For those of you daunted by search fees ranging from $21 to $81 for NYS vital records, one can save money by going to the State Library in Albany to search through the birth, death & marriage indexes on microfiche. Indexes begin in 1881. If you find what you want and walk downstairs to the Health Dept. in the same building, you can get the certificate for the $11 fee. You do not get the certificate at that time. They mail it to you in 2 or 3 weeks. As someone pointed out specific for Broome County (applies to others as well), wills and land records can be obtained from the County and birth, death & marriage records from the towns. For old wills and letters of administration in Broome Co., if one does the search themselves through the indexes, one can get the pages copied for 50 cents per page.