Don't confuse the rules which govern in NY City with those for the rest of NY State. Anyone can walk into to NYC Municipal Archives and get a certified vital record from their collection, and most of these records are also available on microfilm at a Family History Center. The NYCMA has Births to 1909, Marriages to 1937, and Deaths to 1948. They ask for relationship on the mail-order request form but don't ask if you go there in person. The NYC Dept of Health has post-1909 Birth records and post-1948 Death records. They're sticky about Birth records, but any relative can get a Death record. Interesting, the actual cause of death stopped being listed on NYC Death certs about 1948 - now they just say "Natural Causes". (I suppose accidental or violent death might be different). The NY State Dept of Health in Albany is the one with the 50 year rule (Marriages and Deaths) and 75 year rule (Births), but even these can be waived if the individual is deceased and you are a _direct_ descendent. Regards, Charles Sullivan Hepgrannie@aol.com wrote: > >In a message dated 9/5/99 11:51:25 PM, MJSTERN46@aol.com writes: > ><< the death records of those same people can't be released >for 50 + years to the general public! >> > >I guess the keywords here are the "general public". I haven't had any >problem obtaining death records from the NYC Municipal Archives. Of course, >they want to know your relationship to the deceased and the purpose, which in >my case was genealogy. I can understand this, as death records are pretty >personal. > >If you are talking about a certified copy of a death certificate than it >becomes more difficult and understandably so. These have to be obtained at >the Dept of Health and are limited as to the year. > >Check out the NYC Municipal Archives if that is where your interest lies. >Other archives may have different rules but I have dealt with Illinois and >had no problem there either. For the NYCMA go to the following where >printable forms are available: >http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/serdir/html/xdoris01.html > >Eileen > > >==== GEN-NYS Mailing List ==== >Have you considered joining the Rootsweb Genealogical Data >Cooperative? > http://www.rootsweb.com/