After receiving Michael's message I went out to Family Search and did some poking around. I discovered that when you open the record on Family Search the birth date is not listed but it is listed on the results page. I then went to the information page "About this collection" On this page I discovered that the index on Family Search came from Ancestry. My guess is that when Ancestry went into partnership with Vital Check one of the parties changed the database omitting the certificate number. Going to Ancestry's description of the database it says most records include the certificate numbers. This is a great example of why EE adds access dates to citations! Ann In a message dated 22-Nov-12 09:27:57 US Mountain Standard Time, michael.hait@hotmail.com writes: The certificate number (but not the exact birth date) is listed in FamilySearch's version of the same death index.