Monday, May 14, 2007

Missouri Just Keeps On Rollin' Along

The Missouri Death Certificate Project, that is! With no fanfare, Missouri has now posted images for the years 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, and 1949. That leaves 1933-1944 without images. Congratulations to the Missouri State Archives, the Friends of the State Archives, and all the volunteers who are working on the project!

UPDATE (5/14/07, 10:04 PM PDT): Wow! That was my reaction as I perused the newly added years in this database. I'd been searching for several years for the death certificate of my great-grandfather, James William Long, and now I've found it! And there were some surprises there. First, he died not in Kansas City as I had always believed, but in the State Hospital at Fulton, Missouri, on September 23, 1945. Second, the death certificate says he was born in Shawnee, Kansas, another surprise! The informant was his daughter, Christina Neal. A death certificate is only as good as the informant's knowledge, but Aunt Tina was pretty meticulous about facts like this. I'm still analyzing this information. I'm grateful to the State of Missouri for its help to family historians.

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