Death Sources

Irene has put together a handy document that lists sources of online death information for each state. It is an excellent list, and I hope you will use it as you search. The list is color-coded. Scroll to column K to see the key.

Here is a link to the list.

Here are Irene's tips for using the list.

When I start a new company, I like to see what death records are available in the state I'll be working in. (Note: this won't apply to a lot of you because Project 1 assignments are are not by state.) I look at the time span that I can expect to find death records and find out where the best death sources are. For example, for Florida, there is a death index on Ancestry with limited info, but on FamilySearch, there is an index with a lot of extra info including parent names and exact birth dates. If I have a general idea of what's available ahead of time, it saves me time while I'm searching.

I still like to start out searching for a death record on the general search pages on Ancestry and FamilySearch. This way, if I'm lucky, I can find their death record along with their burial, SSDI or other death records in one search. If I don't find them right away, then I like to pinpoint which index is best for my search. If I limit myself to the general searches, I am searching blindly. If I do a general search for a person who died in 1913 in Georgia without success, I can quickly see on the list that the death records began in 1914 and I would waste my time by continuing to search for them. On the other hand, if I do a general search for a person who died in 1915 in Georgia without success, I can quickly see on the list that their record should be listed and it is worth spending some extra time searching with different spellings or search parameters to find it. It's also nice to search a specific index on Ancestry because we can search for exact death year or death date, but we are not able to do that in a general search.

I also find it helpful to compare time spans covered in the indexes. For example, for Louisiana, I can see that the death records go to 1964 on Ancestry, and to 1960 on Family Search, but in the "Other" column, there is an index that goes to 1967. This is great to know if the person I am searching for happened to die in 1966.

Thanks, Irene!