Ohio Deaths, 1908-1953 Not Working

Kathryn Campbell_4

"Ohio Deaths, 1908-1953." Database with images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : 6 October 2021. Index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City.

This database is a wonderful asset, or should I say WAS a wonderful asset until lately. The search engine no longer works at all for 1953. It works sporadically for other years. People that I had searched for before no longer appear when searching. I found one person I needed in 1953 by paging through 791 records, but that was a chore.

I have no idea of what has happened to the database. I hope you can fix the problem.

Thank you.

Kathryn Campbell (katgcamp@comcast.net)

Áine Ní Donnghaile

@Kathryn Campbell_4

I recently encountered a similar problem with that recordset. I was informed, by staff, that access to the images had to be restricted because the Social Security number is on the record. I had attached the record to a PID in the tree, but I couldn't locate it by searching. This is what I was told:

"The record originally wasn’t restricted and during that time someone attached it to the individual. Since then we had to restrict the records as SSNs are shown on it. Because the record was attached to the individual it will remain there but can no longer be found through search."

Hope this helps.

Áine Ní Donnghaile

My contact was going to try and find out if the recordset would again be searchable after the SS#s are hidden/disguised.

I know on some other websites, the SS# on a DC has been covered with a white box.

Kathryn Campbell_4

I do wonder how they expect you to find the death certificate without the search engine, as there are so many deaths, though. I wish they had told us that. Thanks for your reply.

Kathryn Campbell_4

I hope they are able to fix the problem It sure is inconvenient. Thanks again for replying.

Mike357

@Kathryn Campbell_4, hi - just wanted to add a couple of comments about this Collection and suggest a possible approach to finding a death certificate. I believe that we are talking about the Ohio Deaths, 1908-1953 Collection.

@Áine Ní Donnghaile mentioned that access to the records are restricted, in some cases, because of the SSN that are present on the records.

One can access the Ohio Deaths, 1908-1953 by using the Search>Records option and then typing in the Collection name. Another approach is to access the films that make up the Collection by searching the Catalog (and I apologize if I'm dragging you through stuff that you are already well-acquainted with). So, these films are found in the Catalog entry for Certificates of death, 1908-1953 ; index, 1908-1911. Ignoring the indication related to the date range for which you expect to find an index, I have looked through the 13 pages of films until I find the lack of an index icon (i.e. the magnifying glass) on page 10 and starting at the beginning of 1945. So, from there through the end of 1953, there is no index - thus, no way to search for death certificates within these years.

You indicated that you found a certificate, but had to page through 791 records to do so. I think I can get that number down significantly, if you're interested.

First, it appears that the State File Numbers, which is how the Collection organizes the death certificates with each of the years, generally are in a rough ascending order by date. Thus, if you browse the Collection, for 1953, you see 4 columns of File Numbers (at least that's what I see). I just break up the calendar between those columns and that seems to work pretty well.

Next, it also appears that the State File Numbers are also in an iterative ascending, alphabetical order by County in which the death occurred. It is possible that within one set of File Numbers you may find the counties iterate once in the set. An easy way to determine if you should expect to see this is to view the first (or one of the first) certificates in the set of File Numbers. If it is in the low alphabetical range (e.g. Allen County), you probably won't see that phenomenon. If the First record is from Lorain County, expect to see the order of counties start over again within that set of File Numbers.

So let's try this manual search engine. I will look for a death certificate for Mahoning County, Ohio dated 15 June 1953.

My Steps:

• Select 1953, File Number Set: 43901-46300 (because is it mid-way through the sets), -- Looking at image 10, I see a death certificate for Cuyahoga with a death date of June 8, 1953.
• I look for Mahoning County by roughly spiltting the 3159 images - i.e. I go to image 1500 (I like round numbers), and find that I am still in Cuyahoga county, so I go to the end of the "film" and look at image 3150 and find that I am only in Franklin County -- so I need to go the the next set of File Numbers.
• Looking at the set of File Numbers: 46301-49200, I continue to split the range until I find Mahoning county.
• Then, I start looking for a certificate with the desired date (15 June 1953) . Here I decided to jump with a smaller number of images -- I used 50.
• I found a Mahoning county death certificate for 24 June 1953 (no certificate seems to exist in Mahoning for 15 June), and only had to look at 15 records (if I kept an accurate count).

I haven't exhaustively tested this approach, but it does seem to work. I hope this helps. If not, I apologize for dragging you through it.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

Yet another example of security theater.

Obfuscating Social Security numbers for the deceased makes the lives of identity thieves much, much easier: they can use a dead person's ID without anyone being able to check that the person it belonged to is no longer living.