You may need to find an official notice of someone's death if you're researching your ancestry or looking for information about a specific person.If you live in the United States, you can request a death certificate from your state's vital records department, but you will have to pay a fee.There are many ways to find a death notice for free.
Step 1: You can find newspaper obituaries online.
obituaries previously ran in newspapers can be found on websites such as legacy.com.Legacy.com gives free access to obituaries from newspapers in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Bermuda, Australia, and New Zealand.You can run a simple search with only the person's first and last name, or you can narrow your search by specifying the country and state, county or region.If you were unsure what name was used in someone's obituary, Legacy.com can help.The obituaries can be found on Legacy.com as far back as February of 2001.There are more international death records and notices on websites such as WorldVitalRecords.com.Basic information about your search results can be found in the results, but you must subscribe to the service to access the records themselves.
Step 2: You can find funeral home death notices.
An online database of official funeral home death notices can be found at obitsforlife.com.You can use Obitsforlife.com to find death notices by name or location.The website has global death notices from countries such as Brazil, India, the Philippines, Japan, and the United Kingdom.Death notices on obitsforlife.com can only be uploaded by licensed funeral homes.The site's database only contains listings from funeral homes that are members of the site, so results may be limited in that respect.
Step 3: The Social Security Death Index is used.
You can search the SSDI for free on several websites, such as genealogybank.com.The records of people with Social Security numbers who died are in the SSDI.The SSDI can be found on genealogybank.com from 1899 through 2011.First and last name, date of birth, last known residence, and Social Security number are some of the information you can use to search.
Step 4: Find city or state death records.
State death indexes often go back further than online obituaries or the SSDI, and many are available online for free.Links to death records for each state can be found on websites such as http://www.germanroots.com/deathrecords.html.You can find death notices for free through the early 1900s, but you may have to pay a fee or join a subscription site to get access to older notices, such as those from the 1700s.
Step 5: The National Archives has a website.
Links to websites with free databases of death notices and records can be found on the National Archives website.These records are not held by the National Archives since they are maintained by state or local authorities.There are a lot of online research tools on the National Archives website.There are casualty listings from the U.S. military in the Archives.
Step 6: There is a public library.
Sometimes public libraries archive local newspapers back to the first year they were printed.You can find obituary articles in the newspapers.Microform copies of The New York Times can be found in the public library.If you're looking for a death notice from someone who died recently, you may be able to find it for free.If the person died hundreds of years ago, the information may not be available for free.
Step 7: A death certificate can be requested from the vital records department.
The vital records department in the person's last state of residence is the most likely place to get an official death certificate.If you need a certified copy, you'll be charged an extra fee.
Step 8: Search for cemetery and burial records.
Even if a gravestone is old, you can still find information about a person's death in cemetery or burial records.There are websites where you can look up a grave.The Orange County Cemetery District has a database for graves in Anaheim Cemetery, El Toro Memorial Park, and Santa Ana Cemetery.You will have to visit the cemetery to review the records.
Step 9: You can visit the state archives.
State records can provide more detail about the death than national records.If you can't travel to the state capital, you may be able to request documents through a local university research library or historical society.
Step 10: There is a National Archives facility.
If you need a death notice, you may need to visit an Archives facility.You can find the location nearest to you on the Archives website.Beyond federal records, ancestry.com is also free at an Archives facility, so you may be able to find the records you need there without paying a subscription fee to use the online service.