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.

What To Do When You Have No Birth or Death Record

I've made it clear in my welcome message that I never trust someone else's family tree if they don't show their sources and I can't reproduce their facts. So even if I'm given facts by someone I trust, I will still do my due diligence and search for factual proof.

A good resource to use when you don't have access to someone's birth or death record is the Find A Grave website. If you're lucky, you may get to see an image of the headstone with full birth and death dates. A genealogist's giddy dream!

Here's an example of a situation where I wanted to verify the birth and death dates I'd been given for one relative, but you can also try this not when you're trying to prove someone else's work, but when you're trying to fill in missing dates.

I knew from census records that this man lived in Cleveland, Ohio and was alive in 1940. So I used the search form in Find A Grave to find an Edward Byrne who was born after 1855 and died after 1940 in Cleveland.

The search yielded five Edward Byrnes, but as my yellow highlighting shows, only two are buried in Cleveland. Focusing on those two, I see one was born in 1863 and died in 1941—that fits. The other, as it happens, is the son of the man I'm looking for.

When I click his name, I am not given an image of his headstone, but there are several facts recorded by someone I do not know. Once again, it's up to me to determine how many of these facts are trustworthy. But there is truly an abundance of facts, and I'm grateful for that.

I know from the census forms I've collected that he was a grocer. That fits. I know his street address in 1940. That fits. I have the names of many of his relatives, and I see them listed here. Short of seeing his birth and death certificates myself, this looks like credible data. And based on this information, I could attempt to purchase a copy of either his birth or death record from the state of Ohio.

Remember, the more resources you use to corroborate the facts about someone in your tree, the stronger your tree will be.

This Expanded Resource Provided an Elusive Maiden Name

Somewhere along my genealogical travels I found out that my great grandmother's mother—who never came to America—was named Maria Luigia. But I didn't know her last name. I did a little research to see if Luigia was her last name, but it was inconclusive.

Flash forward several years as Ancestry.com's resources continue to grow and grow. Now there is a resource called "U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1935-2007" which the ancestry.com website describes as picking up where the Social Security Death Index leaves off. If you're lucky enough to find an ancestor in this collection, you may learn things like:

• Their father's name.
• Their mother's maiden name.
• A woman's married name.
• Their date and place of birth.

I happened to find the record for my great grandmother's brother, Giuseppe (Joseph) Caruso, and it featured one heck of a bad transcription for his place of birth (there are no images available). For his mother's name it said Maria L. Gilardo. Another sibling's record listed their mother's last name as something very not-Italian, like Girandiu. I also discovered the actual death certificate for Joseph Caruso, which Americanized his mother's last name to Gerard.

So, weighing all of these alternatives, I felt the most logical last name was Girardi (like Joe Girardi, the New York Yankees' manager). I did some research to find out if anyone named Girardi had come to America from their town of Pescolamazza, and they had.

This was enough to make me about 85% confident that I had the correct name.

Then I discovered the unbelievably valuable (to any descendant of someone from the Province of Benevento, Italy) Benevento State Archives. There I managed to find the actual 1840 birth record for my great great grandmother, Maria Luigia Girardi.

The moral of this story is to keep checking for new resources that can help you fortify your family tree.

1840 birth record of my 2nd great grandmother, Maria Luigia Girardi.