Missouri Death Certificates
- Details
- Category: General
- Posted: 30 October 2011
From some of the forum posts, mailing list messages, and inquiries here, it would appear that there are still quite a few people who don't realize that the Missouri State Archives has death certificates that are over 50 years old available online -- for free! They are in PDF format and indexed by volunteers.
Initially, the indexing project involved volunteers typing the information into spreadsheets from printed copies of the Archive's indexes. As I recall, it took almost a year to complete the first phase. In January of 2011, though, with a new online input interface, the indexing for 50,699 death certificates from 1960 was done in less than three days. Some people who volunteered to help didn't even get a chance to contribute very much -- ask me how I know this. :-)
While the search capability can leave a bit to be desired -- for instance, the certificate numbers themselves aren't indexed, and so are not searchable -- with a little ingenuity and some determination, this is a hugely valuable resource and one of the reasons I'm so glad my people decided to migrate to Missouri!
