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Posts Tagged ‘family history’

Tips for Getting Public Death Records

July 10th, 2009
by Mike Jameson

If you are in the process of investigating your ancestry, then public death records may be of assistance to you. A public death record is a document signed by a physician which lists a person’s name, date of death and cause of death.

When you’re trying to piece together your family’s history, death records can help you find out parts of the puzzle. From the early 20th century to today, certified copies of public death records have been available. The National Center for Health Statisticsm, or NCHS, is the best place to begin your search.

The NCHS is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, where you can obtain birth, death, marriage, and divorce records. Because each state’s record keeping is slightly different, there is no set price for retrieving these vital records.

In most states, filling out an application and sending it to your state’s Vital Records Department with the required fee will get you a copy of the certified documents you need. The average cost of a certified copy is about $15. In some states it’s less, and others it’s more.

Resources like Ancestry.com or Genealogy.com are excellent and fast ways to search for ancestral death records. These sites even have records dating hundreds of years back. Depending on what you are looking for, you can receive some information for free, but other things will cost you a small fee.

If you’re serious about tracing your family’s history, it might behoove you to get a subscription plan so that you have plenty of access to records, instead of having to pay for each record you get. There’s actually a free 14-day trial going on right now that you can use with absolutely no risk.

As you can see, there are a variety of choices available when it comes to locating free public death records. You might also want to check with your municipal building if the records are local.

They may be able to direct you to the right department where you can get a copy of the records you’re seeking quickly and easily.

About the Author:

Mike Jameson History , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How to Conduct Genealogy Research Like a Professional Family Background Research Goes High-Tech Family History Goes High Tech

May 22nd, 2009
by Alberto Experanzer

Recent surveys estimate that 55 million Americans are researching their family roots. They come from various walks of life, economic levels, ages, religions, races, and from many professions. For some like my cousin, it is a hobby on which they spend only a few hours each and every month. For others, its a flat out obsession! Either way, they all share a common bond of seeking information about the people in their family who came before them.

In the past few years, resources devoted to digging into your family roots have exploded both on the Internet and in the general marketplace. One of the more notable products is Net Detective by HD Publishing Group. This sophisticated and highly-developed service is designed to make is easy for you to collect, display, and organize information about your family history, and it’s all online.

In addition to pulling in your notes, medical facts, pictures, and multimedia files in one easy application, the latest edition can also:

Searches 3.1 BILLION records for info on over 85% of the residents in the USA;

Picks up MILITARY records from Iraq, Viet Nam, Korea, WW II;

Searches U.S. LEGAL opinions, court transcripts, etc.

You also get an open door to Net Detective’s “Black Book” — legally-obtained intelligence on the millions of information resources available online. Think of this as an internet information center.

Then, consider this: social statistics shows that the more popular search engines (e.g., Google and Yahoo) index only 16% of all the data that is actually available online. The real deal is in the hidden information sources the average person doesn’t see, simply because they don’t come with enough commercial value to support the costs involved for the big search engines. This other 84% is where the real scoop is found, and it’s familiar everyday territory for Net Detective.

In effect, most of the mega-directories on the web use syndicated white pages data, containing the same information, from the same source — and, so does Net Detective.

But here’s where Net Detective differentiates itself: Net Detective only uses White Pages information as a starting point — it then adds to this data tons of personal information from over a dozen public/ private sources, making it the most accurate and the most complete high-tech information source available for any your informational needs.

About the Author:

Alberto Experanzer Genealogy , , , , , , , , ,