Online Death Indexes

Online Death Indexes provide useful sources of birth and death information.  For the most part, these Death Indexes are transcriptions of other Indexes and are subject to the errors associated with transcriptions.

Ancestry.com offers the following State death indexes:

• Alabama 1908-1959
• Arkansas 1914-1950
• California 1940-1997
• Connecticut 1949-1971
• Florida 1877-1998
• Georgia 1919-1998
• Idaho 1911-1951
• Indiana 1882-1920
• Kentucky 1911-2000
• Louisiana 1900-1949
• Maine 1960-1997
• Massachusetts 1970-2003
• Michigan 1971-1996
• Minnesota 1908-2002
• Montana 1907-2002
• North Carolina 1908-1996
• Ohio 1958-2002
• Oregon 1903-1998
• Rhode Island 1630-1930
• South Carolina 1915-1952
• South Dakota 1905-1955
• Texas 1964-1998
• Utah 1905-1951
• Vermont 1981-2001
• Washington 1940-1996
• Wisconsin 1820-1907

Ancestry.com also holds the following Provincial Death Indexes:

• British Columbia 1872-1979
• Ontario 1869-1932

Other significant online death indexes include:

• Arizona 1870-1969 (with images of documents)
• Missouri pre-1910 (1883-1893)
• Missouri 1910-1969 (with images of documents)
• VitalSearch (scans of some state indexes)

My Great Aunt Mary is listed in the Massachusetts Death Index at Ancestry.com.  The information provided there includes:

• Name:  Mary M. Golinski
• Certificate Number:  045417
• Death Place:  Worcester
• Death Date: 18 Sep 1975
• Birth Place:  Other
• Birth Date:  —

For many of the entries in the Massachusetts Death Index, the birth date is provided.  Unfortunately, this is not the case for my Great Aunt Mary.  Nonetheless, the Death Index can certainly be considered a secondary source for death information and may even help locate the death certificate itself.

Copyright © 2006 by Stephen J. Danko