A while back I blogged the Michigan Death Records 1897-1920 available at Seeking Michigan website. They are in the process of posting about a million documents, digitized and indexed. Well, after what they call “many problems,” they have posted another large batch of documents. Since the last roll-out was about 250,000 – and they now say “We should have around 600,000 online,” These quotes are via Twitter. So it looks like they just put up about 350,000 documents. As of this moment, the wording on the website does not reflect this update.
On March 18 (less than a month ago), I blogged that there were a total of 50 Canfield documents posted on the site. Today there are 128! And that includes the death certificate for my Great Uncle, James Titus (on the right). Click on the document to go to the original. A will take a moment to download…
Now go search for your Michigan ancestors at the Seeking Michigan website. Note that the Death Record collection search itself is done by choosing “Death Records 1897-1920” – the last item in the “Add Collections” menu in the lower left corner of the search screen. The search results are displayed in order by COUNTY. So if you do a surname search, roll through the names until you get to your county of choice. Also note that not all counties have data posted yet. There’s still another 400,000 or so to be posted.
That’s great news! Now – if they only could post later death certificaates so I can find my great-grandmother. = )
I’d like to point out that in the death certificates I viewed for Long Lake township, Grand Traverse County, 23 out of 97 had been indexed incorrectly, in many cases because the original certificate was difficult to read.
If you don’t find a certificate you are looking for, you should consider searching by:
1). location name “Long Lake” or ‘Smith township” in the Exact phrase field.
2). by first name, if it is quite rare (e.g., Elipahalet)
3). by last name only and by considering logical variants (try Camfield if you are looking for Canfield)
4). or by first name/last name and year “Smith 1918” or “John 1915”
These methods may ensure you locate a mis-indexed death certificate