Not a question at all really, just thought it was so sad ...

[Joy Dean]

Browsing and searching burials in ancestry, I just read
A Man unknown. It gave his abode and his age about 60.

[WendyPusey]

Reading through the burials for many parishes along the coast on the Isle of Wight you will find many entries like that. usually it's "unknown sailor washed up on beach"

[Sally]

It really makes you stop and think doesn't it.

[Merry]

FreeBMD has 64,980 deaths listed under the surname Unknown.

[marquette]

I browsed through the parish records of St Mary Rotherhithe, along the Thames, and nearly every month there was a burial for some poor unknown man, woman or child, drowned.

Presumably they washed up here from upstream or downstream, or fallen off a ship and were not known to the locals. Their families would never have known what became of them, they would have just disappeared.

[Margaret in Burton]

OH's great great grandfather just disappeared. Probably something similar happened to him.

[Durham Lady]

I've a couple of Cornish men who were sailors and there's no trace of them dying. I have always assumed they could have been involved in a shipwreck or lost overboard.

[Joy Dean]

And browsing, as I am, the parish register for St James, Piccadilly - Name Unknown (didn't even say male or female), and A male child (name unknown).
How sad, not to be known.

[Olde Crone]

Joy

The Vicar of Kirk Michael, on the Isle of Man, buried many body parts (!) of shipwrecked sailors and instead of writing "unknown" he wrote "known unto God" which I thought was a much kinder expression.

OC

[Joy Dean]

Joy

The Vicar of Kirk Michael, on the Isle of Man, buried many body parts (!) of shipwrecked sailors and instead of writing "unknown" he wrote "known unto God" which I thought was a much kinder expression.

OC

Oh, OC, thank you, that is much better :) , and reminds me of Rudyard Kipling who chose Known Unto God for gravestones for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

[JBee]

There's so many people that I can't find and I often wonder what happened to them.

Several members of one particular branch all called John (christian name) disappear without trace and two others die young. Not a very lucky name.