Did you know that a date of death is no longer added to the Social
Security Death Index until three years after the event occurs?
Did you know the State Vital Records Officers have a Model Act which if
passed in your state will close access to birth record for 125 years, marriage
records for 100 years, and death records for 75 years?
GENEALOGISTS
NEED TO WORK TOGETHER AND SPEAK-UP IF WE ARE TO REVERSE THESE RECENT TRENDS! We need to let Congress and
our state legislatures know that genealogists need access to public records and
GENEALOGISTS VOTE! You can help by signing the Genealogists’ Declaration
of Rights and by asking the societies to which you belong to encourage members
to also sign the Declaration.
The Records Preservation and Access Committee (RPAC) has obtained 8,000
signatures over the last year including more than 1,500 at the national
genealogy conferences, over 2,300 at regional, state, and local societies, and
4,100 online signatures. WE NEED 10,000 SIGNATURES BY THE END OF 2015 FOR
GENEALOGISTS TO MAKE A STRONG STATEMENT IN SUPPORT OF OPEN ACCESS TO PUBLIC
RECORDS.
Spread the word! Take a copy of the Declaration signature form to your
local society and obtain more signatures. The signature form for organizations can
be found on the RPAC Blog at www.fgs.orgrpac/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/DeclarationSignaturePageOrganizational-2015-.pdf.
Keep reading if you want more details about how access for genealogists
has been restricted this year. There’s bad news, but there’s good news, too.
·
Section 203 of the 2013
Bipartisan Budget Act, which went into effect 29 March 2014, closed access to
the Death Master File (used by genealogists as the Social Security Death Index)
for three years after an individual’s death. Access during the three-year
embargo is limited to persons certified by the Commerce Department.
Certification costs $400; the annual cost to access the data is $995; the
available data is limited; the search engine inadequate, and new audit and
security requirements will make access unaffordable by even professional
genealogists.
·
Since 1 November 2011, the public
DMF/SSDI has omitted those deaths which were reported only by states. The
Social Security Administration also omits geographic data, although data
aggregators such as Ancestry have been able to add data such as state of issue
back into the SSDI based upon the first three digits of the SSN.
·
Genealogists have had no
access to death records in Oklahoma
·
The Kansas Supreme Court
has a proposed Rule 106 which would redact the mother’s maiden name, date of
birth, and city and state of birth from marriage licenses. RPAC and Kansas
Where genealogists have been actively involved, access to vital records
has improved. On a positive note genealogists from some states have been able
to reverse the closure trend:
·
Death Records in Virginia Virginia Death
Records 1912-2014 and Marriage Records 1936-2014 are available at the Library
of Virginia
See the 14 June 2015 RPAC Blog post, “Virginia Vital Records Online,” at http://www.fgs.org/RPAC for more details.
·
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania
·
The Michigan State
Previous Upfront
with NGS posts on this topic include:
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