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Million Record March
Introducing the Michigan Death Records Collection
Welcome to Seeking Michigan! As a partner in the site, The Library of Michigan is excited to make these Michigan death certificates for the years 1897 to 1920 freely available online. The years 1915 to 1920 are particularly significant, as a readily available statewide index did not exist previously.
There are terrific ancestral discoveries just waiting to be made in this statewide collection. Take Guy Robinson, for example. His death certificate is exceptionally detailed, even more so than usual. Guy died 17 May 1914 in Delta Township, Eaton County. In addition to both his parents’ names (his mother’s maiden name, too), the certificate identifies his mother’s specific county of birth – Dodge County, Wisc. Guy’s father’s birthplace is even more specific – Woodland Township, Barry County, Mich., as is his own – Oneida Township, Eaton County, Mich. Guy’s burial was at Union Cemetery in Eaton County, perhaps at a family plot there. The certificate’s informant was Guy’s father, Loell Robinson, giving a certain validity to the information. If this were your “Guy,” you’d be ecstatic.
Currently, there are about 250,000 of the approximately 1,000,000 certificates on this site, or about 25 percent of the total collection. We’ll be adding additional records regularly in the next few weeks, so check back often.
So what years and counties are here? The list below details what records are currently available; [incomplete] means that particular county (or Detroit) is not yet fully loaded, not that the whole run of counties listed is incomplete. Remember that the Library of Michigan will be regularly adding records in the coming weeks.
1901:
- Lenawee – Midland [incomplete]
- Detroit [incomplete]
1902:
- Alcona – St. Clair
1904:
- Detroit [incomplete]
1905:
- St. Joseph – Wexford
- Detroit [incomplete]
1911
- Gratiot – Ionia [incomplete]
1912:
- Menominee – Washtenaw [incomplete]
- Detroit [incomplete]
1913:
- Alcona – Crawford
- Midland – Wexford
1914:
- Alcona – WexfordDetroit [incomplete]
1915:
- Alcona – Wexford
1916:
- Berrien [incomplete]
- Delta – Gratiot [incomplete]
- Lapeer [incomplete] – Detroit [incomplete]
1917:
- Genesee [incomplete] – Wexford
1918:
- Alcona – Berrien [incomplete]
- Kalamazoo [incomplete] – Wexford
- Detroit [incomplete]
We hope you enjoy Seeking Michigan and wish you happy searching. I hope you find your “Guy!”
AWESOME!!!! I found one death cert which I have. But that is OK. I will keep looking for more of Detroit/Wayne County to be uploaded.
This is a fabulous undertaking. I for one am thrilled!!
So good to finally see Michigan enter the 21st century and putting material online! Congratulations! We eagerly await the rest of the certificates! Kudo’s to the Library of Michigan for its roll in making these available to genealogists all over the world!
Karen
What fantastic news!!! Wayne County has always been the toughest for me to find vitals since I no longer live there. I can’t wait for!!! Thanks to everyone involved for helping to keep the past alive!!!
The Library of Michigan has always been one of my favourite places to do research. Now that these records, as well as the ones on Family Search are available, it makes the searching so much easier. Thank you for making the records available to the public.
Thanks for this marvelous undertaking. I only hope that it is one day indexed for all the counties and possilby by surname. Keep up the grade work,
This is such a valuable resource for genealogy!!! I am so happy. My only complaint is that the search engine is really weak. It is difficult to find mis-spelled names without being able to filter date and county, etc. Thanks for your hard work. I hope you will continue to add more years in the future, particulary 1921-1930.
I love it, I love it, thanks so much!
I am so very pleased to be able to access free death records from the Library of Michigan. My tax dollars are being well spent. I would like to know where monatary donations can be made to help support the State of Michigan’s genealogy services.This is a gem worth supporting.
Thanks for the comments, we actually are working on the search. We should have improvements in the next month or so. We just didn’t want to wait any longer to bring you the resource.
It is indexed by county, surname and more. Click on the “Seek” tab, on the far right, you can choose from a list of indexed fields to conduct your search. Surname is one of the fields.
Thanks Crystal for your comments. Both the Library of Michigan Foundation and the Michigan History Foundation support the genealogical programs at the Library and Archives of Michigan. Donations are welcome! This site has been made possible by the generous support of the Abrams Foundation and individuals like yourself.
WONDERFUL!!!!!
I have already found my grandfather, and great-grandfathers
death records and have broken thru a “brick wall” on his – it is noted he was from WALES – all the time I went by the census and it said MAINE – so I still have a puzzle to solve! You have done outstanding work and I can’t thank you enough! I found some in Washington’s new digital site too, so MICHIGAN is right up there with the other guys! GOOD GOING LIBRARY OF MICHIGAN!!!! thanks so much!
Are there plans to have the death records for the mid to late 1800′s added?
Thank you- I did find one death record. Hopefully more will show up as times goes on.
1867-1896 are available at Familysearch.org
I am having trouble getting to counties to check for death records. Please advise, thank you
Is it only me, or are others having problems with the advanced search feature? The search windows and fields seem to be logically jumbled. Last Name “Smith” and County “Wayne” seems to react like Last Name “Smith” or County “Wayne” or Last Name “Wayne” or County “Smith”. The result is an unmanageable number of hits. Is a help feature in the works?
Great. Now if the other 48 states would catch up with West Virginia and post marriage birth and death certificates on line, it would make the lives of all us ancestor hunters very happy.
Great resource! I have many relatives in Michigan.
Now, how does one correct transcription errors? Found my great-grandfather, Nicholas Laubenthal, listed as McHalas Laubenthal.
Ken Thompson
Moline Acres (north StLouis County) MO
What a great site! I love it! While I didn’t find the one death certificate that I’m looking for, I’ll continue to come back often to see if it was added. Thanks for all your hard work.
I found my ggrandfather with his middle, which the I only had an initial for. Sent your site to acouple of people who do genealogy. Thank you.
Thanks for providing such a valuable resource for anyone who has family ties to Michigan or for someone doing any local research for a particular area. I hope the upcoming additions are as worthy as the initial input; and I am sure the future additions will make the site better and better.
Is there a site for someone to suggest a correction? As a family researcher, the entry for SUTHER P DANIELS, Arenac Co death in 1915, has his name misspelled. It is definitely LUTHER on the death record but has been transcribed incorrectly on the site as Suther.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks again,
Lugene Daniels
Thank you – I found the premature birth (death) of my father’s brother that I was not aware of.
We are working on the search function. Some links have been broken when we switched servers.
Great.
If you come across a transcription error, please contact the Library of Michigan at librarian@michigan.gov.
We’ll be making scheduled updates/corrections to the index as we move forward.
Thanks for using the site!
Thanks for providing this great resource on line! I have so far found one person of interest and looking forward to the further additions. I did find that copying and pasting the text to my Family Tree Maker software ended up disjointed in its final form. I’m also unable to save the death certificate image to my hard drive. Please advise.
This is fantastic. A cousin and I have documented the Canadian STIER STIRE STUER family and know there may be connection to the Michigan STIER’s. Every bit helps. Thanks again!!
Robert: right click on the image for the “save as” function. Cut and paste each line of text separately.
I cannot tell you how happy I am to see this project come together! Please tell us if it will include all of wayne county?! I will send off my donation in the morning -
this is outstanding, i live so far from michigan now. and especailly from houghton coutny. i hope more comes avaliable.
An admirable initiative, but the search function is much more cumbersome than those available on the Missouri, West Virginia and Ohio (LDS) death certificate sites.
This is wonderful, I have family line that moved to Michigan(I live in the UK) and in 1913 my Great Grandmother Paid visit to family in Michigan, but I cannot trace them, this might just help.
Why don’t you just put them on chronolgically? This is hit and miss.
Bar
This site is wonderful! Thank you very much. I have found a couple certificates for my ancestors….thanks again. I am looking forward to the additions as they become available.
GREAT !!!!! I found a previously unkown brother of my grandfather. This unknown sibling unfortunately died the day after his birth. And only about one quarter of the records are entered. I can’t wait for them all to be uploaded.
” PATTERSON ” DEATH ECORDS WILL NOT ADVANCE BEYOND PAGE 12 WHY? FIX ! NOTIFY, PLASE!
I know my response gets buried with all the comments, search functions are being restored, they were broken by our switch to a new server. Please be patient.
That may be all we have at this point. Only 1/4 of the records are up so far.
Will all of Wayne Co be included eventually?
Lillie: yes, we should have everything up by April 20th.
The Library is regularly adding new records until the project is complete, in the next few weeks. When it’s all said and done, every death record for the State of Michigan from 1897 to 1920 will be found here. Every county – Wayne, Keweenaw, and everywhere in between.
Check the death records blog article at the Look blog for the most up-to-date information about what years and counties have been added.
Please be patient, we’re anxious, too, to have these records available online.
I am happy to see Michigan join the list of states that are making this info available. I wish more states would join Michigan and the others like Arizona, Missouri, W. Virginia that are digitizing vitals. Will other records like births and marriages also eventually be added? Cant wait until all the death certificates are online so I can see if I find even more relatives. I hope as the years go by a new year will be added to the collection. Thanks again, this make researching my Michigan roots from here in New York much easier.
I am just curious about the Wayne county records. I have spun through the reels after they were returned to the library looking for 3 deaths in Detroit, Wayne county and none of them were on the film. I am hearing that Detroit is “exempt” from these records and the only way to get the information is to pay the outrageous fees at Vital Records to get certified copies even though I just need a “genealogical” copy for information.Is this true? The Detroit death records are not going to be included?
I’ve already found several relevant records — thank you so much for developing and implementing this project.
I did not find who I was looking for but I did find two people which helped verify some family genealogy. thank you and can’t wait to see more. Nancy
did not find who I was looking for but I did find two people which helped verify some family genealogy. thank you and can’t wait to see more. Nancy
Fantastic! What a lot of work the volunteers and you have done. Have found numerous records so far – looking forward to coming back regularly to hopefully find the rest I am looking for.
Sue:
The collection does include Detroit deaths. Given the size of the city, those records represent a significant portion of the entire collection.
Remember that for some of these years – 1915-1920 – an index was not widely available before.
I encourage you to check back as the project continues. Depending on what year you are looking at, Wayne County and/or Detroit may not yet be complete online here. Stay tuned….
Feel free to contact the Library if you have any additional questions. Thanks for your interest!
Do you have any Michigan newspapers in digitized form that are available for interlibrary loan? I am trying to find the newspaper for Menominee Co., Michigan.
Thanks, Jane