Archives for December 2013

Legislation signed by President Obama on Dec. 26, 2013 will restrict the general public’s access to the Social Security Death Master File, often referred to as the Social Security Death Index.

In Section 203 of H.J. Res. 59, the legislation directs the Secretary of Commerce to establish a program that will restrict access to the Social Security Death Index. This free database has been an emormous help to genealogists because it contains a person’s dates of birth and death, location where the Social Security card was issued and the state where the last benefit check was paid.

The legislation will restrict access to the death index for the three years following a person’s death. The program is intended to take effect within 90 days of enactment.

When a relative’s family did not place an obituary in the newspaper, this was the go-to source to find out a date of death. It is a shame that this will no longer be available as a resource for current death information.

FamilySearch.org has recently incorporated the New York State Department of Health Death Index into its site.

The New York State Department of Health death index DOES NOT include New York City (but then again maybe it does — see last paragraph.) It covers the years 1957-1963. The index contains information on date of death, gender, age at death, place of death and the New York State file number that you can use if you wish to order a copy of the death certificate from the Department of Health in Albany.

The collection will be updated quarterly. Records must be on file for 50 years prior to their release on the website.

To access it from FamilySearch.org, go to:
https//:familysearch.org/search/collection/2285574.

Caution: If your search result only lists New York, United States as the place of death this means the person died outside of New York State. If this is the case, there is still a way to find the person’s place of death.

In order to determine the person’s place of death, you must use the Department of Health website at:

https://health.data.ny.gov/Health/Genealogical-Research-Death-Index-Beginning-1957/vafa-pf2s.

Search on the person’s name and then write down the numerical code that appears in the column Residence Code. On the right side of the page, click on the red “i about” symbol. Scroll down the About the Page box until you see the heading called Attachments. Click on the third attachment, “Out of State Codes.” You will see a one page document that lists the codes used for each state, Canada, Mexico, etc. and in the top right hand corner are the codes for each borough of New York City.

Yes it does seem contradictory that the collection description states that the index does not include New York City and yet there are codes for New York City included in the index! So check the index anyway even if you are sure your relative died in the city. They may still be in the index.