How to find a death certificate, and what it can tell you.
A death certificate is kept by the state or county where the person died, not the federal government, and not necessarily where they lived or were buried. Find the state and year of death, then look to that state's vital records office or state archives. The CDC's Where to Write for Vital Records lists every state's office.
What it can tell you.
A death certificate usually gives the date and place of death, the cause, the person's age or birth date and birthplace, and often their parents' names and where they were buried. The details about their own life were given by an informant, often a grieving relative, so they're only as good as that person's memory. The date and place of death are the parts written closest to the event.
Finding the right office.
Vital records are made by local and state authorities, not the federal government, so they aren't at the National Archives. Start with the state where the person died:
- The CDC's Where to Write for Vital Records lists each state's office, what it costs, and the years it holds.
- State archives often hold the older certificates, and many are indexed for free online.
- Check the years the office holds. Each state's page on the CDC's list says when its records begin: Arizona's, for example, has death records since July 1909.
Before there were certificates.
Each state began keeping death records in its own year, so for an earlier death look for what was written at the time: a church burial record, an obituary in the local paper, a gravestone or cemetery record, or a will. The census can help too: find the last census the person appears in and the first they don't, and the death is usually between them.
Or just ask.
AncestralFire does these steps with you. Tell it one name, and it reads your tree, searches FamilySearch Family Tree once you connect it, and tells you what it found, with the source behind each fact. A real answer:
What doesn't the tree know about Patrick?
Your imported file records Patrick's birth around 1823, immigration to Boston around 1847, work as a cooper, and death in 1858. A note says he died of consumption, but the file has no attached birth or death record or 1850 census to verify details; his parents are named Patrick and Mary Johanna, but their dates aren't given.
From the Kennedy family's published tree: it notices the death is recorded but no death record is attached.
See a whole conversation on How it works, or what it finds in one family: Queen Victoria's family tree, from Kew to Windsor.
Keep reading.
- How to find where your ancestors came from. Work back through your family until you reach the person who arrived, then look for the three records that say where they came from: the census, which asked about immigration in 1900 through 1930; the ship's passenger list, which U.S.
- What is a GEDCOM file, and how to get yours. A GEDCOM file (.ged) is your family tree saved in the one format every family-tree program understands: every person, date, place and relationship, as plain text.