Ohio Death Certificates

Those of us researching Ohio ancestors can really count ourselves lucky. We have the ability to get actual copies of death certificates for those people who died in the state from 1908 - 1953. Our thanks need to go to the Mormon Church for putting the records on their FamilySearch Labs site.

The entire FamilySearch Lab website is a great resource for all genealogy researchers, but having the ability to save and/or print actual death certificates for my Ohio ancestors and relatives is one of the greatest brick wall busters that I have found recently.

To easily find the Ohio death certificates, click on one of the links in this posting. Once there, you will see a list of current projects. Click on the second one titled RECORD SEARCH. This will take you to a page with a search box and a map. Control your desire to begin searching for now! Click on the United States portion of the map and then, on the new page, scroll down to find Ohio Deaths 1908 - 1953. Clicking on this link will give you a search box that concentrates only on the death certificates.

The search box has a lot of capabilities. You can search using only some information or use as much as you know. Play around with the different possibilities. In some instances, I knew only a county and was able to locate members of my family that were previously unknown to me. As you filling the location boxes, you will be prompted with various locations to choose from. Using these will insure that your search is processed correctly.

We all know that finding women once they have changed to their married name is sometimes near impossible. Click on the MORE link and try filling in nothing but one or both parent names. I found quite a few women that I didn't know even existed until I did this. I also found some family members that had been in hiding due to their childhood deaths.

Once you have found someone of interest, you have several viewing options. Hovering the cursor arrow over the name will automatically bring up a box with the pertinent information about that person. Clicking on the name itself will show you the same information in a different format. To view the actual death certificate, click on the little icon next to the name. The image will load and you can zoom in, rotate, save, or print your certificate. To return to the full searched list, click on the small arrows at the top of the search window.

There is also a list of ways to narrow your findings that can be useful if too many possibilities are returned. You can also revise the search elements that you used by clicking on the link in the top left corner.

After searching the Ohio death certificates to your heart's desire, go back and see what else is available for other portions of the United States and world. The Mormon Church is in the process of adding more and more records to created an even bigger website so it is worth bookmarking for future visits. I hope you enjoy this tip. Let me know if it helped you by leaving me a comment!