Finding NYC Vital Records
Another bizarre start to a month for me…..January gave me emergency gallbladder surgery! I am afraid to see what February holds for me….. But the time I had not doing much of anything for January allowed me to delve into some of genealogy Facebook pages I follow. What I did see with regards to NYC records brought me to this blog today.
Vital records for the 5 boroughs ~ Brooklyn (Kings County), The Bronx, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island (Richmond County) ~ are available online in a few places. One is behind a paywall on MyHeritage.com, which allows you to access records including those not available on the NYC Municipal Archives page yet; another is on FamilySearch.org, but only viewable at a FamilySearch Center due to contractual agreements between the NYC Municipal Archives and FamilySearch.org; and the third is on the New York City Municipal Archives website. MyHeritage.com and the NYC Municipal Archives have the best quality records. Indexes for these records are available on Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, FamilySearch.org and GermanGenealogyGroup.com.
You may be wondering how to find the certificate number at this point. They would be in the indexes available in a few places. Again, you would need a subscription to Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com to view them there. FamilySearch.org will have the indexes, which can be viewed from home. The GermanGenealogyGroup.com has free indexes for all five boroughs.
The quickest way I find to get the certificate number and actual record is to use the GermanGenealogyGroup.com website to get the certificate number and the NYC Municipal Archives page to get the actual certificate. Keep in mind that not all are digitized yet, so you may still need to use FamilySearch.org for those certificates if you don’t have a subscription to MyHeritage.com. If you want to know what records the NYC Municipal Archives have digitized, just click on “Digital Vital Records” on their website and it will show you what it available online at this time.
1. Go to https://germangenealogygroup.com/ and using the options on the left side of the page, select Individual Database Search
2. Select the Database in which you are interested (Birth, Marriage or Death)
3. Once you have opened the page you have selected, click on Search ___ Database and fill in any known information. These databases all allow for a “sounds like” and “wild card” searches, which the NYC Municipal Archives page does not. This is why you want to use the GGG databases to get certificate numbers. Otherwise, you would need to know exactly how the transcriber wrote out the transcription for the NYC Municipal Archives page. Just think about it this way….the transcriber thinks the first name says Roy but is actually Ray. You look for Ray and will never find it since it is inputted at Roy.
4. Your search will yield results, in this case:
5. I want the top name, with certificate number 11731. So, I go the NYC Municipal Archives page at https://a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov/
6. I select Certificate, Birth Certificate, the certificate number of 11731, Kings (Brooklyn) and the year of 1897.
7. When I then select search, I get the record, which I can then download.
