Pennsylvania Death and Birth Indices are now on-line.

[madinmaryland]

http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=1085804&mode=2

They are not the most user friendly, but I have found nearly 100 ancestors death certificates index listing on line so far. Some years are sorted by soundex which can be a little screwy, but once you figure out what group your name falls in, it gets a little easier.

[kdmorris]

1. Thought this deserved to be pinned at the top!

Thank you so much for keeping track of this for us!

[CBHagman]

2. Thanks for posting this.

I took the death indices for a test drive and found records of relatives whose death certificates I already had, but I do not give up hope of finding the missing. In any event, it's user-friendly site and much appreciated.

[FREE2BEME]

3. 1961 UPPER DATE OF INDICES A BUMMER

Any word on when Pennsylvania will be releasing more current data, say .... 2000 to present?

[madinmaryland]

4. Welcome to DU.

These are open records and for death records anything from before 50 years is open and for births anything from before 105 years is open.

It's the whole privacy thing.

[Henley96]

5. Spam deleted by gkhouston (MIR Team)

[mrmpa]

6. Question..........

I started looking through the death certificates. I think I found my Grandmother, but only if the number that I think is indicating age, is indeed that. What are all the numbers following the name? Also, I assumed M was for male and F for female, but I found whole pages, where everyone has an M, even the Esters, Janes and Mary's.

[madinmaryland]

7. What year are you looking at? There is some variation over the years.

I looked at the 1955 H-I-J as a sample.

After the city/township, the first two digit number is the county number, then the date the person died, and finally the death certificate number.

[mrmpa]

8. ok, I'll..........

look at it again. I think the 51 was probably the county number for Philadelphia. I was looking at 1943.

[madinmaryland]

9. Here is what it the code is...

After the city name, "M" is the first letter of the last name.

After that:

"230" is the name "soundex" category. i.e. names that sound similar are grouped together.
"60" is the county. I don't have a reference for this.
"8 20 43" is the date of death
"74704" is the certificate number.

This was for a gentleman named Guy J. Musto from Gregg Township.

[DPC.Comment]

10. Very cool. Do you know...

Very cool. Do you know how far back the records go?

[madinmaryland]

11. Birth records are only for 1906, death records are from 1906-1961.

[no_hypocrisy]

12. Understatement to say this site is not most user friendly.

I tried several years and names and all I get is a blank white screen.

[madinmaryland]

13. I used it back in early February, spending an afternoon getting about 150 names I needed.

It is not very user friendly and a bit slow, but it did work for me. Each file it "downloads" for viewing is a pdf that is 20MB large.

[CanonRay]

14. Thanks for putting this up...

[madinmaryland]

15. Death Records for 1962 and Birth Records for 1907 have been added. nt