Can't find birth or death records for my mother

Hi @Mary Lynne KennedyMarine. We understand that you are interested in getting sources for your mother whom you believe was known as Margaret Genene Kennedy. You have stated that she was born in Columbus, Nebraska in 1929, but you are hesitant in sending for her birth certificate when you are not certain about her birth name. We can understand that concern. We are aware that many records have not been indexed yet, so searching with just names and dates for an ancestor will not always find the results that we are looking for. Please consider searching by location or for certain types of records to see what you can find.

Many collections that do not have indexes can be found through the FamilySearch catalog. Click Search, then Catalog to get to the FamilySearch Catalog page. The following knowledge article that is found in our Help Center will explain how to search in the catalog. We hope you will find it helpful.

As you find collections that you wish to review, it will be important to understand the notes that appear on the catalog pages. This additional article will help you with understanding the notes.

Please remember that when you search with the name and life events of an ancestor, you will be directed to indexed records, while searching for specific collections will provide general information that will require some research. Many guests don't find the records they are looking for simply because they don't take the time to do research within a film.

To try to assist in your search, we went to the Research Wiki by clicking Search and Research Wiki and we located a page with the online records for Nebraska Genealogy. It is interesting that there are a variety of early marriage records, but we did not find collections of birth records for Nebraska.

Death records from the California online genealogy records include an index of deaths through the year 2000, but the US Social Security Death Index records include records through 2014. You may want to look at other collections that might be related to your mother's death that are found in the online records from California.

We hope that the information we have provided will give you some other avenues of research. We wish you success as you continue to look for records that verify the life events of your mother.