The American organization Reclaim The Records has launched a new and comprehensive database of deaths in the state of New York. The database, available at NewYorkDeathIndex.com, contains more than 10.5 million records from the period 1880-2017.
The material is the result of a public interest litigation against New York State. For the first time, the death index for the years 1973-2017 has been made available to the public. In addition, the 1957-1971 period now also includes information on actual place of death, not just place of residence - a detail that can be crucial for genealogists who want to order complete documents from local authorities rather than via the state archives.
Extended search options
The database is equipped with both an advanced search and a simpler natural language search. This makes it possible to search for names, time periods, age, geographical distance and place of death, as well as to enter free text such as «John Smith from Buffalo who died in the early 1930s».
Each individual record has been given its own page with a linkable URL, making it possible for search engines and external websites to index the material. The project also includes visualizations such as graphs of deaths per municipality and county, map views, as well as analyses of surnames distributed geographically and over time.
Free access
As with all of Reclaim The Records' projects, the material is available free of charge and users can also download the raw data files. The organization emphasizes that public information should be publicly available.
Reclaim The Records is a non-profit organization that works for access to historical archives through legal processes and transparency work. They state that the work is often costly, and therefore encourage donations to be able to continue the work of opening more archives in the United States.
