Death Records Now

I have gone to several different sites but they all end up asking for money. I thought death records were public records and anyone should be able to search for a loved one but I’m hitting dead ends everywhere.

I put some links below. I wanted to deal with a common misconception first.

> I thought death records were public records

They are, and if you send the name and death date to the appropriate county courthouse, plus a check, which may be as little as $5 or as much as $35, you can get a copy. There isn’t any law that says a state or county has to spend tax money on a web site to make death records available for free.

By contrast, some records are NOT public; sealed adoptions records, and agreements hashed out between two parties in a civil lawsuit, for instance. You cannot get them no matter how much you pay.

Below:

These are all free. Some have ads at the top, which sometimes ask for a name and take you to a pay site, so be careful to distinguish between the advertisement and the input form. An index will have name, date and maybe something else; death records – 500 KB jpg’s of death certificates – are rare. Some of these say "Records" – I copied the page title – but are really indexes.

Social Security Death Index
http://ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi
1960ish – now; almost 90 million entries in November 2010.

Find-a-Grave
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi
53 million entries in November 2010, mostly the USA. Entries range; they may have one or more of:
Exact birth and death dates
A short biography/obituary
Links to the person’s parents’ graves and/or and children’s graves
Picture(s) of the person
The best ones have all of the above; the worst ones have just a name and year of death; "J. Smith, b. ????, d. 1912".

Arizona genealogy
http://genealogy.az.gov/
Births 1855 – 1934; deaths 1844 – 1959. Real records, not an index. Number of entries not given.

California Death index
http://vitals.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ca/death/search.cgi
9,366,786 entries from 1940 – 1997

Kentucky Death Records
(Y!A only allows 10 links per answer, so I cheated. Change the "/ca/" in the URL for the California Death index to "/ky/" to get Kentucky.)
2,921,383 entries from 1911 – 2000

Maine Death Records
Change the "/ca/" in the URL for the California Death index to "/me/" to get Maine.)
401,960 entries from 1960 – 1997

Missouri Digital Archives
http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/deathcertificates/
Real records; Year range 1910 – "50 years ago", so the upper limit changes by one every year. Number of entries not stated, but it too would grow over time. Not all counties are here.

Texas Death Records
Change the "/ca/" in the URL for the California Death index to "/tx".)
3,963,456 entries from 1964 – 1998

West Virginia Birth, Death and Marriage records
http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_select.aspx
Real records; number of entries not stated. Years vary by county. Here are the first five counties, to give you a feel for it:

Barbour: 1853 – 1859, 1861 – 1969
Berkeley: 1871, 1875 – 1906, 1917 – 1970
Boone: 1865 – 1873, 1877 – 1883, 1885 – 1968
Braxton: 1853 – 1861, 1865, 1867 – 1969
Brooke: 1853 – 1860, 1862, 1865, 1867 – 1868, 1874 – 1880, 1885 – 1970

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.

trying to find info about my father side of the family and all I have to work with is his name.

There isn’t a central site. Birth records are usually kept hidden for privacy’s sake.

RootsWeb has death records for California, Kentucky, Texas & Maine, plus an SSDI:
http://searches.rootsweb.com/

The Brits have
http://www.freebmd.org.uk/

If you can see kangaroos nibbling your roses, or say "Eh" at the end of every third sentence, you are out of luck.

Your birth certificate will tell you your father’s birth state and age at the time. His SSN application will tell you his parents’ names and his exact birth date. You can get it, but
1) It costs $27
2) He has to be dead
3) He had to have had a SSN.

If your mother and he were married and you live near the town they were living in when they married, go to the library and look through the social pages for that week. You may get lucky; if they had an article there, it will be chock full of good stuff; "The groom is the son of . . .", "Best man was his brother . . .", the bride is the daughter of . . ." and so forth. It will be free, too. If they were living in Fresno but ran away to Las Vegas to get married, there still may be a snippet in the Fresno Bee.

The county clerk may let you look at the marriage record for free, if you go into the office and prove you are related. That isn’t on-line, but I thought I’d mention it.