New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949 Records
Family Search provides a list of details about an ancestor with a death certificate in the "New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949". Is there any significant information difference between the actual death certificate and the information extracted by Family Search? After years of searching and trying variant spellings of my wife's maiden name in French, I found reference in the collection to a death in Manhattan in 1867. However, the information is very limited. We have a name, that's a victory in itself, date of death (1867), gender, that she died in Manhattan, age and estimated date of birth. I'm assuming from other discussions that acquiring a death certificate either by PDF or mail takes a while and is probably costly. If some one has experience with this, is there much more information in the actual certificate or has Family Search already extracted all that is there? There are examples in other discussions that mention parents, country of origin, place of burial and other useful information. This record has none of that. I see no benefit in ordering the certificate.
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On a family members death record the name of the cemetery is either incorrect or poorly abbreviated. It is spelled calogn. This person died in New York in 1939. I have searched for the name of any cemetery in Brooklyn with this name and there are none. Can anyone help identify this cemetery?
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RickPenland We apologize that your questions got lost in the shuffle and you have not received an answer until now about the New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949. Here is how you can learn more about the record collection as well as how to learn what more might be available. From the record collection search page, click How to Use This Collection
The FamilySearch wiki page opens for the collection:
Here you can learn basic information about the record collection. Some of these pages give more information than others. But the most helpful part of the pages is towards the bottom where you can find the "I Can't Find the Person I'm Looking For, What Now" and "Research Helps" sections. Those link you to other wiki pages that can answer your question about death certificates in New York. The New York Vital Records article should be helpful:
Among the links on that page is a link to the New York State Library where you can get vital records and a link to order New York City certificates where you can discover what kinds of fees are involved in getting the actual certificate and I imagine you could query them to learn what additional details would be on an actual certificate.
Most serious researchers would not be content to rely on what is in the index of a record, since indexers make mistakes. So, if you can afford it, pursuing a copy of the actual certificate seems like a good idea.
I'm sure those in the Community who have ancestors from NYC can give you additional (and better) information, but this might give you something to start with. We also have a Community Group for New York. I don't know how active it is, but you might consider posting there to get help from experienced researchers:
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@RickPenland in 1867, the record may be only a single line on a ledger page, rather than a certificate. That means there is less information than later records, but it is always worthwhile obtaining the record.
You can obtain that page for free by using the FHL Free Lookup Service. New Library Lookup Service at the Family History Library • FamilySearch It will arrive by email, as a jpg, within a couple of weeks.
@N Tychonievich New York City records are held separately from New York State records. That means that the link to the New York State Library is not as useful.
Since the subject is this database, the TITLE is incorrect. The records end at 1948. There are no 1949 records in the database. I've tried to get it fixed in the past, without success. Any chance you can put that on your list, please, @N Tychonievich ? Thank you!
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile Yes, I will submit a request to correct the title of the record collection. Thank you for pointing it out.
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Thank you! I have a couple of others for New York. May I put those here or would you prefer a separate post?
And there is a typo in my earlier post which I can no longer edit - should be "link to the New York State Library is not as useful."
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile Separate posts keeps things cleaner. We don't want the person who posted the initial question to get a lot of comments added that do not directly pertain to the initial question. Can be confusing.
I fixed the typo. It's a weird thing that sometimes Community lets us edit and delete our own posts and sometimes it doesn't.
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Thank you!
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile Because the reported collection includes burials in 1949, engineers are not going to change the title of the collection.
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I understand that point, but it is still misleading to someone expecting to find a death in 1949. Any hope of an "FYI" in the description?
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile Maybe. I can but try.
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Deaths -1948, Burials -1949? I know sometimes there are helpful hints in the description.
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My best guess would be Calvary Cemetery, which is in Woodside, Queens County, New York, not Brooklyn. But, it is a Roman Catholic Cemetery, so unless the person or their spouse was Catholic, they most likely would not be buried there.
Veterans and their spouses might be buried in Cypress Hills Cemetery. which is in Brooklyn.
Canarsie Cemetery is in Brooklyn but is rather small with only 5,500 burials. (Calvary has 3 million.)
No other cemeteries starting with a "C" come to mind.
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@Mildred Bishop The NYC Records department has recently put about 70% of their vital records online, in color. Sometimes the color version is much easier to read. The website is https://a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov/search
You can see what records are available here https://a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov/digital-vital-records
Scroll down to find the "Deaths" tab and click on it to see what years and locations are available.
If you will share the 1939 certificate number, I'll be happy to help more. New York City research is one of my passions.
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Many thanks for posting these links. They are useful for me too!
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I'm incredibly grateful to have been able to access the microfilmed records over the years. Now with color, some of the oldest records in my collection have revealed information I had not seen before. The amendments are in colored ink, making the changes more obvious and easier to see. Some of mine have amendments that date from after the microfilming, giving me new information altogether.
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