Genealogy Online for Beginners 101 - Lesson 3: Birth, Death & Marriage Records

Genealogy Online for Beginners 101 - Lesson 3: Birth, Death & Marriage Records

To my surprise, I have been able to find many birth, death & even marriage records available on the internet so far.

Laws vary in all states as far as what information can be available online, and even when & how you can order copies of documents.

Minnesota, which is where a majority of my relatives are from, has a wonderful database for birth & death records:  http://www.mnhs.org/genealogy/

Here you can even do an advanced search by Mother's maiden name. In doing so, you may find a relative whose name was spelled a bit differently than you recall. Maybe they went by their middle name (as my Uncle did), and you never even knew their first name. Searching by Mother's maiden name may bring up their record.

Once you locate the record, you will see their birth date, county born, mother's maiden (which many times in my case is misspelled), and if the death record is in the same name, you can see their death date, county, etc.

If the person was married, then you always search the death records by their married name.

Death Records: Another great website to obtain details is the Social Security Death Index.

http://ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com/

This is a free source to search. You will obtain their death date, last residence, social security number & even the state their SS# was issued from. That may tell you where they were born, or where they came into the U.S. from.

To search for records in other states, go to a search engine & type: Wisconsin Birth Index. And you will find out if they allow their records to be viewed online. Wisconsin does not, nor does New York or Oregon. California does. That is I have found so far in my own family searching.

Marriage Records: In Minnesota check: http://www.mncounty.com/Modules/Certificates/Marriage/Default.aspx

Here I was even able to see my Mom's marriage record, my sister's, my Dad's first marriage...etc. I was amazed at how many records I was able to view. So far this is the only state I have search for marriage records.

Please feel free to add links to any sites you may know of that would help anyone with birth, death or marriage records.