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Chances are that someone you are looking for died in the 20th century. Your grandparents, and if you are lucky, great-grandparents probably lived into the era when states began collecting information about their departed citizens on death certificates. If you have been working on your family's genealogy for a while, you probably know about the useful information contained in these little bureaucratic treasures. However, if you're just starting out, you may not be aware of them.

Most states started requiring death certificates around the turn of the century. Rhode Island has information going back to 1853, and New Hampshire claims records from 1640, but this is very unusual. In some cases, large cities kept their own records. Baltimore, for example, has records from 1875, but the rest of Maryland did not start keeping records until 1898.

While every state has its own style of death certificate, in general these documents contain the following information:

• The name of the deceased
• The deceased's date and place of birth
• The usual residence of the deceased at the time of death
• The cause of death
• The deceased's place of burial
• The names and birth places of both parents
• The name of the informant - usually a relation
• The name of the doctor

A word of caution - these are not perfect documents. The information which they contain was supplied by the informant, usually a relative. That means it's likely the information is correct, if the informant knew it or could recall it at a time when his or her emotional state was probably not too good. I have seen death certificates where the parents names' were blank or simply made up, because the informant simply did not know them. This seems to be the exception, though, because in my experience, most of the information on the death certificates I've used in my research has been accurate or close enough to supply a good clue.

You can get information about acquiring death certificates from the vital records web sites of the individual states and territories.

The US Dept. of Health and Human Services offers a very useful booklet called "Where to Write for Vital Records" that is available from:

Some of the information available in death certificates is also available in Social Security number applications. It take six to nine months to get one, but they also contain a wealth of information. You must know your ancestor's social security number to make the request. Ancestry.com has an online SSN death index search and will provide you with a letter to request the application from the Social Security Administration.

¹Some cities have earlier records
²Some counties have earlier records
³Except during the Civil War, 1861-1865
⁴City of Baltimore has records since 1875
⁵1894-1920 are incomplete
⁶City of Portland has incomplete records from 1880
⁷All earlier records held by the counties
⁸There is a gap in the records from 1896-1912; also some cities have their own records
⁹Very incomplete records from 1857

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