USA genealogy: Utah death certificates now online

More than 250,000 death certificates from the US state of Utah that date from 1905 to 1954 have been digitised with a searcheable index now linked with original images. To search the Utah death certificate index and view the certificates, users need to go to the Utah History Research Center website.

FamilySearch, in conjunction with the Genealogical Society of Utah and the Utah State Archives and Records Service, ran the project to link the state's free online index to death certificates to original images of the historic documents relating to Utah death records.

The integration of the index of Utah death records with free digital pictures of the death certificates issued from 1905 to 1954 by the state will open doors to additional information for family historians and genealogists with Utah ties.

The online index to more than 250,000 Utah death records was created by the State Office of Vital Records and Statistics and has searchable information limited to the name of the deceased person, their date of death, sex, and where they died.

The Utah State Archives turned to FamilySearch to help them get the digital images online. FamilySearch digitised the images of the Utah death records and provided the technology to link the images of the certificates to the state's online index.

The linking process was completed in just a few weeks — incredibly fast for a project of this nature and magnitude.

The names of people from the Utah death record collection are now very much alive, searchable, and viewable online — and for free.

Ancestry.com also has useful information for people looking for Utah death records and Utah burial records. The Utah Cemetery Index (Source Information: Utah Valley Regional Family History Center. Utah County, Utah Cemetery Index [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 1998. Original data: Utah Valley Regional Family History Center. Utah County (UT) Cemetery Index. Provo, UT, USA: Utah Valley Regional Family History Center, 1997.

This is an index of 80 000 records from the cemeteries of Utah containing details of burials and memorial headsontes. Each entry gives the surname of the person buried, the first name, birth date, death date and cemerery location in most cases.

The user merely needs to type in an ancestor's name that died in Utah between 1905 to 1954, and they will be directed to a brief summary of the ancestor's death certificate with a link to view the original image. Users need to simply click on the certificate image to see a larger, high quality view of the original death certificate.

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The Utah History Research Center also has other useful digitised records and many other indexes, with the facility to order the image from the Center. It includes, for example, access to the Utah Cemetery Inventory Project. This contains the names and other recorded information about people buried in cemeteries in Utah.