Death records can provide vital clues to create a family tree. Using these documents and others such as birth or marriage records, you can trace much of the path of an ancestor through history.

Genealogy should include accurate information on birth and death dates, unions, children, as well as the locations of each event. Death records can give the answers to many questions.

Modern death records for the United States can be located through the Social Security Death Index. This Index is fully searchable online at no charge. From the Social Security Death Index you can find the birth date, Social Security Number and state of issue, death date and last residence of your past family member.

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Public death records are vital records which are the prime sources of genealogical information. A death record is a legal document which is signed by the attending physician and proves the date and cause of a person’s death. These are maintained by civil authorities. Death records play an important role in genealogy research, because they can often provide details on family members.

Certified copies of death records have been made available since the year 1919. The vital records also include birth, death, marriage and divorce records. There are certain websites which offer information on how to obtain vital records from each state, territory and county of the United States. The death record usually contains the full name of the

person, the date of birth, the date of death, and the county, state or town where the death took place. Death records often mention where the dead body is buried and specify the name of the person who reported the death. Sometimes death records may help people to find ancestors. Any relative of a deceased individual is defined as an heir.

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There are many reasons why you may want to find someone’s criminal records. For example, suppose you’re dating online and are thinking of meeting someone in person. You may want to check and see if that person has a criminal record. Or maybe you are interviewing for a babysitter or nanny. In this case it is extremely important to make sure the candidates have a clear criminal record. Even other types of employers may want to check the criminal records of applicants to make sure they are not a risk when it comes to theft or drug use.

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You may need birth records for any number of reasons. Perhaps you lost your birth certificate or those of your children. Maybe you are researching your genealogy, which is a valid reason to request a copy of a birth certificate. Or you might be trying to find someone and you wish to contact his or her family. You may be trying to conduct a background check on someone. If this is the case, knowing the person’s place of birth can help you contact neighbors and relatives to obtain information on the individual. The parents may still live at the same address shown on the birth certificate. Birth information is considered public knowledge in most states and can be released

to just about anyone.

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There are many sites online that have information on how to find vital records. Most of them take you in circles and you never really find what you are looking for. This article should help with finding birth, marriage and death records.

Let’s start with this page that has most of the links for where to find information about State and County birth, marriage and death records from around the USA - [http://www.freeprf.com/vital.html]FreePRF.com’s vital records page.If you are trying to find the birth date of the person you are researching, I suggest trying this site that has a free birth date lookup - BirthDatabase.com. BirthDatabase.com is a pretty good resource of finding the exact year, month and

day of a person’s birth. The best part is that it’s FREE. The only fallback with this site is that you can’t narrow your search by state. The search results cover the entire USA for all the persons with the name you area looking up. Some names are omitted from this database. [http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/?o_xid=0038179757&o_lid=0038179757&o_xt=38179757 ]RootsWeb.com has a very good death index. You can search by first, middle and last name. You can also search by social security number.For birth information, [http://service.bfast.com/bfast/click?bfmid=5647408&siteid=38179757&bfpage=list_search ]Ancestry.com is another good resource. It also has a death information database.Marriage records are tricky, especially if you want information from California. Most recent marriage records in California are confidential. You can obtain some information from www.vitalsearch-ca.com/gen/ca/_vitals/camarrin.htm; however, the records only go up to 1986.Also try www.vitalsearch-ca.com/gen/tx/tx_/txmarrim-go.htmfor their Texas marriage database. Their Texas marriages database is comprised of over 6 million groom/bride entries from 1967-2002 displayed in straight text form. In addition they have a Kentucky marriage database - www.vitalsearch-ca.com/gen/ky/_vitals/kymarrim-go.htm - from 1973-2002.Clark County Nevada (Las Vegas) www.co.clark.nv.us/recorder/mar_srch.htm - has a great marriage records database. Marriages are indexed on-line from 1984 through the present. This marriage inquiry system is also FREE to use.If you cannot find the vital records information online, try The National Center For Health Statistics page on “Where to Write For Vital Records,” www.cdc.gov/nchs/howto/w2w/w2welcom.htm. It lists the mailing addresses, phone numbers of all the states vital records offices and how to obtain such records.

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