Genealogical Researchers in Missouri: Let's really push for opening of the Missouri vital records 72 years or older. This will require legislative action. Let's get it passed in the up-coming session! Surely, it would be beneficial, during the present campaign, to present this issue to the candidates for state legislature and state senate. The following may help you in your contacts with the candidates in your district. Keep it non-partisan. Dear Legislator Candidate: Many, many Missourians are keenly interested in family history. However, some are impeded by a problem that exists with regard to the State Vital Records Office and which, indeed, would exist in any similar situation. The time has arrived for microfilm copies of the Missouri vital records (72 years old or older), and indexes at the State Vital Records Office in the Department of Health to be made available to the public at the State Archives. A 72-year interval is not arbitrary. Owing to the Federal regulation that census data remain closed for 72 years, that interval has become a de facto standard in the USA. A 72-year interval suffices for privacy. Justification: Family Historians must be enabled to study record after record, not just seek one record at a time, and especially not have to work through an intermediary person or to depend on an index. That is essential, because of the many problems in interpretation of hand-written records, many typos, many spelling variations in names, even many variations in names themselves. There are many entries in which the surnames are mis-spelled. Here is an example. One researcher's great-grandma's married name was Zakrzewski, a name that, with the silent 'k', is more often butchered than not. She died in St. Louis some time after May, 1910. Surely, her death is recorded in the State Vital Records office The only practical way to find her death data would be to search all the surnames that begin "Za", "Ze", "Sa" or "Se" in that time period. Repeated tries thru the Vital Records Office have been costly, but not successful. In another case, a researcher submitted formal requests and fees to a vital records office (not Jefferson City) for his aunt's birth and death dates. He knew, and stated, that she was born and had died in the 1890s. They reported finding neither birth nor death records. As it happens, those older birth and death records are open. When he reviewed the microfilms, he found both her birth and death data. And he found that her birth name differed from her baptismal name and from her name at death! The latter had been the only name that he had known for her. Perhaps that vital records office's index cards were out of sequence. More likely, they had her recorded by only one of her names. Because hand-written capital letters are the most troublesome, it often happens that indexes are severely deficient. Yet a governmental office can only check via an index. The Soundex system is similarly deficient, for it, too, depends on the surname initial. All that is needed is to add to Sect. 193.245 of RSMO 1994 a new sub-paragraph as follows: (4) The department shall provide microfilms of all vital records that are 72 years old or older, and microfilms of indexes to all such records, to the State Archives for study by the public. In January of each year, the department shall provide microfilms of all vital records that have become 72 years old or older within the prior year, and microfilms of indexes to all such records, to the State Archives for study by the public. Please note that this would in no way interfere with the present practices of the vital records office. In the most-recent legislature, different bills were introduced into each house, and hearings were held, but no action has yet been taken. Will you support family researchers in this effort? Bob Doerr in the beautiful Missouri Ozarks