reclaimtherecords.org

[shellyesq]

The New York state death index is in the process of being rolled out.   I found at least one person from 1898 already.    Here is part of Reclaim the Records' message from Facebook:

This death index covers 1880-1956, which is seventy-seven years! Here are some things to keep in mind:

- 1880 and 1881 have very limited data, as the state law requiring reporting deaths to the state didn't have great compliance at first.

- 1943 is, unfortunately, extremely hard to read, and we don't know if any better copy exists. If there is, we'll go after it with a new FOIL request and scan it.

- New York City deaths are, for the most part, not included in this statewide death index. That's because New York City and New York State are completely different vital records jurisdictions. However, some deaths that were in neighborhoods that are part of modern-day New York City -- such as Flushing (Queens) or Canarsie (Brooklyn) -- do show up in the pre-1897/1898 statewide death index! That's because they weren't incorporated as part of the city yet at the time they were recorded.

- Three major cities are not included in this statewide death index until 1914 or 1915: Yonkers, Buffalo, and Albany. Reclaim The Records will be making three new and separate FOIL requests to those city clerks for the first-ever public copies of their 1880-1914 death indices, in order to complete the missing data.

- Finally, there is some disagreement over whether people who died at state-run mental institutions or developmental disability institutions were correctly included in the statewide death index. If you know of someone who died in one of those facilities, could you please check to see if they were in fact recorded in this index, and report back?

WHERE:
 We're uploading all these files, year by year, to the Internet Archive (archive.org). Other websites, as well as individual researchers, are welcome to use, download, and even host the files on their own websites, and create transcription projects if they wish. The files are entirely in the public domain, free to use without any restrictions. If you do create a transcription, though, we'd appreciate just having our name mentioned, and a link back to our website (https://www.ReclaimTheRecords.org/).

Each year's worth of files can be very large, perhaps a 10 GB zip file for images for an earlier year, or 20 GB for later years, as the later years do have more names and therefore more images in them. We would recommend browsing through the data using the images hosted online on the Internet Archive's website, rather than trying to download the huge zip files to your computer on a slow home modem connection, but that's up to you.

Here's what the sample URL structure looks like:

https://archive.org/details/New_York_State_Death_Index_1880
https://archive.org/details/New_York_State_Death_Index_1881
https://archive.org/details/New_York_State_Death_Index_1882
https://archive.org/details/New_York_State_Death_Index_1883
https://archive.org/details/New_York_State_Death_Index_1884
https://archive.org/details/New_York_State_Death_Index_1885

...and so on. You get the idea, just change the year at the end of the URL to any year between 1880 and 1956.

The best way to see the WHOLE LIST of the items in the New York State Death Index collection will EVENTUALLY be through this direct link:
https://archive.org/details/nydeathindex

...but FOR THE MOMENT, you can do a search of what's available so far using this inexact link:
https://archive.org/search.php…

WHEN:

Some of these records are online and the images are browseable online right now. Some are online but you can't browse the images yet, they're only downloadable in giant zip files right now. And some of the records aren't online at all yet, but will be going online in the next few weeks.

Please have patience while we try to get everything in tip-top shape. We hope everything will be completely online and browsable by August 2017.

Reclaim The Records is changing that. If you like what we're doing, if you're happy to see vital records indices like this New York State death index returned to the public domain, and if you want to see this approach brought to more record sets in more states, we hope you'll consider making a contribution to our work. We recently applied for and won our 501(c)3 non-profit status from the IRS and will be announcing soon how you can make a tax-deductible donation to help us reclaim more records!

Until then, stay informed about what we're doing and what records we're planning on reclaiming on next! You can:

1) Subscribe to our free e-mail newsletter through our website at https://www.ReclaimTheRecords.org/

2) Like our page on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ReclaimTheRecords/

3) Read our snarky GIF-filled tweets on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ReclaimTheRecs/

[Rosinish]

Thanks Shellyesq,

I hadn't seen this thread before....what a great source!

Annie

[shellyesq]

Ancestry now has an index for these records.  http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=61535 

One thing worth keeping in mind is that some of the outer boroughs that are currently governed by New York City didn't become part of the city until 1898, which is after this death index began. 

[shellyesq]

Reclaim the Records has put in a request for the New York State marriage index 1881-2016, so hopefully there will be some movement on that in the next few months.

[shellyesq]

The New Jersey marriage index 1901-2016 is now available thanks to Reclaim the Records.  https://archive.org/details/njmarriageindex?sort=titleSorter

[shellyesq]

They recently obtained the Buffalo, NY death index from 1852-1944.  http://mailchi.mp/reclaimtherecords/bfvk8vew84-1631181