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