Genealogy Lesson #21: Vital Records: A Different Death Index

In the last lesson, posted on Tuesday, April 28, 2020, we moved from searching the NYC Municipal Death Records Index on the German Genealogy Group (GGG) website to the NYC Municipal Death Records Index provided by FamilySearch.org.

If you were able to find the death of my 3rd great aunt, Gertrude Joyce-Sheridan (born circa 1865 - died 1934) in the FamilySearch index, you can see their index provide much more detail about the death certificate. FamilySearch’s index provides the following data:

Gertrude M. Sheridan
New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949

Name: Gertrude M. Sheridan

Event Type: Death

Event Date: 21 Apr 1934

Event Place: New York City, Queens, New York, United States

Address: 905-Troy Ave

Residence Place: B'klyn, N.Y.

Gender:Female

Age:70

Marital Status: Married

Race: White

Occupation: Domestic

Birth Year (Estimated): 1864

Birthplace: U. S. A.

Burial Date: 24 Apr 1934

Cemetery: Calvary Cemetery

Father's Name: John Joyce

Father's Birthplace: U. S. A.

Mother's Name: Mary O'Neil

Mother's Birthplace: Ireland



These are details taken from the actual death record. The name of her parents and thus Gertrude’s maiden name confirms that this indeed is MY Gertrude Sheridan.

This death certificate could now be ordered if one desired or one could got to their local Family History Center and view an image of the document for free.

It is good to also see the actual document because sometimes there are details that are not in the index, such as the cause of death, which might be of use or interest to the researcher.

You can certainly see though that not all indexes are built the same. Some of you might wonder why then anyone would look at this New York City Municipal Deaths Index anywhere other than FamilySearch. In short, human error. That is to say that sometimes there are records that make it into one index and not the other. 

When doing genealogy research you want to make sure you look everywhere possible and thus conduct what is known as an exhaustive search. It should be noted that there is also an index for New York City Municipal Death Records on Ancestry.com if you have access to that database.

Before moving on to marriage records, in the next lesson I will write about death records outside of New York City.