How to Find State-Specific Death Indexes and Records

DeathIndexes.com is a compilation of free and subscription resources for finding death records in each U.S. state. The website is owned and maintained by Joe Beine.

I didn't expect her to have an obituary.

If you don't have a subscription to ancestry.com or a membership with another genealogy website, Joe Beine's lists can quickly help you discover exactly the resource you need to locate information on a particular relative. Each link tells you up front whether it takes you to a site that requires payment or provides free access.

Within the individual state pages, links are sorted for you by county. I decided to dive in and look for members of a particular family that lived in Steuben County, New York, and found a link to a website I'd never seen before. In one click, I downloaded a PDF that gave me the names, birth and death years, and cemetery name for every Caruso who died between 1912 and 2016 in that county.

Then I thought about my sister-in-law's distant relatives who lived and died in Broward County, Florida. I found another website I'd never seen before that is the searchable database of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Broward County. I'll need that when I go back to verify all the facts I have about her ancestors.

My favorite find, and I've barely scratched the surface, is a database of the local newspaper where my paternal grandmother's parents lived. A search for the last name Iamarino yielded one result: my great grandmother, Maria Rosa Caruso Iamarino. Apparently they published her obituary, which is a surprise to me. I can see the publication date, the page and column. I think I need to go to their local library to see the obituary, but I am happy to know it exists.

DeathIndexes.com also features a Genealogy Records & Resources link to several excellent resources for vital records.

If you have not yet explored this site, I highly recommend you do.