Friday, February 5, 2016

MICHIGAN DEATH RECORD IMAGES FOR 1940 NOW ONLINE! Here’s how I found my family’s certificates


The website https://michiganology.org/vital-records/ has many wonderful records & historical information for Michigan researchers. 
Certainly the one I’ve used the most is their death index and images. The images for records from 1897-1920 have been online for a while now.

The images for 1921-1952 are being released as the 75 year restriction rolls around.  As of today, they have uploaded the images up to and including 1940.

So, today, I’m going to use my Legacy search function and see how many, if any, of my ancestors have deaths in Michigan in 1940.

To accomplish this I will go to the “Search” tab and then “Find.”
I want two criteria in my search:
  • Place of death = Michigan
  • Date of death = 1940
(CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT)
 1940 yr of death search

And, here is my list

1940 yr of death search list

Let’s go over to seekingmichigan.org (UPDATE Oct 2019 - the seekingmichigan website if closed down - the new site is michiganology.org) and see how many of those four certificates I can locate.

NOTE:  As you know, uploading and indexing are not perfect sciences.  So, just because we hear that records are available, doesn’t mean they ALL will be.

How many of these death certificate images did I find?

FOUR OUT OF FOUR!!!

BUSH_William W_death cert_5 Mar 1940_DetroitWayneMichigan
DEATH CERT FOR WILLIAM W. BUSH
GOULD_Willard B_death cert-2_6 Jun 1940_Saginaw_SaginawCo_Michigan
DEATH CERT FOR WILLARD B. GOULD
ERB_Minnie nee Hartwey_death cert_15 Jan 1940_DetroitWayneMichigan
DEATH CERT FOR MINNIE ERB
FORSYTH_Katherine_death cert_24 Sep 1940_DetroitWayneMichigan
DEATH CERT FOR KATHERINE MARTZ FORSYTH

Wonderful!  I’ve downloaded each of them, cropped and corrected them and now I can add them to Legacy and source them.  That’s what I call 15 minutes well spent online.

TIP:  I do not like the look of images as they appear in our downloads.  I don’t like the black surrounding them and I don’t like them to be crooked or too grey.  I fix all of this before I ever save the digital image to my computer.  I takes about one minute to perform the task and makes your images look so much better in any report or if you upload them online.  See my “Other Posts” below for a post I wrote about this process.

Time to go work on those records.  Please let me know how many new records you find in this collection.

OTHER POSTS THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST

MICHIGAN DEATH RECORDS ONLINE - Where can you find them?

Legacy 8 - THE SEARCH FUNCTION - What Can You Find?

EASY DOCUMENT EDITING - How to Straighten & Correct Images

Happy hunting,
Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2016   Diane Gould Hall
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

3 comments:

  1. GeorgiaFebruary 5, 2016 at 4:14 PM

    How do you straighten the image? I know how to crop the image but not straighten it. I have ArcSoft Photo Studio on my computer that I use for cropping.

    Thanks.
    Georgia

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Diane Gould HallFebruary 5, 2016 at 8:15 PM

      Hi Georgia,
      Well, I have to admit I'm not familiar with the software you mentioned. However, in the program I use there is a rotate option. That opens a menu allowing me to rotate in small increments, either left or right. Does you pr program have a rotate option? If so, have you examined all the features to see if incremental rotation is offered? When in doubt I always go to Google and try to find answers. Sometimes I will find a tutorial link to a YouTube video with my answers. I've learned a lot doing that. Please get back to me as I will be wondering if you found the option in your software.
      Thank you for stopping by.

      Delete
  2. GeorgiaFebruary 6, 2016 at 9:32 AM

    Thanks. Will examine my software and see what happens. Georgia

    ReplyDelete

I look forward to reading your comments. If you have any connection to the people mentioned in this blog, please let me know. I write about mine and my husband's ancestors and would welcome new information or meeting a new cousin or two. Thanks for visiting and come back soon.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)