Hi Carole, I agree as I think the death certificates are an awesome tool for research and to corroborate other evidence! As a word of caution, everyone should keep in mind that there may be errors on the death certificates as the informants were human and therefore prone to make mistakes. For example, I ordered several of my direct-line ancestor death certificates a few years ago and noticed the name of the mother of my great-grandfather Charles Calvin Brown is listed as Araminta Dameron when in fact it is Araminta Martin...he married a Dameron. But all in all, they are still a great tool! I think what you mention too about being creative in your searches on the website is great advice. I have done the same in some of my searches. For instance, I noticed that Lewis Stark who is a brother to my great-grandfather William Howell Stark is shown as Lewis Stork. Interestingly though, if you look at the orginal death certificate, it does almost look like Stork instead of Stark (if one didn't know any better)! I think the greatest aspect of this new search engine is if you had an ancestor who died before 1910, but they had a sister or brother who lived after that date, which could potentially give you the names of the parents of that particular ancestor. I have the Martin surname on another line (through my Grandmother Mary Margaret Asbell Brown) and I was able to find a death certifcate for a Mary Martin in Montgomery County, MO, which listed her father as Patrick Martin. Mary looks to be a sister of my gg grandfather Thomas Michael Martin who was born in Ireland in 1830, migrated to Michigan in the 1830's with his parents, lived for brief period of time in Montgomery Co., MO before moving to Randolph Co., MO in the 1870's where he died in 1900. Until now, I didn't know the name of his father! I hope everyone else finds this as helpful as I have! David [email protected] wrote: David you beat me to posting this. I've been trolling thru the site and it's great. I love that I can view and print out some of the death certificates. Its a great research tool. Everyone should check it out. Don't forget that you might need to be inventive when looking for someone. I had to use 3 different spellings of "Lessly" to find everyone I was looking for. The transcribers did a great job but aren't always perfect as far as spelling some names correctly (no wonder given some of the handwriting) so keep that in mind. To find one person I left the first and last names blank and just selected Randolph County and the year of death for the search. Carole Brace In a message dated 4/22/2006 7:06:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: I couldn't remember if this has already been posted on the Randolph List, but great progress is being made by the Missouri State Archives in digitally scanning death certificates from the State of Missouri. To date, they have indexed all death certificates from 1910 through 1955. Currently, death certificates are available to view on line from 1910 through 1922. You can search for your ancestors or collateral relatives on the screen, which is included in the attached link: http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/deathcertificates/ I hope this helps! David ==== MORANDOL Mailing List ==== Questions for the List Administrator? Send them to Leslie at [email protected]