Death Records: How It All Started - RecordsSiteReviews.com

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Death Records: How It All Started

Death records are the earliest vital records in the United States. The origins of these public documents date back to 1880 when the US Census Bureau founded a system for nationwide death registration.

Public health was starting to turn into one big headache for government officials in the late 1800s, not only in the Americas but also in Europe. Western medicine (not to mention public health systems) had not yet advanced to the point that such outbreaks could be contained and managed easily.

This was the dawn of the industrial revolution and it was common enough to find factories with slave-like conditions built next to each other.

Setting up healthy working conditions was far from the minds of the era's capitalists. Everyone was simply too busy trying to make money or earn a living. Even children, many of whom were undernourished, formed part of this industrial labor force.

It's easy to see how a mass outbreak of a deadly disease, such as bubonic plague, could start.

Death Records: Early Days

The initiative for setting up death registration was started by doctors working with the US Census. They suggested that death records were a good way to update the census, which were used to give officials an idea of the public health situation in different states.

To be part of this death registration system, a city or state had to set up laws to govern the way death records were gathered. And they had to show that their area achieved 90% compliance (i.e., at least 90% of all deaths in the area were recorded).

The first areas to set up an efficient system for issuing death certificates were Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, New Jersey, and 19 cities.

At the start of the 20^th century, all 6 New England states had set up death registration, as well as pioneers NJ and DC, plus New York, Michigan, and Indiana. California, Pennsylvania, Maryland, South Dakota, and Colorado had set up their own death registration areas by 1906.

That's the reason why the earliest death records kept in government archives in these areas have much earlier dates than in other parts of the US.

Birth registration areas only began in 1915, while those for marriage began in 1957. Divorce registration, started in 1958, was a bit harder to set up.

It was only by 1933 that the entire United States had fully set up registration areas for deaths and births.

Death Records: Where Else to Look

Before registration areas were set up, cities and towns may have resorted to various ways of filing their vital records. Some may not have filed public records at all and just relied on whatever informal system was already in place.

So where can you go if the death records you want date before death registration was set up in your state? Here are some possibilities:

7. Local cemeteries (in the absence of death records, just check out the tombstones)

Read more about the history of the death certificate and how it is used today at RecordsSiteReview's Death Records section.