Social Security Death Index - Free Look-ups

A very powerful resource, the Social Security Death Index, contains birth and death information on millions of United States citizens. While the social security program was started in the 1930's during the Great Depression, computerized records did not exist until 1962 (the earliest date records are kept in the death index).

These records can be found on several web sites but one particular source, Rootsweb, seems to have the most up-to-date listing. There is about a two-week lapse between notification of death to the Social Security Administration and adding the individual to the death index.

The following site provides a good overview of the social security records:

http://www.rootsweb.com/~rwguide/lesson10.htm

The actual database can be found at the listing below. It is recommended that you use the advanced search feature to help narrow the results. This resource gets four stars and is bookmarked in my essential research sources.

http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi

A great resource!