Hi Michele, I looked at the Charlestown register page for Ruth Kenrick's death on Ancestry as part of the Massachusetts Town records collection (stamped p 56, Charlestown Archives Deaths). I have worked a bit with the MA vital records but usually later dates. I was also surprised at such a delay for a burial. If this is the record you are looking at, the last column with a date of December 3, 1853 indicates the date registered. It would make sense that there would be some variation in the registration date of the records. This format does not give a burial date, just the cemetery (New Burial Ground) and the undertaker or informant. You may want to try to find a newspaper notice and/or locate the cemetery. Also, Charlestown was annexed by Boston in 1874 so the cemetery is now part of Boston. Margaret I rarely do research in the northeast. I prefer to confine myself to the familiar territory of the deep south ? I am looking at a death register book from Charlestown Massachusetts. Ruth A. Kenrick died on 05 Nov 1853 but was buried on 03 Dec 1853. The other persons on the page follow this same pattern. I know that up in the cold NE that even today they will hold bodies until the spring to bury them because the ground is too hard, I get that. But in this case both the death and the burial is in the dead of winter so I can't figure out why you would wait a month to bury someone. Michele