At 03:30 PM 3/5/2003 -0700, jprollings@hotmail.com wrote: >If you think that they died between 1932-1952 in SC, you can write the SC >Archives in Columbia and request a copy of the death certificate. I feel >sure that NC Archives can do this, too. I have gotten them from Columbia >myself and Massachutes, and I only knew the names, no dates. > There's a "however" on this: death certificates for this time period -- especially the 1930s, out in rural areas -- may not exist. Since death certificates were only required if the deceased died after a doctor had been called, if the family didn't call in a doctor, there may not be a death certificate. I spent some time several years ago looking through the death certificate index at the SC Archives in Columbia for someone who'd died in the 1930s and came up empty. The deceased's family was very poor, very rural, and he died in the depths of the Depression. (I did find an obituary in the microfilm of a local newspaper, though.) My understanding is that requirements on obtaining death certificates from about 1952 tightened up significantly here in South Carolina about 10 years ago. My information -- and this is from the early 1990s -- on NC death certificates is that the request needs to be made from the deceased's closest surviving relative or if there are several from the same generation (such as the deceased's children), a relative from the closest surviving generation. I know that death certificates in South Carolina didn't exist before about 1913: North Carolina's may have started in the same time period, as well. Elizabeth Whitaker Upstate South Carolina

My grandfather died in Georgia in 1943. No death certificate was filed. Don't know if it was because of the war, rural location, etc. However, we contacted the funeral home and, after searching their records, they sent us a notarized letter stating his date of death. If you have a general idea of where they lived, you might want to canvas the funeral homes in the area. Pam McClure Elizabeth Whitaker <whitaker@innova.net> wrote:At 03:30 PM 3/5/2003 -0700, jprollings@hotmail.com wrote: >If you think that they died between 1932-1952 in SC, you can write the SC >Archives in Columbia and request a copy of the death certificate. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, and more