A week or so ago there was a good discussion about the Social Security Death Index. If you are using ancestry.com you may not come up with as many hits as rootsweb.com for the same name. I just tried both searches with the exact same name, with ancestry I got 3 hits, but with rootsweb I got 12. One of the names listed on rootsweb had a death date of 1958 - this person was not mentioned on ancestry at all. I had previously thought also, that it was rare to find someone listed in this index pre1962. Hope this helps, Kay