So it goes for many of us genealogists. We’re fascinated by cemeteries and death records; other people think that’s creepy. But in the spirit of genealogy and Halloween, here are some tips on finding your ancestors’ death records:<\/p>\n
You can get websites and contact information for state vital records offices from the\u00a0Centers for Disease Control Where to Wrote for Vital Records listing<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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- Restrictions on public access to death records are generally shorter than those for birth records\u2014depending on the state, it’s usually 25 to 50 years if you’re not immediate family. Check the state vital records office website for this information.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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- If your ancestor died before statewide vital record keeping began, there still may be a record. Many counties, cities and towns started keeping death records before the state said they had to. For example, Ohio death records don’t officially begin until 1908, but the city of Cincinnati started keeping records about 1865 (yay for me!), and\u00a0they’re online here<\/a>. With some gaps, St. Louis began registering deaths in 1850. They’re in the\u00a0Missouri Birth and Death records, Pre-1910 database at Missouri Digital Heritage<\/a>. The database gives you a microfilm number for the image of the register at the Missouri State Archives; and\u00a0the registers also are digitized on subscription site Ancestry.com<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The town or county health department or a local genealogical society where your ancestor lived can tell you when death recording began there. Remember that these early records often aren’t complete.<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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- To find online death indexes or record collections, search online for the county, city, town or state name and\u00a0death index<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0death record<\/em>. The free\u00a0FamilySearch.org has indexes to death information from a variety of sources for most states<\/a>; also\u00a0search the catalog at Ancestry.com<\/a>. If you find your ancestor in an index, check the site to see how you can get the original record.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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- No official death record to be found? Look to other sources, such as newspaper obituaries and death notices, cemeteries, church records, US census mortality schedules and probate records.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So it goes for many of us genealogists. We’re fascinated by cemeteries and death records; other people think that’s creepy. But in the spirit of genealogy and Halloween, here are some tips on finding your ancestors’ death records: Death records are generally available after the state passed a law that counties or towns had to\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genealogy-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacksoncountyohiogen.com\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacksoncountyohiogen.com\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacksoncountyohiogen.com\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacksoncountyohiogen.com\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacksoncountyohiogen.com\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2285"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jacksoncountyohiogen.com\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2314,"href":"https:\/\/jacksoncountyohiogen.com\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2285\/revisions\/2314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacksoncountyohiogen.com\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacksoncountyohiogen.com\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacksoncountyohiogen.com\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}