gemini.google.com/share/16012c13136e).

1. State of Illinois Medical Certificate of Death, County File no. [blank], Dist. No. 175, Reg. no. 18, name of deceased Charles Maaske, date of death Feb 26, 1951; digital image, “Illinois, Cook County Deaths, 1871-1998,” FamilySearch, IGN 100640874, image 110 of 369. ↩︎