People for Better Pennsylvania Historical Records Access (PaHR-Access)
Requesting Online Access To Older Pennsylvania Death Certificates
- What's the cost and who is going to pay for this?
- Does the law have to be changed?
- What about the loss of revenue to the Pennsylvania Division of Vital Records?
- How many records are we talking about?
- Modernizing the Division of Vital Records
- What About Birth Certificates?
- Can't people already easily get these records?
- Pennsylvania is one of only five states
- Online death certificate databases for other states, etc.
- Progress Report (includes a list of endorsements)
Discussion:
We would like to have much greater access to Pennsylvania's older state death certificates and to have them available online. Currently, all death certificates recorded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania since 1906 have restricted access regardless of how long ago a person died. Pennsylvania Division of Vital Records regulations require the requester to supply several pieces of information (including when and where the person died), spend $9 and wait 5 weeks or longer for each and every death certificate. A requester is also required to have a direct relationship to the deceased in order to obtain a copy of a death certificate. Often a requester doesn’t know if the person is related and needs the death certificate to find out. This is especially true when compiling family histories and trying to find the descendents of a common ancestor. The information a requester is expected to supply is quite often the very information a requester is looking for and the very reason for wanting a death certificate.
Many of us have experienced the frustration of either being told the death certificate could not be found or being sent the wrong certificate. Yes, a requester can pay $34 for an extended search of up to a ten year window with the charge of an additional $25 for each extension to that search window. To say the least this is quite costly to the requester and very time consuming for the Division of Vital Records. Sadly it doesn’t always result in a successful search and the fee is not refunded.
Also Pennsylvania doesn’t have a publicly accessible index
to see if the person even died in Pennsylvania. So it becomes an expensive
guessing game that doesn’t always result in finding a death record
even when the person actually died in Pennsylvania.
Because of the many burdensome and paradoxical restrictions,
the public is not able to use these historic records as much as they should be
able to.
We understand the concerns about privacy.
However, there is no practical reason to keep all of these records restricted
indefinitely. Therefore, our basic proposal is that the death certificates that
would be accessible online by the public would have to be at least 50 years old.
Currently that would mean only the death certificates of persons who died before
1959 would be made accessible. As each year passes the next year in line would
be made accessible online to the public.
Twelve states have already made their older death certificates available online, including Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and West Virginia. The states of Louisiana, New Hampshire, Vermont and Washington are in the process of doing so. For approximately 30 other states there are extracted data and indexes of death certificates online. However, Pennsylvania has no publicly accessible index and continues the outdated and costly manual processing of each of its older death certificates one at a time.
Points To Consider:
The public would be much better served and genealogists, historians, professors, scientists and researchers would be able to utilize the considerable amount of data contained in these numerous historic records in a way that is light years removed from the current limited access system. As indicated under What About Identity Theft?, government itself would also be able to better utilize these records and proactively help stop the identity theft of deceased persons.
There is no practical reason all of these records should be kept confidential indefinitely especially after a fairly long lapse of time. The year of death guideline addresses privacy concerns.
In the long run, having death
records in a database would be a cost savings to the Commonwealth and it gets
away from the antiquated system of manually processing each request one at a
time.
Because there is no comprehensive index for death records before 1960 (which is one of the reasons the requester is required to supply the place and date of death) the requests for the records from those years are probably the most time consuming requests and therefore the most costly requests for Vital Records to fill. By placing these old records into an online database it would relieve Vital Records of what are probably the most burdensome records. Vital Records could then do what it needs to do and concentrate on newer business rather than acting as an archive for old vital records.
There is no real reason the
public should not have access to an index for all of Pennsylvania's death
certificates that includes only the names of the deceased and dates of death.
The public would be able to readily compile family medical histories which if done thoroughly would not only include parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents (a total of 30 in itself) but all of their siblings as well (which all tolled can easily exceed 100). At $9 a piece that could be, to say the least, quite costly for a person to learn his or her complete family medical history. Here is a link to a U.S. Department of Health & Human Services webpage in which the U.S. Surgeon General talks about the importance of people learning about their family medical history: http://www.hhs.gov/familyhistory/
Being able to more easily find their Pennsylvania Roots could spark an interest on the part of out of state residents and induce them to come to Pennsylvania to discover more about their Pennsylvania Heritage. The biggest influx into historical societies and genealogy libraries is during the summer when out of state visitors come to Pennsylvania to learn more about their ancestors.
Here is example of how much more these records would be used if they were open to the public: according to what we have learned from the Missouri State Archives, before setting up their online database, their states Vital Records Division received approximately 5,000 requests per year for death certificates more than 50 years old. In the first 18 months after setting up their online database for older death certificates they had 8.8 million searches for death certificates. There is no doubt that if Pennsylvania had such a database it would be several times more popular and utilized.
Other
states have already made their death certificates available online. Why not Pennsylvania?
What about privacy?
While we understand the concerns about privacy there is no practical reason these records should be kept restricted indefinitely. At some point public records can be considered old enough it shouldn’t matter who sees them. Whether it is 25, 50, 100 or 200 years is a matter of debate. We suggest a wait of 50 years is long enough (see Why 50 Years?). From 1893-1905 the counties of Pennsylvania registered deaths (including the cause of death). These records have always been open to the public with no concerns about privacy. If death records from 1893-1905 don’t invoke such concerns why should death records from say 1906, 1907 or 1908? If these years don’t then it is really a matter of which year would.
If it is a matter of privacy in general there have always been public records that are quite more revealing. For example after estate records are filed at county courthouses in Pennsylvania, the records are immediately open to the public and contains, not only a person’s name, date of death, etc., but also detailed information about a person's wealth and property. The same is true of marriage records, property taxes and deeds. There is no moratorium or waiting period to view these records. In fact property tax records are already available online The federal census is released after 72 years, but it contains information on people who are still alive. Also there are already numerous other records available online that are far more worrisome than our proposal could ever be. Here we are asking to see the death record of people who have been dead at least 50 years.
What invokes the greatest concern about privacy when it comes to death certificates is the cause of death. All the other information such as burial place, date of death, date of birth, spouse's name, parents' names, where they were born, place of residence or the name of the informant, is rather innocuous and no more revealing than any other information found in obituaries or on a large number of genealogy websites. Many states have no restrictions on who can obtain a death certificate. For some states, such as California, Florida, Texas, and so on, information from state death, marriage, divorce and even birth records that is less than 20 years old can be found on the Internet.
The cause of death could be redacted from the scanned images of the death certificates, but redacting the cause of death on all certificates would not allow a person to learn their family medical history. However, as a possible alternative, the causes of death that invoke greatest concern (such as suicide, etc.) could be redacted. Although interestingly in the 41 states in which death certificates are or eventually become open records this is not an issue.
Genealogy, family history, tracing ones ancestry are all about remembering people who almost never appear in the history books. Having easier access to these records, rather than restricting them indefinitely, helps us to remember and learn more about those who came before us. Without people doing and being able to do this kind of research the vast majority of people who ever lived would be lost to history. Being overly concerned about privacy relegates those in the past, including many close relatives, to obscurity.
What about identity theft?
Rather than possibly contributing to identity theft having the death record information readily available could actually help stop identity fraud by making it easier to verify deaths. The easier it is to verify a death the harder it is to steal that identity. Keeping the system as it is, with its extremely limited ability to verify deaths and even then only in-house, only makes it easier for identity thieves. No one can use a death certificate as identification and no identity thief will bother with an identity that is readily verified as deceased.
The Social Security Death Index (which is actually derived from the Social Security Death Master File database) contains information on persons whose deaths were reported to the Social Security Administration. This information, available to all worldwide, includes the person's dates of birth and death, where they last lived and their Social Security number. While it may seem counterintuitive to have this information readily accessible to everyone it is purposely made available to verify deaths and therefore help stop identity theft. As we understand it banks, insurance and credit companies and government agencies use it all the time for that very purpose. The information from this database is released weekly and includes persons who have died very recently including many people you may have known personally. But it does not contain all deaths, only starts in the 1950's and therefore is not an alternative what we are requesting. As an example of being able to find just about anyone's name in this database Elvis Presley's Social Security number was 409-52-2002, late Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey's was 161-26-3777, recently deceased Pennsylvania State Senator James Rhoades’ was 193-32-9493 and also recently deceased Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll’s was 194-22-0660.
Social Security Death Index (GenealogyBank.com)
For similar reasons we suggest modernizing the Division of Vital Records by having all of Pennsylvania's birth and death certificates be put into a database that could be used by law enforcement and government agencies for the purpose of verifying deaths and to help proactively stop the stealing of identities of deceased persons (known as ghosting). Missouri state law enforcement has used that state's older death certificate database for this purpose. See Modernizing the Division of Vital Records
Having a database of Pennsylvania's death certificates would actually be in accordance with Federal Law PL 108-458, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services, in coordination with the Social Security Administration and others, to award grants to States to assist them in computerizing their birth and death records, to develop the capability to match birth and death records within and among States, and to note the fact of death on birth certificates of deceased persons. This is done to stop someone from misusing the birth certificate of a deceased person.
We also suggest, as part of this effort to bring Pennsylvania into the 21st Century, the adoption of an Electronic Death Registration System like those already in use in California, New York, Texas, and several other states. In this way all future death certificates would be electronic and instantly on file at the Division of Vital Records and allow for the immediate processing of a death event (see next paragraph).
As we understand it the greatest danger of ghosting is in the first few days to months after a person has died. Identity-thieves read obituaries and use the information to obtain credit cards, etc. Because the victims are deceased it is often quite some time before the deceptions are discovered. For this reason the experts strongly recommend copies of the death certificate be sent to the major credit bureaus as quickly as possible (after all they don’t know a person is deceased until someone tells them).
We need to get away from the naïve belief that if we limit the amount of information getting out there we will minimize the chances of identity theft. Given the nature of the Internet this is little more than crossing our fingers as more and more information is forever being added from multiple and sometimes unknown sources. We need to make it so that no matter how much information identity thieves may have on deceased persons it will do them absolutely no good. The easier it is to verify deaths the harder it will be for the deceased to have their identities stolen.
What's The Cost And Who Is Going To Pay For
This?
All of the states that already have scanned copies of their older death certificates online had most of the work done by volunteers usually through the Genealogy Society of Utah. Because of this, the cost to the taxpayer was minimal and consisted of primarily the cost of setting up the in-house computer systems to store the data. Our hope is to do the same with Pennsylvania. We are in contact with the Genealogy Society of Utah which is very interested in this cause. They have sent us a proposal letter which clearly states they will do the work at no charge as long as they are allowed to have a copy of the data for their own genealogical use.
Since most of the data extraction has already been done for death records since 1960 and the Genealogy Society of Utah is willing to do the work on the death records from before 1960 at no cost to the taxpayer the cost to the Commonwealth would be a fraction of what it would otherwise. The vast majority of the work that would still have to be done by the Commonwealth would involve scanning the certificates and attaching the data to the images. Commercially this can be done for approximately between 1 to 2.5 cents per image and 10 cents per data extraction. See How Many Certificates Are We Talking About?
The Commonwealth can also obtain federal grants to pay for any costs it may have through Federal Law 108-458, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services, in coordination with Social Security Administration and others, to award grants to States to assist them in computerizing their birth and death records, to develop the capability to match birth and death records within and among States, and to note the fact of death on birth certificates of deceased persons.
Whether or not these records are made available online these historic records can still be made open to the general public and indexes made publicly available as has been done in most states.
does the law have to be changed?
Currently Pennsylvania statute prohibits the release of confidential vital records to the public regardless of how old the records may be. The relevant sections of the Pennsylvania Vital Statistics Law of 1953 states:
35 P.S. § 450.801. The vital statistics records of the department and of the local registrars shall not be open to public inspection except as authorized by the provisions of this act...Neither the department nor local registrars shall issue copies of or disclose any vital statistics record or part thereof created under the pro vision of this or prior acts except in compliance with the provisions of this act...
35 P.S. § 450.804...[T]he department shall issue certified copies of
or disclose a vital statistics record or part thereof if an officer of the
department designated by the Secretary of Health finds that the applicant
therefore has a direct interest in the content of the record and that the
information contained therein is necessary for the determination of personal or
property rights.
As a letter received from the
Pennsylvania Department of Health states:
Therefore,
the Department of Health may not release for public access any record, parts
thereof, or listings the Department creates from such records without being in
violation of the Act. The General Assembly, to ensure compliance, included
criminal provisions for unauthorized disclosure of information.
Our view is that at some point these records should be considered old enough to be considered historical records open to the public for research. Even having an online index for of Pennsylvania’s death certificates requires a change in the law regardless of how old the death certificates are. Except for Missouri, all the other states which have online death certificate databases didn’t have to change their laws because their older death certificates automatically became open public records after a certain number of years (usually 50 years).
As those in the Pennsylvania State Government should already know the new Open Records Law does not affect records that are specifically restricted by law, only those that are not.
WHAT ABOUT THE LOSS OF REVENUE TO THE PENNSYLVANIA DIVISION OF VITAL RECORDS?
It is not clear just how much “profit” Vital Records makes on each death record request it fills. The fees paid probably just cover their costs. However, we believe the requests for death certificates before 1960, because of the archaic manner in which these requests must be filled, are the most time consuming requests for them to fill and therefore the most costly. By relieving Vital Records of having to fill these requests it could then do what it needs to do and concentrate on newer business rather than acting as an archive for old vital records. Besides we shouldn’t keep Pennsylvania from going into the 21st century because some people what to keep doing things in the same old antiquated and costly way as was first started in 1906.
Having a publicly accessible online index for death certificates less than 50 years old (containing only limited information such as the name and date of death) would actually increase the number of requests for that time period. This is because the public would be able to find what they want so much more easily and with much less guessing they would more likely send in more requests for death certificates.
How many certificates are we talking about?
According to information received from the Pennsylvania Division of Vital Records there are a total of approximately 12.5 million death events in their files. Approximately 6.7 million of those are from before 1960. The death records since 1960 have been partially computerized, that is data has been extracted and put into a database. Also according to information received PA. Vital Records receives approximately 26,000 requests per year for genealogical purposes. Approximately 13,000 of those are for death records before 1960. As you can see this is a considerable number of public records with restricted access and a mountain of historical data grossly underutilized by the public. As indicated in point #8 under Points To Consider if these records were made open public records the interest in these records could easily be more than a hundred fold.
Also according to information received from the Pennsylvania Division of Vital Records there are a total of approximately are 19.8 million birth events in their files. Of these the birth certificates (approximately 16.5 million) since 1921 have been partially computerized, that is data has been extracted and put into a database.
modernizing the Division of Vital records
While our main concern is to have vastly greater access to the older state death certificates we suggest modernizing the Division of Vital Records by having all of Pennsylvania's birth and death certificates be put into a database. The advantages of doing so would be many:
1) The Division of Vital Records would be able to get away from the antiquated and costly process of searching and filling each and every request manually. With few exceptions, each request could be filled at a staffer’s work station and in a fraction of the time. This would be especially true for the older death certificates because there is no comprehensive index for them.
2) Law enforcement and government agencies would be able to proactively use this same database for death verification much the same way the online Social Security Death Master File is used to thwart identity theft of deceased persons. By punching in a name and birth date into the database search engine it can be instantly determined if an imposter has stolen a deceased person’s identity. This would be in keeping with the Federal Law 108-458, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which provides grants to the states to computerize their birth and death records for much of the same reasons.
3) Genealogists, historians, professors, and researchers would be able utilize the information contained in these historical records in a way that is light years removed from the current limited access system. However, the general public would still only have access to those records that would become open records. Should a person wish to have a birth or death record that is not an open record they would still have to apply to the PA Division of Vital Records and meet the same requirements currently in place in order to obtain those records. Those who would need a certified copy, regardless of how old the record is, would only be able to obtain a certified copy through the PA Division of Vital Records and only copies issued by PA Division of Vital Records would be considered legal copies.
As part of this effort to bring Pennsylvania into the 21st Century, the adoption of an Electronic Death Registration System like those already in use in California, New York, Texas, and several other states. In this way all future death certificates would be electronic and instantly on file at the Division of Vital Records and allow for the immediate processing of a death event.
The greatest cost in computerizing Pennsylvania birth and death records is data extraction. As indicated earlier the birth records since 1921 and the death records since 1960 have already had data extracted and put into a database. To complete this computerization would require scanning the records and complete any data that has not already been extracted. Scanning the records is a relatively inexpensive process. With the Genealogy Society of Utah willing to do the work at no cost to the Pennsylvania taxpayer for any records they can keep a copy of the data for their own genealogical use it will make computerizing the Commonwealth's birth and death records considerably less than it would otherwise. See What's the cost and who is going to pay for this?
On March 13, 2009 State Representative Richard Grucela reintroduced on our behalf the comprehensive Vital Records Modernization Bill HB 931. Except for one minor change, this is the same bill he introduced in the last session last year (HB 2543 & SB 1378). This bill reflects this modernization by calling for computerizing Pennsylvania state vital records; birth certificates over 100 years old and death certificates over 50 years old to become open records and to have them online; and establishing an online index (and only an index with minimal information) of death records over 2 years old. It is designed to modernize the Division of Vital Records, proactively help stop the identity theft of deceased persons and allow for vastly greater use of the oldest state birth and the older state death records by the public. Click here to see HB 931.
Here is the list of the 67 Pennsylvania state representatives who are cosponsors of this bill: William Adolph, John Bear, Robert Belfanti, Karen Beyer, Joseph Brennan, Thomas Caltagirone, Mike Carroll, Paul Clymer, Mark Cohen, Jim Cox, Tom Creighton, Lawrence Curry, Bryan Cutler, Craig Dally, Mike Fleck, Robert Freeman, John Galloway, Richard Geist, Camille George, Jaret Gibbons, Neal Goodman, Richard Grucela, Gary Haluska, Ted Harhai, Julie Harhart, Patrick Harkins, Susan Helm, Tim Hennessey, John Hornaman, Scott Hutchinson, William Kortz, Nick Kotik, Deberah Kula, Mark Longietti, Tim Mahoney, Jennifer Mann, Joseph Markosek, Keith McCall, Anthony Melio, Carl Metzgar, Nicholas A. Micozzie, David Millard, Ron Miller, Phyllis Mundy, Kevin Murphy, Mark Mustio, Bernie O'Neill, John Pallone, Cherelle Parker, John Payne, Merle Phillips, Thomas Quigley, Harry Readshaw, Douglas Reichley, Todd Rock, Steve Samuelson, Dante Santoni, Stan Saylor, Mario Scavello, John Siptroth, Ken Smith, Matthew Smith, Timothy Solobay, Jerry Stern, Randy Vulakovich, Chelsa Wagner, Katharine Watson, Jesse White and Rosita C. Youngblood.
We are currently working on getting this legislation reintroduced in the Senate.
What about birth certificates?
Unless the law is changed Pennsylvania's birth certificates will be restricted indefinitely even after the passage of several hundred years. However, because of privacy and identity theft reasons it would not be unreasonable to be concerned about having the birth certificates of people who are still alive become open records even after a considerable length of time such as 75 or 100 years. Perhaps the solution would then be to allow only those birth certificates that are are at least 75 or 100 years old and the persons have been confirmed as deceased to become open records. Interestingly other states, including those who have very short or even no waiting period have not had such concerns.
In compliance with the Federal Law 108-458, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 all the birth certificates of deceased persons are to have indicated on them that the person is now deceased and therefore make them useless to any would-be identity thief.
Senate Bill 683 introduced by Senator Robert D. Robbins on March 27, 2009 calls for birth records to become open records after 75 years. HB 931 introduced by Representative Richard Grucela on March 13, 2009 includes having birth records become open records after 100 years.
Anyone requiring a certified copy of birth certificate would have to make the request directly from Vital Records and still have to meet all the existing requirements to obtain a certified birth certificate.
Access varies considerably from state to state and many states differentiate between legal and for information-purposes-only copies. Only twelve other states have restricted access to birth certificates like Pennsylvania (that is only certain persons may obtain a copy of a birth certificate regardless of how long ago the person was born or even if the person is now deceased). Many of the rest have moratoriums ranging from 30 to 125 years with the most common waiting period being 100 years while a number of states have no general public access restrictions.
Can’t people already easily get these
records?
Vital Records regulations require the requester to have a direct relationship to the deceased in order to obtain a copy of a death certificate. Often a requester doesn’t know if the person is related and wants the death certificate to find out. This is especially true when compiling family histories and trying to find the descendents of a common ancestor. Too often the only place the information needed to establish the relationship can only be found is on the death certificate. The information a requester is expected to supply to obtain a death certificate (such as the date and place of death) is quite often the very information a requester is looking for and the very reason for wanting a death certificate in the first place. To say the least the process is paradoxical and cumbersome.
Many of us have experienced the frustration of either being told the death certificate could not be found or being sent the wrong certificate. Yes, a requester can pay $34 for an extended search of up to a ten year window with the charge of an additional $25 for each extension to that search window. To say the least this is quite costly to the requester and very time consuming for the Division of Vital Records. Sadly it doesn’t always result in a successful search and the fee is not refunded.
Also Pennsylvania doesn’t have a publicly accessible index to see if the person even died in Pennsylvania. So it becomes an expensive guessing game that doesn’t always result in finding a death certificate even when the person actually died in Pennsylvania.
While obituaries contain much of the same information a researcher is looking for they are often no easier to find and sometimes cannot be found. This is especially true of deaths from the early 1900's. Even when an obituary is found it doesn't always contain all the important information that can be found on a death certificate particularly the parents' names and especially the mother's maiden name. This is extremely true of obituaries from the early 1900's. Very often the death certificate is the only place this information can be found.
Having the kind of death certificate database we are proposing for Pennsylvania would be light years ahead of the current system of finding death certificates. We can say this because that is exactly what it is like to use similar databases in states that have already done this.
An example of how much more these records would be used if they were open to the public, according to what we have learned from the Missouri State Archives, before setting up their online database, their state's Vital Records Division received approximately 5,000 requests per year for death certificates more than 50 years old. In the first 18 months after setting up their online database for older death certificates they had counted 8.8 million searches for death certificates. We have no doubt if Pennsylvania had such a database it would be several times more popular and utilized.
Why 50 years?
General public access to death certificates varies considerably from state to state. While the details vary only nine other states have restricted access to death certificates like Pennsylvania (that is only certain persons may obtain a copy of a death certificate regardless of how long ago the person died). One state restricts general public access to death records after 1948. Sixteen states restrict general public access for the first 50 years and some more have restrictions varying from 40 years to 2 years, while fifteen states have no general public access restrictions. Some states differentiate between “certified” or "authentic" and "informational" or “for-information-only” copies for legal purposes, but otherwise have few if any restrictions.
Public opinion similarly varies from wanting a waiting period of at least 100 years to why restrict them at all. Fifty years seems to be about the average and the most common. It is a reasonable period to address privacy concerns but is not too strict by requiring an unduly long moratorium before these records can be used by the public.
In the publication by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/National Center for Health Statistics titled "Model State Vital Statistics Act and Regulations" (DHHS publication No. 95-1115), which is still enforce, is this recommended standard in the section called "Regulation 13. Disclosure of Records":
"When 100 years have elapsed after the date of birth, or 50 years have elapsed after the date of death, marriage, or (divorce, dissolution of marriage, or annulment), such records in the custody of the State Registrar shall become available to any person upon submission of an application containing sufficient information to locate the record".
Pennsylvania is one of only five states
There are currently 11 states for which the actual scanned images of their older state death certificates are available online. We are aware of at least four states that are in the process of doing the same.
From what we have been able to find there are 23 other states for which there are online indexes for state death certificates, many of which are less than 50 years old (however access in two of these states to the death certificates themselves is indefinitely restricted).
In 9 more states (plus Washington D.C.) the state death certificates at least at some point become open records (death certificates in a total of forty-one states eventually become open records).
Additionally 2 more states allow state death certificates to be obtained for genealogical purposes 75 years after the death event.
This makes a total of 45 states (plus Washington D.C.) where there are are online databases, indexes, where death certificates eventually become open records and/or can be obtained for genealogical purposes.
It is only in Pennsylvania and 4 other states in which access to all state death certificates, regardless of how old they may be or ever will become, is indefinitely severely limited without even so much as a publicly accessible index. It is only in 7 states (including Pennsylvania) in which state death certificates do not eventually become open records or at least in the case of 2 states become accessible for genealogical purposes.
Unless the law in Pennsylvania is changed this mountain of what is probably one of the single largest sources of genealogical data in Pennsylvania will be remain very severely restricted century after century after century.
Online death certificate databases for other states, etc:
The links below are for those states for which there is online access to images of their older death certificates. Our goal is to have a similar free access database of Pennsylvania's older death certificates. Interestingly the death records from the City of Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) from 1803 to 1915 are currently available free online (these are death records that were kept by the City and not any of those kept by the state).
Philadelphia, PA. (Family Search Lab)
Additionally Louisiana, New Hampshire and Vermont are in the process of having their older state death certificates become available online. The death records for New York City up to 1948 will also become available free online through the Genealogy Society of Utah.
For a number of other states there has been information extracted from their vital records and placed on the Internet including births, marriages, divorces and deaths with many of them from less than 20 years ago.
Arizona (Arizona Department of Health Services)
Georgia (Georgia Archives)
Kentucky (Kentucky Vital Records Project)
Massachusetts (Family Search Lab)
Michigan (Seeking Michigan/Michigan State Library)
Missouri (Missouri State Archives)
North Carolina (Family Search Lab)
Ohio (Family Search Lab)
South Carolina (Family Search Lab)
Texas (Family Search Lab)
Utah (Utah State Archives)
West Virginia
(West
Virginia Division of Culture and History)
http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_dcsearch.aspx
or
(www.wvculture.org)
(Archives and History) (Births, Deaths, and Marriages) (Deaths)
Shelby County, TN. <includes the City of Memphis> (Shelby County and the Register of Deeds) (under the Archives logo change Search Type to "Death Records 1848-1956")
Additionally this website includes a statewide index of deaths from 1949 to 2005. And yes the index includes Mr. Elvis Aaron Presley who died in 1977 at age 42.
About PaHR-Access:
PaHR-Access (People for Better Pennsylvania Historical Records Access) is strictly a grassroots organization started in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania in August of 2007. It was first known as People for Better Access to Pennsylvania Historical Records (PBAPHR). The name change took place in early November 2007 to allow for a more pronounceable acronym (i.e. par-access).
We are ordinary people who
literally
want better access to Pennsylvania's historical records. Our main concern is the
restricted state death certificates. PaHR-Access is not affiliated with any
political, commercial, institutional or religious organization
whatsoever. If you have any questions or concerns please contact our
spokesperson:
610-791-9294
(updated July 1, 2009)