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Posts Tagged ‘Data Bases’

Social Security Death Index?

February 9th, 2010 3 comments

what kind of information can you find on the social security death index?…I’m doing some family research and I was able to find my gg-grandfather’s ssdi, it has his birthday (dec. 25, 1860) and death-date (jun. 18, 1965) and where he died (Tulare, California), but nothing about the parents…other family member’s index’s have had something about parents on them, even if it’s the father’s surname or mother’s maiden…I also am having trouble finding a death certificate. Where would I look for that, and would his parent’s info for sure be on that?

I’ve been using Ancestry, Family Search Org, Roots web, and Family History Records data bases.
will it be my best bet to order the actual death certificate for his parent’s information?

The on-line SSDI has jus what you saw; name, birth date, death date, last residence and last benefeit, one of which may be th death place, and where the SSN was issued.

The SSN application, which costs $27, will have parents’ names, exact birth place, address and occupation at the time, and, for women, maiden name. Roots Web’s SSDI will format a letter to the SSA for you; click on "SS-5", print, add a check and wait 6 – 8 weeks.

The California Death Index, by Roots Web, has father’s surname and mother’s maiden name, sometimes. No SSDI I have seen has anything about parents. Some other death indicies do, most don’t.

Are death records public record?

December 9th, 2009 5 comments

I know my great grandmother died in NJ, somewhere in Bergen county (Rutherford, NJ as far as I know). She had been an immigrant from England in 1942 (approx). Every web site I seem to find for vital records in NJ wants to charge just to search. I understand that there will be a charge for a copy of the record, but aren’t vital records public record?

Some are, some are not, and just because a record is public doesn’t mean the state / county has to spend the time and money to put it on-line.

Some do; West Virginia and Missouri both have wonderful web sites with some BMD records. Some don’t. RootsWeb has data bases of death record indexes from California, Kentucky and Texas, for selected years.

If you have ever read "Day of the Jackal", you may remember how the bad guy got a birth certificate for a child that was born about the time he was but had died young and pretended it was his; he then used it to get a passport. The authorities are more wary these days, but identity thieves are more sophisticated. So, may state and counties are less eager to give out information than they used to be.